Wole Soyinka Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by S. Beth Atkin

Page 6 of 7

Political Activist

After this period you assume the role of a political activist. You had had it before but it's even more evident in your work and you most recently wrote, decades later, The Open Sore of a Continent, which is about the tyranny that now exists in Nigeria. What accounts for General Abacha's current grip on power and what is it doing to the idea of a united Nigeria?

Well, in fact I was going to just make a small correction. It isn't so much that I became more of an activist after my imprisonment, it's rather that the situation in Nigeria deteriorated to such an extent that the degree, the intensity, of my activism had to be elevated correspondingly. There is nothing which I would have loved more when I came out of prison than to be able to say to myself, and I believe I did say to myself, if this is what people want ... remember there was a military dictatorship at the time when I came out, it was still under Gowan, General Gowan. That was the first time I went into voluntary exile and that act was to distance myself from an environment which I felt had failed to come to grasp with the significance of the civil war, its immorality, and the future consequences. In other words, everybody had a sense of euphoria. The war was over, the nation had stayed together. Unity became a virtue. The ills, the anomalies, the contradictions which led to the war in the first place, the civil war, no longer existed. And then there was an oil boom. People expected the country to be impoverished as a result of the war. But the opposite happened. There was money. And I saw society all around me and I felt, it wasn't a question of being a voice crying in the wilderness, it was just a sense of isolation. I didn't even bother to cry out in the wilderness. I just knew that something was very profoundly wrong, that the platform on which the nation was sitting was worm-eaten and was going to collapse very soon. And so I went into voluntary exile, because I saw that to have said or written anything at the time would have sounded like, oh, this bitter individual who's coming from prison and doesn't want to see good, doesn't want to see prosperity, wants to bad-mouth the regime. It was impossible for me to speak. And in a sense, I felt a great sense of relief: "That's it, that's the way society wants to be, I'm going away to do some writing and to recover my sanity."

But then I was not left alone. I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine. And of course, when the reality began, when it was clear that this dictator had no intention of leaving, that he was in fact now busy transforming himself into a life president and was already squandering the resources, then gradually began coming back, even from exile, becoming involved in the affairs of the nation. The divorce, actually, didn't last longer than about six months to tell you the truth. Then, of course, things had gone from bad to worse in Nigeria. And so I became involved as a matter of course.

Are you surprised that the great powers, the United States, the European Community, are willing to reconcile themselves to the current regime in Nigeria even though it may be one of the worst tyrannies that the continent has seen?

Surprised, and at the same time not surprised.

See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome. If you remember during the Cold War, where the East played against the other and the Third World nations played one ideological bloc against the other, both sides, both communist and capitalist worlds, were very fond of the strong man syndrome. A single individual to carry out their imperial will on that continent. The business world loved not to be accountable. You picked up the phone, you spoke to Mobutu Sese-seko, you got a contract worth a couple of billion dollars without any vetting, without any accountability, without going through the process of the appropriation committee, and so on an so forth. As for the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, they also loved that.

However, all that world of theirs, the rivalry fell to pieces. And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms. And so on the one hand you'll find a government like the government of the United States or France or Britain talking about participatory, accountable government, the fact is that they still deep down prefer to do business with the "strong man" and find excuses to say, okay, this is only for a while. We're moving toward democracy but don't let's move too fast, and maybe this is the person who will bring it. In the mean time, hundreds have been liquidated, torture continues. They have the reports from their embassies, their missions. They have their reports from the United Nations Human Rights Commissions, Commonwealth, Amnesty International, European Union, they have all these reports. But that will to break with the past has not yet been thoroughly formed. And so they play it both ways.

What will bring the downfall of the Nigerian tyranny?

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking. Some people have just been shot in Bada, but they won't give up, we won't give up. But additionally, international pressure: isolation of the Abacha regime, diplomatically, culturally; sporting links to be cut; but above all, economically. Making the Abacha regime understand that the color of the skin makes no difference, that when you have a minority regime oppressing the majority, as in Apartheid South Africa, the treatment has got to be the same as was meted out to Apartheid South Africa. Now it is that level of moral recognition and the reiteration of certain universal political values, only that, combined with internal resistance, will bring Sani Abacha down.

Has it been hard for you to maintain hope with regard to the political situation? If we go from the period of the Biafran war to the present, it seems such a period of disappointment for someone like yourself who is so tied to the culture of the Yoruba on the one hand, but the idea of a united Nigeria, which unites all the different peoples, on the other.

It's been difficult, and without a question I've had moments when I just wondered whether we're not really pursuing an impossible ideal. I remember a particular period of total confidence, in which during a conference, which was presided over by the second-in-command to the former dictator Babangida, I called and demanded the termination of all dictatorships on the African continent by a certain date. I was confident that we would, while it would not be a thoroughgoing achievement, that in the large part we would have done it. And for a while it looked as if everything was moving that way. You had the termination of one-party rule in Malawe, Namibia became independent, a movement was made toward ending the Liberian situation. And dictatorships were just stumbling. Ono Fagindo had been killed in the meantime. This "Emperor" Bokassa had been dethroned. Macazinguima had been carted off in equatorial Guinea. It was a period of buoyancy. Then suddenly it all began again to go wrong. And who would take the lead but my own nation, my own base. If I was so confident we were already organizing the African Democratic League, which was to take its platform from Nigeria, because we were on the way to democratizing and we were to forge links with both the democracies in Africa and the struggling democracies and actually assist peoples who were still laboring under dictatorships. That was the confidence we had, that we would use our own resources in Nigeria to accomplish this. Now look at me. Suddenly remembering that charity began at home. So it is depressing from time to time. But at the same time, I don't like to use the word "optimism," let's just put it this way: we have no option. That's my space and I want it back. And so I have no option but to continue to fight to get it back. I'm not surrendering that space for some bunch of thugs and murderers and torturers and rapists and robbers. It's just unthinkable. So from that standpoint, you could say that I'm an optimist in the sense that I'm confident I will take it back.

I want to read you a quote from your grandfather in the book Ake, where he's telling you how to deal with bullies. "Wherever you find yourself, don't run away from a fight. Your adversary will probably be bigger, he will trounce you the first time. Next time you meet him, challenge him again. He will beat you all over again. The third time I promise you this, you will either defeat him or he will run away. Are you listening to what I'm telling you?"

He was very prophetic.

Next page: Conclusion

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