by Wole Soyinka
On its own, however, the resistance manifesto of the quasi-state can prove seductive. Only rarely does it make the mistake of showing its hand in advance, as happened in Algeria. In that nation, decades of neglect, state corruption, and alienation of the ruling elite swung the disenchanted populace at the democratic elections of 1992 toward a radical movement, the electorate remaining more or less indifferent to the fact that the change threatened to place a theocratic lid on many of the secular liberties that they had learned to take for granted. Bread and shelter are more pressing issues, in the immediate, than notions of freedom of taste. Thus: We shall ascend to power on the democratic ladder—declared the evidently popular Islamist party—after which we shall pull up the ladder, and there shall be no more democracy. Let us spend a little time on the Algerian scenario; it holds many lessons for us and, of course, occupies the tragic role of being one of the unwitting dispersal agencies of human resources for our ongoing climate of fear.
Algeria is merely a convenient example, but it is also a subjective choice for me, I am compelled to admit. My generation grew up under the indirect education of a singularly vicious anticolonial struggle—the Algerian— one that surpassed in its intensity even that of the Kenyan Mau Mau–led nationalist revolt. That struggle easily qualifies as the most brutal of Africa’s wars of liberation right up to the independence decade of the continent— the nineteen sixties. In addition, Algeria played a key role in the formation of the radical corps of African—and even black American—nationalism in the fifties and sixties, served as a source of reference, solidarity, and material aid for many African revolutionary leaders, from Guinea and Ghana to the Congo and South Africa. This North African country belonged in the radical sector of African nations that eventually closed ranks with the more conservative group for the formation of the Organization of African Unity. Given such a history, it is perhaps inevitable that my generation would take more than a passing interest in the contemporary fortunes of that nation. As a newly independent entity, its experiments in postcolonial reconstruction provided study models in the quest for the developmental transformation of other newly independent African nations.
To watch such a people plunged into a state of social retrogression, from whatever cause, is a harrowing cautionary tale, truly tragic, a reminder of the Sisyphean burden that unforeseen forces often place on the shoulders of would-be progressive movements. It is a daily reminder never to take any political situation for granted, never to underestimate the focused energy of the quasi-state whose instinctive recourse to the rule of fear as a weapon of struggle drives the best minds of a nation into exile, liquidates others, and paralyzes the creative drive of a dynamic people.
Algeria, in 1992, was a dilemma posed to try the credentials of the hardiest democrat anywhere in the world but, most pertinently, her African cohabitants across the Sahara, who, in many cases, were then struggling to free themselves from the stranglehold of military dictatorship. That dilemma can be summed up thus: if you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fallout that comes with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself? This was the crux of the electoral choice that was freely made by the Algerian people. Why indeed should a people not, in effect, redeem Hegel from Karl Marx? They would only be paying Marx back in his own coin, since Marx’s boast was that he began with the model of Hegel’s schema of history but then turned Hegel on his head. He replaced Hegel’s idealism with a materialist basis and the class struggle. Both are agreed on the dialectical process that leads to the fulfillment of history in the emasculation of the state order. Social contradictions are resolved and political strife is eliminated. Rulership becomes indistinct from followership—in one case, through the benevolent embodiment of enlightened rule, in the other, through the eradication of classes.
What the Islamist party of Algeria did was simply to embody the historic will, or spirit, in the Koran. Ironically, this ought to be regarded as a democratic advance on Hegel, since the process of this annulment of history was reached through popular choice, and the mantle of interpreters of the historic will—summed up by Fukuyama as “the end of history”—had been bestowed on the theocratic class by the electorate itself. Who can argue against the proposition that choice remains the bedrock of the democratic process, and if a people have made a choice that eliminates all further necessity for the ritual rounds of choosing, well . . . that argument appears to have reached its terminal point. History has been fulfilled.
The problem with that argument, of course, is that this denies the dynamic nature of human society, and preaches that the purely fortuitous can substitute, at any time, for the eternal and immutable. Such a position opens the way for the triumph of a social order that is based on the concept of the Chosen—a mockery of the principle of choice if ever there was one!—and totally eliminates the impulse to change as a factor of human development. On the political field, it entrusts power permanently into the hands of a clique of rulers whose qualification could rightly range from membership in a military class to that of a Masonic order, or perhaps a labor or scientific union where specific circumstances have placed such a body in a position to resolve an overwhelming catastrophe or even dilemma. Wherever history is conceded its hour of fulfillment, revelation replaces inquiry or experiment, dictation replaces debate. For us in Nigeria in 1992, these were no abstract issues, much as we wished Algeria would simply go away or choose another time to pose a dilemma that provided ammunition for our own stubborn dictatorial order.
Let us quickly recapitulate, for those to whom both Nigeria and Algeria belong on an alien planet—or, as in some encounters I have had, are indeed the same nation since they sound alike. What happened was that in both countries—in 1993 in one case, 1992 in the other—a recognized political party looked all set to win an election. At that point, however, the process was truncated by the military for no other reason than that it did not like the face of the winners. There was a critical difference, however. The victorious party in Nigeria did not promote a manifesto that would abrogate all further democratic ventures, while in the Algerian case this formed the core of its manifesto. You will understand therefore why, whenever anyone approached me for an opinion on the situation in Algeria after those elections, I quickly looked for an escape route. Easy enough to simplify the issue and say, yes, take the democratic walk to its logical conclusion, but then, as we have attempted to question, just what is the logical conclusion of the democratic option? Dictatorship of a kind different from the dictatorial status quo?
Perhaps we can approach this dilemma obliquely, citing a very recent, and instructive, development within Nigeria—one that is, however, only a partial and tepid echo of the Algerian situation. Following the May 2003 elections, the second since that nation’s return to democracy, the Sharia pioneering state, Zamfara— progressively followed by nine others—declared that its governance would henceforth be comprehensively based on the Sharia in its strictest Islamic application. One of the later subscribers to Sharia rule was the Yobe state. In December that same year, the governor, himself a Muslim, found himself obliged to take stern measures against an extremist movement that named itself after the Taliban. This group rose against the state government, claiming that it had failed to keep strict adherence to the Sharia. The sect launched an insurrection, took over some police stations—one of which, incidentally, it renamed Afghanistan—inflicted a number of casualties, and sought to overthrow the elected government. It was subdued by state forces, the movement banned and the Council of Ulamas, the religious leaders, dissolved.
Would it be totally illogical to project that this could also easily have been the fate of Algeria if indeed the victorious party had succeeded in forming a government? Once righteousness replaces rights in the exercise of power, the way is paved for a permanent contest based on the primacy of the holier-than-thou.
However, this is mere speculation. What we do know, as
fact, is that since the undemocratic choice was made in Algeria, over 150,000 lives have been lost, several of these in a most grisly manner. And not just writers, cinéastes, painters, journalists, intellectuals—those purveyors of impure thoughts who are always the primary targets of fundamentalist reformers and thinkers— though these, as usual, have also been at the forefront of carnage. We are speaking here of entire villages and sectors of urban society that were considered guilty of flouting, at one level or another, the purist laws of the opposition, now transformed into a quasi-state, or simply of failing to show sufficient dedication to spiritual expectations. A resistance movement that began as a legitimate reaction to the thwarting of popular will, expressed along democratic lines, has degenerated into an orgy of competitive bestiality. State and quasi-state are locked in a deadly struggle, marked by a complete abandonment of the final vestiges of the norms of civilized society.
Such extremism could not stay localized for long. We have only to recollect that some of the leaders of this new insurgency cut their teeth in the struggle for the liberation of Afghanistan, a struggle that triumphed with the expulsion of Soviet forces of occupation from that nation, then recollect that such mujahideen are pitted against a regime whose leaders are also veterans in the bruising war of liberation against French colonialism. And the consequence of these antecedents for global politics? The end of the notion of a nationalist war that would remain strictly within national confines. Perhaps such a notion had long since dissipated—only not much notice was paid at the time—dispelled by the Vietnam War, a war that sought no more than the liberation of its land from the domination of foreigners.
Regarding that war, I must express a puzzle. Vietnam, then known as Indochina, fought two wars of liberation, first from France, which she defeated at the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu, then from the United States, which felt that she knew a thing or two that France did not. No one can forget the saturation bombing carried out by the United States in the latter stages of the war—a brutal assault that was actually described by the president, Richard Nixon, as an exercise to bomb North Vietnam to the negotiating table—nor the earlier barrage of defoliants whose effects have yet to wear off completely in that nation, the deadly chemical weapon napalm, with horrendous images of inhuman disfiguration permanently seared on world memory. Now, the puzzle is this. I find it curious that the North Vietnamese, victims of two world powers in rapid succession, did not ever consider designating the entire world a war arena where innocents and guilty alike would be legitimately targeted. Not one incident of hijacking took place during those wars, neither did the taking of hostages, or the random detonation of bombs in places of tourist attraction or religious worship. United Nations agencies, as well as humanitarian organizations, appear to have enjoyed the respect due to neutrals in conflict. Most unbelievable of all, however, was the aftermath of that war, the now ritual encounters between U.S. veterans and their former enemies in an embrace of reconciliation.
Certainly, during the entire Vietnam wars, it would have been an excessive claim to suggest that the world was trapped in a climate of fear. While we may dispute in the end what lessons must be drawn from this contrast, what remains certain is that it is one that needs to be closely studied. In the fifth lecture of this series, “ ‘I Am Right; You Are Dead,’ ” we shall take this up again. Certainly we cannot ignore the antecedent histories of such peoples, their philosophies, and their religions. The same observation may be made, albeit in a different vein, of the antiapartheid struggle that was waged with no less commitment and intensity against a ruthless foe. The oppressed black people of South Africa did not pronounce the outside world guilty of the crime of continuing to survive while a majority race was being ground to earth by an implacable machinery of racist governance. There are hidden lessons in these studies in contrast, lessons that may enable us, after acknowledging the principal sources of the current climate of fear, to seek remedies that go beyond the rectification of the glaring and sustained conduct of global injustice.
It is always easy enough to address the material factors of conflict, and we do know that in most cases, such will be found as the primary causes. They can be identified and grasped, and usually provide a basis for negotiation even in the most intense moments of conflict. Nations fight over land, over water supply and other material resources, and, in civil wars, also over political marginalization—these are accessible causes of discontent, cogent in their manifestations. They go to the heart of a people’s sense of social security and need for survival. Intermeshed with these, however, but not so intricately as to be totally inseparable, is a much neglected factor in its own right—the quotient of power, the will to dominate, to control, that strange impulse that persuades certain temperaments that they can realize their existence either individually or collectively only through the domination of others. We are speaking here of that phase when a struggle moves beyond its material causes—to restore parity within an exploitative order or whatever—and becomes one that is dedicated to the seizure and exercise of raw power. It goes to the heart of the phenomenon of those dictators who, long past their creative usefulness, still cling ruthlessly to the seat of power, a contemporary instance of which can be seen in the pitiable condition of the once revolutionary, now merely embarrassing ruler of Zimbabwe, whose rule is sustained today not by popular acceptance but by the agency of terror.
Let us not therefore limit the thrill of power only to its structured manifestations. The territorial—that is, the physical expression—of the will to dominate is only part of the story. There is also its furtive exercise, one that, often outgunned and outmaneuvered, may even give up all interest in territorial control but will not give up the craving for domination. We may liken it to that now-commonplace technological gadget known as the remote control, one that incidentally plays such a lethal role in the explosive dialogue of today’s parties of conflict. We are speaking of the thrill of power by means other than actual governance, power as a pursuit in its own right, an addictive concentrate, extract, or essence. It is a realm that need not be anchored in material grounds, remains a pursuit in its own right, craved for its own sake. The conduct of the child taunting and circumscribing the motions of a captive insect, or the well-known antics of the school bully—these are early forays into the laboratory of power, from which a taste may develop into major assaults on entire communities. The complementary emotion of the victim—insect or school pupil—that the tormentor loves as his reward is, of course, the expression of fear, accompanied by an abject surrender of volition.
I believe that it is time to confront a heightened reality—heightened, because not exactly new—and to include the factor of power, the instinct to power, among the motivating components of the human personality and social movements, an unquantifiable element that has always governed much of social and nation relationships. History concedes to exceptional figures, past and present—Alexander, Suleiman, King Darius, Chaka the Zulu, Ataturk, Indira Gandhi, etc.—the temperaments of nation builders as well as nurturers of power. That latter impulsion is not glossed, either by historians or by the psychoanalysts of supermen and -women. What differs in our contemporary situation is that the relishing of power is no longer an attribute of the outstanding, exceptional individual, but is increasingly accessible even to the nondescript individual whose membership in a clique, or activities on behalf of the Chosen, more than fulfill this hunger for a share in the diet of power.
Is it strictly out of a commitment to the moral law— Thou shalt not kill—that the extreme antiabortion crusader in the United States stalks and kills abortion doctors, patients, and innocent passersby, sometimes operating from within a network of protective cells? Or is there also an element of the thrill of membership in a quasi-state, exercising a form of power that transcends all mainstream social accords? We shall turn more fully to the theme of the Chosen in the fifth of these lectures.
For now, let me assure you that if you wish to observe the face of
power at its most mundane, you do not have far to seek. You do not need to pay to see Marlon Brando in his role as the Godfather at the head of a Mafia combine. That face is omnipresent—from the clerical assistant on whom the emergence of a critical file depends to anonymous members of an unacknowledged terrorist organization in the United States known as the IRS—the Internal Revenue Service. Simply be on the receiving end of a letter of demand from that body to construct on your retina the driven personality of the writer!
Actually, that ogre has long since been displaced in my personal encounters—at least temporarily—by one of the new creatures of the heightened state of alert that now prevails in countries like the United States. These days, after you have checked in and gone through all the security checks, you may find yourself at the departure gate being subjected to a final, detailed check of your person and your baggage. That selection is mostly a random one, carried out by the computer. However, in other airports or, more accurately, with certain airlines, it is an airline security official who decides your fate, either immediately before or after you have passed through the baggage-screening section. That individual, who presumably is trained not only in human but in document psychology, looks you up and down like some strange insect species, takes another look at your passport, weighs it in one hand or in both, and takes another look at you. She does not ask you any questions; all decisions are based on that dual inspection—of you and your documents. She pauses—there is a long queue behind you but she pauses a long while—to let you know that your fate is in her hands. Then, with the most contemptuous toss of her head, she indicates that you may go through, or . . . step aside and join other lesser beings who are huddled, waiting to be stripped to their barest essentials. Don’t take my word for it, go and see these individuals at work. There are a hundred ways I can think of—most of them actually polite and humane— whereby you can let a voyager know that you are about to subject him to some inconvenience, but for a laudable cause. No, these individuals let you know, in advance, that what you are about to experience is indignity, and that they, and they alone, are the powers that force-feed you this diet of humiliation.