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Soliloquies
by C. Krydz Ikwuemesi
I. “...You are the children of war and violence ...“
At the PACA-Nigeria Convention in Enugu in November
2001, Gabriel Okara, one of Nigeria’s most celebrated
poets, was a special guest. He read some of his poems to
the highly enthralled audience made up of artists, art
teachers, and art students. In response to a comment
during the open discussion, Okara said inter alia, in
reference to the social situation in contemporary Africa
, “... You are the children of war and violence…”
Okara was referring, in fact, to Africa’s youth who have
been ground through the mill of untold violence and
assorted disaster. I must hasten to add that youth in
this context is to be defined to reflect a time-frame of
between 40 and 50 years. Of course this could be an
unusual kind of definition. But in this instance, I am
looking at birth beyond the biological standpoint. I am
looking at both biological birth and psychological
rebirth in the period of post-independence in Africa. In
other words, while some people have been born in Africa
after their country’s attainment of independence, others
were already born before independence and could be said
to have been “born again” or reborn albeit
psychologically with the birth of the new
socio-political era. The two categories of people,
however, carry a fair share of the crisis that has
encircled the socio-political milieu in Africa in the
post-independence era. It is not every country in Africa
that has witnessed war. But the social conditions in
some countries are as good or bad as a battlefield. This
combines with other factors in shaping the consciousness
of today’s Africa.
I have argued elsewhere that this situation has turned
otherwise peaceful societies into jungles in Africa
where the leaders see themselves not as William Blake’s
“horses of instruction” but as divinely ordained tigers
and baboons according to whose whim and caprices the
citizens the logical squirrels and antelopes in the
prevailing animal kingdom must live their own lives. In
this scenario, the pursuit of the common good and
excellence has taken a back seat and what obtains is the
shameless privatisation of values and notions which
otherwise would have one rational meaning in common
parlance.
The danger in privatization as a philosophy is its
propensity for a close affinity with individualism. It
leads the perpetrators to define and interpret
everything from their personal point of view and in the
manner that suits them. This is, perhaps, the philosophy
that informs statecraft, law making and enforcement in
Africa, and the notion of leadership.
On the road from Lagos to Porto Novo and Cotonou, Lome
to Quagadougou, Bamako to Accra, what one finds in the
streets are faces of unhappy peoples, short-changed by
comprador leaders who only create the kind of social
conditions that would appeal mainly to the worst in
their peoples. Unemployment is high. Crime rate has
worsened. Humanity is grossly devalued. A few years ago,
I would never have contemplated that human beings could
be shot like chickens, especially by those who are paid
to protect them. Yet people are shot like this by police
and robbers in many African countries. Very rarely do
governments respond logically. The usual response is
propaganda aimed at inverting the obvious ugly reality.
But the snag is that if individual countries in Africa
cannot attain peace and social security internally, how
can they contribute to a peaceful continent? Beyond the
allure of commerce, how many individuals would want to
go to other countries with the kind of uncertainty that
is everywhere? The average African sees the next country
as some danger zone. Most citizens of Francophone
Africa, for instance, have very weird notions of
Anglophone African countries. This remains bizarre. And
the governments on both sides have not done much to
obviate the suspicion. Beyond OAU (now Africa Union) and
ECOWAS and their endless conferences which seldom
achieve practical results inside Africa, Africa remains
badly atomised. Every year, as its affluent sons and
daughters besiege resorts and holiday centres in Europe,
Africa what should be the lively Eden of the modern
world is left to the mercy of brutally efficient
politicians and dare-devil traders. Social development,
technological advancement, peace, and a flourishing
tourism industry are among the ideas that fascinate
Africa’s political leaders, but they have not the
capacity to turn those powerful possibilities into
sustainable reality.
II. And corruption runs in your veins
The PACA party has just arrived Le Galerie Marina Varuna,
venue of Overcoming Maps 3 in Lome. It is about 630pm in
the evening. We have been, here earlier in the day. And
Djonda, the Co-ordinator of Overcoming Maps 3 in Togo
has mentioned that the very end of the road on which the
Galerie Marina was located is actually the border
between Togo and Ghana. From the Marina Gallery, looking
down the road, you can see a narrow stretch of the road
separating the two countries. Ghana is literally fenced
off.
But there is an opening on the wall overlooking the
adjoining road where the Marina Gallery is located. It
is not exactly a gate. But it looks like one. Inside,
you can see people going about their businesses.
Children run past as they play with one another.
Borders to me are highly policed places. If maps are the
consummation of acts of violence as Armyel Garnoni says,
borders are the instrument of validation and
perpetuation of such acts. But this very border is not
policed, or so I think. I am deeply fascinated. So I ask
one of the Projects Assistants, Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi,
to go down with me for one or two snap shots at this
curious border. As Ugochukwu poses before the camera,
two soldiers or police or gendarmes or whatever ran out
from a shed at the corner of a building. This border is
a trap of sorts, and it has just two animals.
Of the two animals, I was, perhaps, the more lightly
priced, as I was the one who had wanted to take the
photo. What followed may be described as an ignoble
drama, but for me, it was one of those moments when I
would feel ashamed for humanity, nay, Africa; one of
those moments when the animal in man takes a front seat.
One of the two military men said something in Ewe and
the other one, wearing bathroom slippers jumped on a
waiting bike and rode away, while the one who spoke to
him darted here and there like a caged, angry animal
remembering wild life. The rider returned in no time to
rejoin the drama. People gathered. The drama approached
its denouement when the other officer took his mobile
phone and started making mock phone calls to the
military authorities to the effect that two strange men
had come to photograph the border. When some of the
Togolese participants in Overcoming Maps and some other
people came to plead with the officers, they claimed
they were standing there on the road and we came and
started taking pictures without even greeting them. At
that point the one wearing bathroom slippers threatened
to collect my camcorder. When I played back the tape for
people to see that I had recorded nothing, they shifted
the goal post. They said that our coming to the spot was
a very serious offence and we should pay CFA1O,000.00.
Even when Mr. George Agbada, the Director of Galerie
Marina, finally came to the scene to intervene, the two
officers would not bulge. They insisted on collecting
CFA5,000.00 or they would seize the cameras and call the
authorities. Their trap, apparently, would not let go
any animal it caught, at least not without chopping some
chunk of flesh.
I was very sad. Our Togolese friends assured us that it
was nothing that we should not brood over the incident.
One of them said, “Ce n’est rien. id le miitaire
c’estIaIoit”
Ce n’est rien! But it meant so much. It is reminiscent
of the corrupt police, immigration and customs officers
at the borders we went through. It reminded me of police
road blocks in Nigeria (especially in the east) which
were usually mounted, not always for security checks,
but often to extort money from helpless road users. It
reminded me that in Nigeria police men have shot at
moving vehicles at times wounding passengers because the
drivers refused to stop or to give them money. It
reminded me of a story told by a pastor who travelled in
the same taxi with me from Lagos to Porto Novo of how
Beninese officials at the Seme border once wanted to
beat him up because he refused to part with N5,000.00
from the N25,000.00 they found on him while he was
travelling sometime in 2002. It was, for me, a vivid
reaffirmation of the absence of freedom in much of
Africa, a place where basic human rights are often
misconstrued as luxury.
In most parts of Africa, the so-called disciplined
forces (Army, Police, Navy, etc.) are the most
undisciplined institutions in the community. In some
countries, the uniform is a license to lawlessness and
recklessness. This fact is the bane of Africa as far as
the problem of corruption is concerned. Most African
governments make a window dressing out of the war
against corruption, as they never deal with the
fundamentals of the matter. Otherwise, how could a
people say that they are fighting corruption when they
have a very corrupt police force? Who would enforce the
laws against corruption in such a country?
I must point out at this juncture; however, that
corruption is not limited to Africa. It goes on in and
outside official circles in most parts of the world. But
it has become so endemic in the private and public
systems in Africa that it now seems to have an African
identity. Perhaps, corruption is a by-product of the
system of ‘prior-appreciation” which, Ali Mazrui argues,
was prevalent in pre-colonial Africa; that is, the
system where someone would show appreciation in
anticipation of a favour or a good turn. But in those
days, “prior appreciation” was valued in kola nuts or
yams or chickens. Today, from the dashing officers at
the borders or on the highroads up to the
brocade-wearing ministers and heads of states none would
deal in kola nuts and chickens. It has to be money, from
very laughable sums to disturbing millions. Corruption
is thus also part of the by-products of the
mismanagement and neo-colonisation that encircle Africa
in the post-independence era. The politics of
deprivation and impoverishment that has informed the
creed of leadership in Africa has led to the rise of the
survival-of-the-fittest syndrome, a situation where the
significance of the narrative of the self must override
the more enduring pursuit of truth, equity and
excellence, a situation where each individual must press
his advantage with every resource at his command. From
ministers, vice-chancellors, civil servants and
policemen, everybody, all are quick to fall to the
temptation of abuse of office. But, perhaps, the case of
the law enforcement agents is more painful, especially
when it is considered as a dangerous instance of role
reversal. For when the watchman becomes the thief, the
human philosophy of natural logic and the concept of
order are perforated and the result as it is now in most
African countries can never be a picnic.
III. Little gods of terror...
Much of the problems of modern Africa are a hangover of
colonisation. This fact is most palpable .in the
relation between the leaders and the people. In Africa,
the leader is often the master and the people, the
servants. This, perhaps, explains the personality cult
that surrounds the notion of leadership in Africa and
the reason why some countries - Togo, Benin, Zimbabwe,
Namibia, Libya, for instance - have very durable
presidents. In Africa, the leader is a little god;
authority is recklessly abused. In all situations, the
police and the armed forces are the vehicle for the
abuse of political and at times moral authority.
Of course, the police and the armed forces are a symbol
of political authority and social order. Since authority
flows from the highest echelons of society down to the
lowest, it is only logical that cancer is subtly
introduced into society when authority is abused from
the top. This scenario paints a vivid picture of the
situation in most African countries where values have
been shamelessly inverted, where words which should have
one rational meaning in common parlance and usage are
flagrantly redefined. If the creed of governance in
Africa is written on the tablet of corruption, violence,
and intolerance, the concept and enforcement of law,
order, and justice must be very skewed indeed as a
matter of logic.
But law, order, and justice can only be contemplated in
a place where they really exist. Anyone would be quick
to point out that African nations do have laws and that
the concept of justice and order are not alien to them.
Yet I insist that having laws written down but never
propey implemented is as good as no laws. The same goes
for order and justice. The idea of order and justice
without practical and practicable dimensions translates
to nothingness. In the hellholes that characterise most
of Africa’s cities, law, justice, and order are tall
dreams. Insecurity is high and violence can be
two-a-penny. In this entire ugly scenario, the police
stand out as a major factor, in its position as the
presumed symbol of order in society. But the reality in
most African cities readily problematises any such
symbolism. What with the brutality and dishonesty that
have become so endemic among the (un)disciplined forces
in these parts. How could corrupt political and economic
systems beget a social order based on justice and the
rule of law? In the West African subregion, it is always
fashionable to point at Nigeria as a quintessence of a
lawless or corrupt society. But travelling through
Lagos, Porto-Novo, Cotonou, Lome, Kara, Ouagadougou,
Bobo-dioulasso, Cinkasse, Bamako, Kumasi, Accra, and
Cape Coast as a participant in Overcoming Maps 3, I saw
the same problems running through the countries. They
may exist in varying degrees. But they are there. You
could see them in the streets, on the faces of the
people, too. Psychologically, you could “see” them in
the air, flying like ugly buntings. Then you only need
to reach a border to get a confirmation or, when you get
to a roadblock somewhere on the highroad. It is,
perhaps, worse at the borders. The police, customs, and
immigration officers at all the borders we passed
through share one thing in common: corruption. They have
lost all sense of humanity and seem to compete with the
lower animals in bestiality. In the cities and on the
roads, the police and gendarmes could be nice or nasty;
it depends on how the spirit moves them and, perhaps,
how lucky one is as a traveller. Their attitude both at
the borders and in the cities was not circumscribed by
the statutes of the law. Which law? After all, is the
police not the law, and the law, the police?
Le militaire, c’est Ia Ioi ici! That was what Togolese
Dodji Klu said to me in Lome when we had problem with
the fire-eating gendarmes at the Ghana-Togo border near
Galerie Marina. But KIu was wrong. Perhaps, he lacked
the right word to describe “le militaire”, which
includes the police. “Gods” may be a better word. Yes.
“Gods”. In much of Africa, the policemen are gods.
Little gods of terror... That is what they are. And you
cannot challenge them.
How could you when their position, image, and essence
seem to be as divinely ordained as those of their
principals - the mayors (local government chairmen),
governors, presidents and all shades of political
hooligans?
This is probably why democracy has refused to work
successfully in most parts of Africa. Like the concepts
of law, justice, and order in modern Africa, the notion
of democracy is highly misconstrued. What is known as
democracy in most parts of Africa is often the
decentralisation of corruption and violence. Such a
system, with the attendant burdens and curses, can only
be sustained by the activities of unruly (disciplined)
forces. Otherwise, the disciplined forces should ask
questions. Of course, in Africa, the disciplined forces,
especially the army, have challenged the status quo by
way of coup d’etat. But experience in many countries has
shown that military politicians are merely an alternate
face of a very ugly coin.
The emergent truth that is most self-evident is that
Africa, generally, is not a free society. Freedom is
built on truth, equity, and justice, avidly guided by
the rule of law. Of course, there is no ideal society in
practice. All societies are tending towards the ideal.
But Africa, one must concede, is very far indeed from
the ideal. Unfortunately, her little gods of terror,
personified by the present crop of custodians of
political, legal and military authorities, cannot
chaperon her in the right directions.
IV. The triumph of nescience: God! God! and no good.
Part of the curse of neo-colonial Africa is the
albatross represented by the new visions of God and
religion in the continent. Since the colonial encounter,
Africa has been a religious bazaar, a playground of
religious and other fancies, where anything can happen.
No doubt, the continuing failure of political and social
institutions in Africa since independence has created a
situation where Africans generally have lost faith in
the centralising myths that shape their national
destinies. Rather than address the social problems of
their various countries frontally when the need arises,
Africans often resort to prayer and crusades. Every
problem, including bad governance and corrupt leadership
is a spiritual-religious problem and must be prayed out
of existence. And if the political and military leaders
can no longer be trusted, why not the spiritual ones or
any bible-carrying, sol-disant reverend?
So Africa becomes one huge fantasy land where religion
is the fastest growing industry, where there are
churches everywhere, where everybody in the street is
“born-again” (ne de nouveau), where there are “born-
again” ministers and presidents and yet tyranny is cheap
and the abuse of human rights is normal. The resultant
geography is then a collage of contradictions, a place
where God is cheap and meaningless, where the notions of
truth and good are recklessly privatised.
Some people would argue that the preponderate
religiosity in contemporary Africa is a hangover of
Africa’s preoccupation with the spiritual essences of
life and other phenomena in pristine times. Yet in
pre-colonial Africa, values were much more commonly held
and morality was perceived from a communal perspective.
In the present times, the atomization of the notion of
morality and the vulgarization of its meaning is the
bane of development in the private and public sphere in
Africa of today. This probably stems from the prevalent
materialism, greed, and selfishness which are byproducts
of the failure of social institutions.
In this situation, the purpose of life degenerates into
a miserable rat-race for eternity, an attempt to corner
and dominate the “world to come”. The world of here and
now suffers, as so much is taken from it and so little
is put back to keep it going for ourselves and our
children. In other words, there is something apocalyptic
about contemporary society in Africa; a rapture-oriented
society cannot plan for the future, as its vision is
beclouded by otherworldly aspirations.
There is no doubt that Africa has arrived at her Dark
Ages. Any discerning person can draw vivid analogies
between the present scenario in most parts of Africa and
what Europe experienced in the dying centuries of the
first millennium and the opening ones of the second. I
often tell my friends that it is usual for barbarians to
take over the leadership of countries or regions for a
while only for them to be swept away by the unrelenting
tides of history. But again, one must recognise that
history is not just an abstract concept or mere branch
of scholarship. It is a living product of human
experience. Its potency or otherwise may depend on the
will and vision of those who characterise it. So it is
one thing for barbarism to gain ascendancy, and it is
another for the people to attain the right level of
consciousness needed to reverse the trend. History, in
its glorious cadence, does not run on the side of those
who decline to act in the face of challenge. That
Africans have resorted to religion in these trying times
of their history is part of the surprises and
contradictions of post- independence. Religion in itself
is no danger to the advancement of society. If anything,
it is one of the nutrients any progressive society would
need in the endless cycle of collective evolution. But
when a given society decides to choke itself on one
nutrient alone (in this case, religion), it runs the
risk of social kwashiorkor. The other face of religion
as one of the elements in the terror that is in the
heart of post- modernism has been fully exposed in most
African countries where Pentecostalism has degenerated
into mass movements or where Islam has lent its cloak to
the convulsive violence that drives politics in Africa.
As Jonathan Sacks has succinctly put it, “Religion, the
great truth about man’s search for meaning, trespassed
during the Middle Ages into two realms not its own:
factual knowledge and political power. The result was
ignorance and persecution”. Not only has the same
happened in Africa, not only has the result been the
same; religion has had its greatest triumph as “opium
for the masses” in Africa. Africa’s neocolonial leaders
seem to have also seen in religion a veritable weapon of
war - war against the usually down--trodden,
impoverished majority who must never attain a good
measure of consciousness if the prevailing inversion of
values and norms must continue. As Africa writhes in the
grip of fire-eating opportunists masquerading as
leaders, her sons and daughters are at prayer, a kind of
truancy from reality. As heaven and hell (rather than
man) become the “measure of all things”, genuine social
development and the pursuit of excellence suffer. After
about two decades of excessive spirituality built on
dishonesty and fundamental selfishness, the chickens are
coming home to roost. The implications are vivid enough
in the domains of creativity (including the visual arts,
music, and the litero-performing arts), technology,
social amenities, and the convoluted systems of
education. There is something drastically wrong with a
society where there are the greatest number of “born
again” (including political leaders, police men and
soldiers), “prayer warriors” and all kinds of clerics
and where evil, crime and injustice persist in a
downward spiral. Perhaps Sacks paints the picture more
luridly when he says that “A society in which we are
afraid to walk in streets and parks, or to open the door
to a stranger, or to engage in debate with an audience
which does not share our views, has become a less free
environment, because there are fewer things we can do
‘freely’ without precautions. When confidence in order
breaks down, the appeal to authoritarian politics
rapidly rises To this, I must add “authoritarian
religion”. When religion jostles to become an iron
umbrella that saves people from the rain rather than a
tool that helps them to go through, and enjoy, the rain,
it takes side with the terror that it should normally
address.
Although experience shows that religion does not
necessarily make people better human beings, it has
functioned in certain instances as a possible deterrent
against those who would do evil in society. In the
highly tormented history of post (neo)-colonial Africa,
religion, as in some other parts of the world, has
created more problems than it can ever solve. But the
situation inside Africa remains very dangerous, as
Africans in their newfangled cargo cult attitude seem to
place on religion’s shoulders responsibilities that
normally belong elsewhere. Indeed, the heavy burden
makes nonsense of religion and holds social and
technological development captive. It is quite alarming
that Africa - the continent of promise danced and
clapped her way through the last century. That she
appears satisfied and ready to pray and dance her way
through the challenges of the 21st century is part of
the puzzle of the century itself.
V. AFRICA: Questa notte
senza fine!
This endless night!
(questa notte senza fine!)
I am exhausted. I can’t bear it.
0 God in heaven, have mercy on us.
Will this weeping never end?
What can I doto help her,
My darling, my beloved? (cara mia, cara mia)
It should not be strange
that I conclude this piece with the above lines from an
article by Garrison Keillor published in the Time
magazine of April 13, 1998. I have not been able to
understand what Keillor was trying to satirise in his
article. But I think the verses I am appropriating
encapsulate my feeling for my continent, tormented by
her leaders and peoples.
Questa notte senza fine! For much of Africa, there is no
where to draw the line between colonization and post-
colonialism. The emergent - hybrid neo-colonisation - is
a veritable nightmare in itself, a brutally long night.
As the years run by, the same problems tend to recur,
like the spirit of the unsung dead.
And they are unsung, unaddressed - these recurrent
problems of social development. In Africa, problems are
never really addressed. Governments are adept in
shifting goal posts, postponing doomsday. Lasting
solutions to problems and issues are never attractive.
Government policies lack continuity and long term
vision. Development is on a hit-and-run basis.
After about four decades of independence, the result has
been most depressing all over. Every sphere of life is
shrouded in an ugly pallor. From the systems of
education up to the corridors of power and politics, all
are ridden with artificial problems which have become
very durable indeed.
Travelling between; Lagos, Cotonou, Lome, Ouagadougou,
Bamako, and Accra, I have seen the same problems. They
have eyes. The problems have faces, askance and
disgruntled. They are the moving spirit behind mendicant
children walking the streets, in the cold, in the
harmattan, in the acidic sun, begging for alms, for
daily bread. These faces are the worrisome visage of
Africa, the one that lives by the stream but doomed to
wash her hands with spittle, the one that has
resourceful sons and daughters and opulent in-laws, and
yet they cannot help her. They cannot, because the
lunatics have taken over the asylum; logic, reason, and
order have been inverted.
What can I do to help her,/my darling, my beloved? I
could not help but feel like the “father” in Keillor’s
article as we drove through the streets in the different
countries. How can I help her?! But can anybody really
help her? Or her children? They may be resourceful; but
I am told they are clowns also. How do you rescue clowns
from the allure of the circus?
Perhaps I should pray? I could pray. Like a typical
African. But I would borrow the prayer. I should borrow
the prayeroftheAmerican Josiah Gilbert Holland: “God
give us men”and (I add) save us from the scourge of
masquerades and little gods, so that our future
generations do not bite sand! Yes. You can do it, oh
Lord, (a Ia Keillor) if only You would walk across the
Atlantic and grant this poor woman a few good men!
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