By Cheong Suk-Wai
SINGAPORE, Nov 10 — Nigerians enjoy chilli-hot food. Even so, their literary lion Wole Soyinka wowed his host Christine Khor at a charity dinner here earlier this month when, as she put it, he ‘massaged” sambal belacan into his rice and then pocketed two buah keluak to show his friends and family.
Soyinka, 75, the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is widely revered as one of the finest writers alive of English prose and poetry. He was in town to grace various events organised by the National University of Singapore’s Department of English Language and Literature to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the university’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Born Akunilwade Oluwole Soyinka near Ibadan in western Nigeria, the son of an Anglican schoolteacher and trader was awarded the Nobel in 1986, two decades after his imprisonment for 22 months for protesting against unfair elections in Nigeria and then brokering peace in the country’s breakaway Biafra region. The thrice-married Yoruba chieftain was released after a global campaign to free him.
Then in 1993, Nigeria’s then military ruler Sani Abacha sentenced him to death in absentia for treason. Soyinka had fled his country for the United States. He is now a creative writing don at universities in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Over coffee, he mused about the challenges of maintaining one’s integrity these days:
What, to you, is dignity?
Dignity is the capacity of every human being to feel that he or she is placed on an equal basis with any other individual. If some people are disadvantaged, it becomes the responsibility of society to make them feel that their human worth remains the same even if their capacity is not the same as that of others.
What is the worth of humanity when life is so cheap?
When I talk about worth, I’m talking about equality of voice. There is no dignity in citizenship under a dictatorship because the latter has taken away the right to choose.
With globalisation levelling playing fields, it would appear that everyone might soon have an equal voice.
At the moment, Western powers have built up a tradition of commercial dictatorship with all nations, with the encouragement, very often, of the leadership of our very own societies, who find it very easy to collaborate. They become the darlings of their trading partners but, in fact, they’re degrading the collective worth of their own societies.
But isn’t being open to trade beneficial to their peoples? I’ve heard statements from so-called democratic leaders such as: “I know what is best for my people.” That’s such an insolent remark.
Why so?
It is no different from the language of the former colonial masters. So you’re quite right that we are still aspiring towards that level playing field.
So colonialism still prevails long after the colonialists have left.
It is so. The British, when they were leaving, decided which part of Nigeria was to rule over the rest.
What would you advise other countries with similar competing ethnicities and histories?
The only advice that I can offer is exactly the formula we are proposing for our nation, which is this: We know that this nation was founded on a lie. But let us sit down now and decide the protocols of co-existence, because as long as we have not done that, we are fulfilling the mandate of our colonial masters. We are not yet free.
What of the dignity of people everywhere who migrate en masse for economic reasons?
When individuals — who, after all, have a responsibility beyond themselves and their families — sit down and watch a bleak wall day after day, I can understand why they say, “Wait a minute. We’re all going to die anyway from a lack of opportunity and the lack of the ability to feed ourselves at a rudimentary level.” Isn’t it better that such an individual should take the plunge and seek a more favourable clime, even at the risk of death?
But they often end up in economic quicksand. Governments globally have got to create jobs and if they cannot do that, develop a welfare system that cushions at least the extreme agony of these immigrants. This need is beginning to dawn on some industrialised countries. That’s why they meet from time to time, but they’re acting very slowly, very reluctantly and very gracelessly.
Why gracelessly?
Because they should recognise that, in many cases, their own career of exploitation has been responsible for the conditions in countries (from which) lots of migration is taking place. I don’t know what the situation is like now but 10 years ago, I found that about four-fifths of the aid programmes poured into these countries actually went back to those nations to pay their own staff, perquisites and so on. And of the remaining one-fifth, half goes into the pockets of those countries’ leaders.
How are you and other activists countering that?
One way is to work directly with local groups who make the decisions. Another is to work with volunteers who go deep into the country to help people there dig irrigation systems or build clinics.
Some say human rights activists are their own worst enemies. How could they improve their reputation? What human rights activists need to do now is impress on leaders that they shouldn’t wait for the world to declare, say, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, a criminal against humanity. They should themselves take the lead and ostracise and impose sanctions on him, so they’re not pushed into a situation where, when an international body declares this man an international pariah, they are forced to say, “No, no, no, you can’t come and tell us that.” That for me is a fundamental point.
In his own words...
The one sure thing about Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is that he is very much his own man. This rings through clearly, from his reluctance to pose for photographs to his shoot-from-the-hip views on:
Singapore —“I find it well laid-out, very orderly with a kind of antiseptic atmosphere.”
His countrymen — “In Nigeria, the continuing internal struggle for a national character has maybe made them more aggressive than peoples in other places.”
The chaos in many former colonies — “If the lie on which they are founded had turned out to be constructive, nobody would bother with it.”
The problem of mass migrations — “If the government truly cares for its own people, it will realise that there’s a real problem if its people are going out in droves.”
What he tells those who tolerate leaders who are criminals — “Why are you saying this over the dead bodies, the tortured, mutilated, raped citizens, your own people?”
The solidarity of evil — “It’s what I call many leaders who are themselves criminals in their own territories.”
The failure of global leadership — “Year after year, there’s drought and famine and it takes a pop singer like Bob Geldof to awaken the conscience of this world.”
Anyone who defends errant leaders — “Stop playing the game of We versus Them. The only ‘versus’ that has any meaning is freedom versus power.”
The worth of freedom — “Without it, people are caged animals and humanity has not yet progressed.” — The Straits Times
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