Gates: Should [Robert] Mugabe and his generals be subject to war crimes charges?
Soyinka: I believe that a lesson has got to be made to discourage others. It’s not enough to put people like Charles Taylor on trial. I mean, his crimes were obvious. There are far more subtle ways of degrading a people, even in this case it wasn’t all that subtle. When you take a bulldozer to the homes of your opposition, and you just turn living, teeming areas into deserts overnight, simply because they disagree with your political policy, that is a crime against humanity, and I believe that people like Mugabe should be tried for crimes against humanity, yes.
Gates: South Africa, Russia, China, all voted to block sanctions in the Security Council against Zimbabwe, but sanctions were certainly significant in helping to end apartheid. Why were sanctions OK then and not now?
Soyinka: Well, you must ask Thabo Mbeki that. Maybe he has an answer to that very profound question. Why were sanctions all right then, but not against Mugabe? Is it because Mugabe is black? Shall we then say that we should let Charles Taylor go free, where we put Radovan Karadzic on trial?
Gates: Oh, the doctor with the white beard, Santa Claus. [laughter]
Soyinka: What a character. [laughter] So we put all those on trial, but somehow African leaders and their government should be subject to double standards. I mean, what are these people talking about? I don’t understand it. I find the conduct of China is not as surprising, because China is onto a business trajectory right now and is not looking right or left. [laughter] And the Soviet Union doesn’t surprise me too much. That’s now a dictatorship masquerading under Putin, masquerading as a democracy. The democratic gains, the struggle, the heroism—and it was heroism, of even people like Khrushchev, those who began this mountain before you come to the latter, Gorbachev and the others—the heroism, the courage of those people is being treated like rubbish, being trivialized by characters like Putin. So we now have a dynastic situation, in which one individual puts his clone on the throne and continues to whittle down the freedoms which were gained at such a terrible risk, and in some cases terrible prices.
Gates: How do we end the carnage in Darfur?
Soyinka: The carnage in Darfur and the entire situation in Darfur can be ended by two major groups. We have a situation in Sudan where Sudan is a member of various organizations, the African Union, the Arab League, the United Nations. Primary responsibility rests with the African Union. Sudan is a test case. The African Union says it has a peer mechanism—this is one of its boasts—a peer mechanism for examining and for judging the conduct of members, leaders in that case. They meet in caucus somewhere. They scratch each other on the back. Heaven knows what they say. But they don’t do it out in the open. Now, if they brought their peer mechanism processes out in the open, in which the government of Sudan is indicted openly, its conduct is indicted, then, of course, the government is subject to censure by not just the governments of the African Continent, but by the people themselves, because they see what they stand to see on what basis this judgment has been made. And then there becomes, . . . the people will have the right to impose a moral compulsion on the African Union to act against Omar al-Bashir. That’s number one. Second, Sudan belongs to the Arab League. The Arab League has a responsibility to call Sudan to order, to actually accuse Sudan openly, to break with Sudan, for everyone to see that even his second tier or family relationship has disowned him, has disowned that government, has disowned and condemned that conduct. And this, then, gives the United Nations an additional fillip for acting, living up to its responsibilities in the Sudan, because the United Nations calls on various nations to act as peace keepers, as peace enforcers in other nations. We have Nigerians who are serving in Lebanon . . .
Gates: Absolutely.
Soyinka: . . . who are serving in the Balkans and so on. Why on Earth is the Sudan being treated like some little backwater kind of third rate, third level member of the United Nations family? So these are three groupings which have a primary responsibility. But the first one is African Union. African Union should expel Sudan. Expel Sudan, and then the Arab League should also expel Sudan. So you turn that state into a pariah, a complete pariah, which becomes fair game and places a mandatory moral responsibility to all the nations, to sanction, to boycott, and in fact to harass militarily where necessary, where possible the forces of the government of Sudan.
Gates: Do you have any thoughts on the war crime indictment of the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir?
Soyinka: Well, as you know, well, you might know or not remember, that we did put him on trial. This is Omar al-Bashir. We had a kind of symbolic trial of him in New York. The Genocide Watch organized it, and I was in fact the judge, the principal judge. [laughter] I knew you’d laugh at that. But it was a very solemn occasion. And it was staged deliberately in this huge hall just opposite the United Nations, so that, and this was on the third floor, third or fourth floor, and with a background. There was a wide window behind us. So you had all the flags of the nations fluttering in the background. And witnesses were flown directly from Sudan, and some were taken, some were already refugees in this country or in other places. There were victims of torture. There were doctors. You had foreign journalists, some of whom, one of whom, in fact, had been imprisoned by the Sudanese authorities because he went where they did not want him to go. And the charges, in fact . . . Omar al-Bashir was represented by a lawyer, not of his own choosing, but we found a lawyer for him, since he didn’t answer our charges. And it was symbolic. It was a ritual, if you like. It was play acting, if you like. But it was dead serious. And in fact, his—Omar al-Bashir’s—advocates put up a very strong case for him. In fact, I think they got carried away, because they are professional lawyers, and they didn’t want to seem to be playing into the hands of the judgment which everybody expected and wanted. And he was found guilty, of course, on all charges, and the result was sent, the decision was sent to the United Nations, to various governments and to human rights organizations all over the world. So there’s already material, even from the amateur section, before we talk about the findings of UN representatives who have been sent to respond. And already there are some sealed indictments against some of his officials. I don’t know if these include Omar al-Bashir. But Omar al-Bashir certainly should be declared a war criminal and should be seized wherever he is and put on trial.
Gates: Well, are you proposing a 21st century version of the Congress of Berlin?
Soyinka: What is wrong with having this time an internally organized, quote unquote, Congress of Berlin undertaken by free peoples in their own interest for their own future, recognizing the fact that they’ve been leading a false life? They’ve been living an externally donated existence. And I’m talking about political structures, contests of ideologies, all foreign contests. No. We’ve been playing surrogate to the ideologies of others, economic policies, even down to architectural ideology. I mean, you look at the architectural face of the African continent. What do you see? You could be in New York in many instances. And they move straight from those New York skyscrapers to the most degrading kind of slums you ever encountered.
Gates: Yes.
Soyinka: And so, the idea of starting all over might sound formidable and daunting. But I ask you, what, when you compare it to what is happening in the Congo today, what more or less is coming to an end on the West African coast in formally quiet, democratic Ivory Coast, in Liberia, in Sierra Leone, and when you look at the destruction of Sierra Leone, beautiful Sierra Leone, and the degradation of the youthful generation, the dehumanizing . . . I mean, we’ve lost generations to this dehumanizing. Can you think of anything worse than that, actually removing, depriving youth of their humanity from the age of eight, nine, ten? And so, when I look at the option, when I look at what seems to be an impossible task, and when I look at what the AU, which succeeded the Organization of African Unity, when I think of what is not happening there, I think that the time may be better occupied with sitting down and
saying, OK, let’s go back to that moment, and let us see if some of the problems we’re having, including civil wars, interminable civil wars, Eritrea, Congo, Kinshasa tomorrow, sections of the one Congo moving into the other, to go and sort them out there. And in turn, they in turn go in through the back door to go and sort the other side out. When you think of internal problems, you think of Niger and Nigeria, the Niger Delta, the oil-producing delta, in which this oil-producing area, which has been absolutely savaged by oil exploration, with the collaboration of the center, with the collaboration of those in power at the center. Is Nigeria a nation? Or is it just something we describe as a nation space? And what these people in the Delta Region are asking for today? They’re raising the stakes all the time, from resource control, which is denied for so many decades, moving towards increased autonomy. Many of the more radical are now saying, listen, we want our own nation. We want complete independence. We want to go back to the kind of nation states that existed . . ., I mean, this is a very extreme position, but I’m just telling you what is the thinking in many areas, out of sheer generational frustration. So while on the one hand, yes, I agree, it’s a very daunting task, you look at what is on the ground right now. It’s an impossibility.
Gates: It’s been what seems like, to me as a literary critic, an explosion of brilliant writing by women on the African continent, and more particularly by Nigerian women. I’m thinking mostly recently of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Do you read their works? And what do you think of them? And how do you explain this boom of energy and insight?
Soyinka: Well, it’s very difficult to explain why the mantle of writers has been picked up by the women like Chimamanda Adichie, I’m talking especially fiction, mostly fiction, most competently and vibrantly. It’s a phenomenon, which quite literally sociologists should go into. It could be, of course, that, because most of these writers, the more notable of them come from the East, with the experience of the civil war and the impact it made on their reflective temperaments, that they reached a stage now where they can look back on it, and this thing happened in their childhood, and the experiences and the—
Gates: Sometimes before they were born.
Soyinka: In some cases before they were born. But their stories, and their parents went through it, and they learned to understand the impact. And so very often there’s a theme, even if the theme is submerged under the study of humanity in general. There’s a theme. There’s a theme which acts as an impetus for a certain literary surge. And . . . war could have done it in the case of the women in Nigeria. It’s just a theory.
Gates: Certainly in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s case, that’s her great theme. [Pause.]
Gates: I’ve never asked you this, but is there any resentment on the African continent that you’ve encountered when you see these Western figures galloping into Africa on their white horses offering to solve all the problems of poverty? I mean, people like Bono, for example? I mean, is he seen as a hero? Or is there some element of condescension or neocolonialism or resentment that accompanies those sorts of effort?
Soyinka: Well, I can assure you that there is in many areas a lot of resentment when . . . what you call the St. Georges on white chargers come in with their lances to deal definitively with the dragons of illness, of corruption, of productivity, etc. But that has to do more with attitude. It’s because they come as if they have all the solutions. They don’t come as prospective partners in a mutual enterprise for the advancement of humanity, in which one side of humanity has obviously been disadvantaged, owing to their various histories. It has to do a lot with attitude. For instance, I can tell you that in many, many far flung areas, there are some unsung heroes of African development. Those go into the remote areas, assess what is needed. It could be very simple things. It could be even wells, bore holes, irrigation system utilizing the sparse benefits of nature, and introducing even new methods of cultivation and so on and so forth, helping to control pests, agricultural pests and so on. And they work side by side with the people. And they are loved, they’re accepted as simply partners in progress, if you like, in development. And they go back again and again and again. There’s no resentment against those people. It’s when people come with aid, A-I-D, organizational aid, in which those, especially those who are somewhat enlightened, see that 60% of the aid which is being offered, which has been announced to the whole world, actually goes to the payment of salaries and ameliorants and privileges of those who come in, who live in a different lifestyle completely from those who they have come to help. Now, one is not suggesting for a single moment that they should go into huts and not have some creature comforts. No, no, no. We’re talking about literally what are called bureaucratic aid, which is what you see bureaucracy sitting on top of a minimum resource.
Gates: Mercedes, servants. . . .
Soyinka: You understand. That really is where the problem lies. And the whole attitude is very patronizing, very condescending. It’s like, “you people.” You know? “You people.” You should know that this is what I mean, that “you people” attitude, separating yourself already from those who you’ve come to assist. [Pause.]
Soyinka: Let’s take the African American attitude first. When Richburg, that’s his name, I think, Richburg?
Gates: Keith Richburg.
Soyinka: When he wrote that book, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, it was a nasty book, because it was nasty not because it told the truth, but because it revealed a very disgusting level of self-hate. If Richburg had left out the self-hate, I would have recommended that book as a primer for African Americans for an introspective look at their own history, and at the history of the country, the nation, the continent, [at those who] collaborated in selling them into the trade basket of the European world. See, African Americans must first of all come to terms with the level of guilt of their own peoples in their transportation across the Atlantic, across the Sahara. They have been turned into nothing but cattle and beasts of burden.
Gates: You’re talking about the black African [role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade].
Soyinka: I’m [saying that] African Americans must go back [to this history]. Then, if they confront that history, they will find no surprise whatsoever. They are the same people. Their descendants, their kin, their mental kin, are treating their own people in exactly the same way. Only this time, it’s a bit difficult to sell us into slavery to go and join African Americans where they are today. All they have to do is examine that history very, very carefully, and they would have no problem in recognizing the real nature of the Idi Amins or the Bokassas, Mugabe, Sani Abacha, etc. It’s the simplest exercise.
Gates: Black on black oppression, continuous.
Soyinka: Continuous, continuous. And they’ve just got to come to terms with that and stop. They must mature beyond the point of saying, these are my immediate oppressors. There are no other oppressors. Yes, they must confront their immediate oppressors. They must demand their complete fundamental human rights, economic rights, political rights wherever they happen to be. But they must stop thinking . . . they must move beyond believing that there are no oppressors of humanity outside the ones who are really stepping on their toes in their immediate environment. That’s one way of dealing once and for all with this very irritating and sometimes very dispiriting attitude of African Americans towards what we are undergoing on the African continent. We feel a kind of double betrayal when that happens, when, for instance, embassies opened here to support Idi Amin over on that side.
Gates: That’s embarrassing.
Soyinka: I mean, it’s very embarrassing.
Gates: In the name of black nationalism.
Soyinka: Black nationalism, never mind the color of the boots. That boot is on my neck. I want it off. [laughter]
Gates: Let’s talk about Africa since 1960. Even I, who was ten years old in 1960, the great year of African independence, even I was infected by the enthusiasm, sense of hope, the optimism that finally our people on the contine
nt were taking over. They were kicking the Europeans out. It was going to be a new day. Almost a new kind of human being. Democracy would come to the continent, both political democracy and economic democracy. What’s happened to that dream?
Soyinka: I mean, the reality we have to face is that they never really left. The Europeans, the colonial powers, never really left Africa. We have expressions like neocolonialism, neoimperialism, etc., which, of course, are cultural phrases, but what is the reality? The reality is that in leaving the French, the British, the Portuguese left behind in many cases their surrogates to carry on this time what I call the internal colonial adventure. They left behind those who would continue to execute their own policies, to maintain a relationship, a subservient relationship, even though [it looks] very glitzy on the surface. All the leaders went around with their . . . long limousines, and they were seen in international caucuses sweeping in with their huge entourage. And it looked as if they were receiving egalitarian treatment and relationship. But this was not the truth. Take Nigeria, for instance. Take Nigeria. We have the incredible admission these days, now open, because many of us have known it for quite a while, from colonial officers who admit that when the British left in 1960, before they left, they made sure that they falsified not merely the electoral process that handed over power to that section, the less advanced section of the nation, but they even falsified the census, the national census. And one of these officers used the expression, he said, what are they talking about, Nigerian politicians rigging the election? He said, it was we, the British, who taught them how to rig it. It’s there in black and white in his document. He was a colonial officer at the time, giving instructions to rig the elections in favor of the less advanced section of the nation.
Gates: By which you mean the North, the Muslim.
The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader Page 77