I
am certain there are others who, like me, received invitations to the
recent edition of the Storymoja/Hay Literature Festival in Nairobi, but
could not attend. My absence was particularly regrettable, because I had
planned to make up for my failure to turn up for the immediate prior
edition. Participant or absentee however, this is one edition we shall
not soon forget.
It was at least two days after the listing of Kofi Awoonor among the
victims that I even recollected the fact that the festival was ongoing
at that very time. With that realisation came another: that Kofi and I
could have been splitting a bottle at that same watering hole in between
events and at the end of each day. My feelings, I wish to state
clearly, did not undergo any changes. The emotions of rage, hate and
contempt remained on the same qualitative and quantitative levels. Those
are the feelings I have retained since the Boko Haram onslaught
overtook the northern part of our nation. I expect them to remain at the
same level until I draw my last breath, hopefully in peaceful
circumstances like Chinua Achebe, or else violently like Kofi. As
becomes daily clarified in contemporary existence, none of us has much
control over these matters.
Two earlier commitments were responsible for my inability to attend
the festival. One was a public conversation with a very brave
individual, Karima Bennoune, an Algerian national, whose trenchant
publication - YOUR FATWA DOES NOT APPLY HERE - is of harrowing
pertinence to the events of Nairobi, a pertinence that continues to
ravage our, and other nations. The other preventive factor was the
annual conference of International Investigators in Tunis, doing battle
with the monster of corruption. The link of the former event is obvious
enough, but if you think the latter has no relevance to what has
happened in Nairobi, or is taking place in the northern part of this
nation, permit me to correct you.
Yes, we all know of material corruption, we confront it all the time.
Tragically neglected however is what we should learn to designate as
spiritual corruption. Those who organised and carried out the outrage on
innocent lives in Nairobi are carriers of the most lethal virus of
corruption imaginable: corruption of the soul, corruption of the
spirit, corruption of that animating humanistic essence that separates
us from predatory beasts. I am no theologian of any religion, but I aver
that these assailants delude themselves with vistas of paradise after
life, that their delusion is borne of the perverted reading of salvation
and redemption. Those who attempt to divide the world into two
irreconciliable parts – believers against the rest – are human
aberrations. As for their claims to faith, they invoke divine authority
solely as a hypocritical cover for innate psychopathic tendencies. Their
deeds and utterances profane the very name of God or Allah.
Let us however abandon theology and simply designate them enemies of
humanity, leaving a very real question that the rest of us must resolve –
whether this breed even belongs to the human race, or should be seen as
a mutant sub-species that require both moral and scientific
definitions. We cannot continue to pretend that those who have set their
sight against that enabling spark that we call creativity, those who
arrogate to themselves the right to dispose of innocent lives at will,
belong within the same moral universe to which you and I belong.
Without a moral universe, humanity exists in limbo.
Not since apartheid has our humanity been so intensely and
persistently challenged and stressed on this continent. History repeats,
or more accurately re-asserts itself, as a murdering minority pronounce
themselves a superior class of beings to all others, assume powers to
decide the mode of existence of others, of association, decide who shall
live and who shall die, who shall shake hands with whom even as daily
colleagues, who shall dictate and who shall submit. The cloak of
religion is a tattered alibi, the real issue – as always - being power
and submission, with the instrumentality of terror. Let us objectively
assess the true nature of the dominion that they seek to establish in
place of the present ‘dens of sin and damnation, of impurity and
decadence’ in which the rest of us supposedly live. We do not need to
seek far, the models are close by – they will be found in contested
Somalia. In now liberated Mali. Fitfully in Mauritania. In those turbid
years of enchained Algeria, and her yet unconsolidated business of
secularism. Theirs is the dominion of exclusion. Of irrationality and
restraints on daily existence. A loathing of creativity and plurality.
It is the dominion of apartheid by gender. Of the demonisation of
difference. It is the dominion of Fear. Let us determine that, on this
continent, we shall not accept that, after victory over race as card of
citizen validation, religion is entered and established as substitute on
the passport, not only for citizen recognition, but even to entitlement
to residence on earth.
After the deadly calling card of these primitives, the rest of the
Nairobi festival was cancelled, understandably, but sadly. I have
however written to the organisers not to even bother to renew my
invitation for next year’s edition - life permitting, I shall be there.
We must all be there. And we must learn to smother loss in advance, not
just for that festival but for all festivals of life and creativity
wherever in the world. Resolve that, no matter the tragic intervention,
such events must run their course. Let us accept, quite simply, that a
force of violent degeneracy has declared war on humanity. Thus, we are
fated to be ever present on the battlefield until that war is over.
I submit that we were all present at that concourse of humanity in
Nairobi. We were present by the side of every maimed and fallen victim,
among who was a distinguished one of us, one of the very best that have
defined us to the world. We were present in Mali even before this
nation, to her credit, joined in stemming the tide of religious atavism
and human retrogression. We were beside the students of Kaduna, Plateau,
Borno, the school children of Yobe, the mangled okada riders and petty
traders of Kano, beside all those who have been routinely slaughtered
for so many years past in this very nation. In Nairobi’s hub of commerce
we were present, confronted yet again with that same diabolical test
that was applied to school pupils in Kano many years ago, where those
who failed to recite the indicated verse of the koran were classified as
infidels, and led away to have their throats serially slit. We have
been present at the travails of Algeria, recorded for posterity by that
lady Karima Bennoune in YOUR FATWA DOES NOT APPLY HERE. We were beside
Tahar Djaout, author of THE LAST SEASON OF UNREASON, cut down also by
religious fanatics. We are the mere survivors who continually ask, when
will this stop? Where will this end? The ones who echo Karima and that
miraculous survivor Malala in declaiming - No indeed, your fatwa can
never apply here. We have been beside the children of Chechnya in the
Soviet Union, innocents who, taken hostage, were reduced to drinking
their own urine, then deliberately gunned down as they made their way
out of a school gymnasium that had turned into an inferno. We continue
to remain beside all who have fallen to the blight of bigotry, religious
solipsism and spiritual toxicity. We shall continue to stand beside
them, denouncing, condemning, but most critically, urging on all who can
to anticipate, stem, and ultimately eliminate the tide of religious
tyranny. We have taken the side of humanity against those who are
against.
At this very time of the latest outrage, the world body, known as the
United Nations Organisation was actually convened in General Assembly.
We must instigate that body to evolve, through just, principled, but
severe and uncompromising action, into a United Humanity Organisation,
that is, thinking not simply ‘nation’, but acting ‘humanity’. It means
going beyond pietisms such as – this or that is a religion of peace, but
obliging its members to act aggressively in neutralising those whose
acts pronounce the contrary, so that Humanity is placed as the first and
last principle of nation existence and global cohabitation. The true
divide is not between believers and unbelievers, but between those who
violate the right of others to believe, or not believe.
Memories that span fifty or more years are difficult to distill into a
few words. Suffice it to stress for now that Kofi Awoonor was a
passionate African, that is, he gave primacy of place to values derived
from his Ewe heritage. That, in turn, means that he was thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of ecumenism towards other systems of belief and
cultural usages – this being the scriptural ethos that permeates belief
practices of most of this continent. We mourn our colleague and brother,
but first we denounce his killers, the virulent sub-species of humanity
who bathe their hands in innocent blood. Only cowards turn deadly
weapons against the unarmed, only the depraved glorify in, or justify
the act. True warriors do not wage wars against the innocent. Profanity
is the name given to the defilement of the sanctity of human life. We
call on those who claim to exercise the authority of a fatwa to
pronounce that very doom, with all its moral weight, upon those who
engage in this serial violation of the right to life, life as a
god-given possession that only the blasphemous dare contradict, and the
godless wantonly curtail.
This scalp that they have added to their collection was roof to a unique brain that a million of their kind can never replace.
A few months ago, in New York, on a joint platform of the United
Nations and UNESCO, I entered an urgent plea into the proceedings of
that International Conference on the Culture of Peace: Take Back Mali! I
urged. At home, I impressed that urgent necessity on our own
government. I know that Kofi Awoonor, poet, diplomat and democrat, would
approve my commendation – in this specific respect at least – of the
action of our and other ECOWAS governments – albeit after France had
taken the critical lead – in taking back Mali. I especially applaud the
outgoing Foreign Affairs Minister, Ashiru, who hearkened to that
imperative of speedy intervention and urged it with vigour and urgency
on the African Union. We salute the courage and sacrifices of the
soldiers who reversed the agenda of the interlopers – al Qaeda and
company - with their arrogant designs on those freedoms that define who
we are in this region, and on the continent itself. Safeguarding
freedoms, alas, goes beyond even the most intense passion and will of
the poetic muse, and we must never shy away from acknowledging this
cruel reality. Those who believe that a tepid, accommodative approach to
fundamentalist rampage can generate peace and human dignity should
study – as I have often urged – the experience of Algeria, captured with
such chilling diligence in Karima Bennoune’s work. The cost of ‘taking
back Algeria’ is one that will be reckoned in human deficit – and
unbelievable courage – for generations to come. Today, I urge all forces
of progress to – Take Back Africa! Rescue her from the forces of
darkness that seek to inaugurate a new regimen of religious despotism,
ruthless beyond what our people have known even under the imperial will
of Europe.
These butchers continue to evoke the mandate of Islam, thus, we
exhort our Muslim brother and sister colleagues: Take back Islam. Take
back that Islam which, even where it poses contradictions, declares
itself one with the culture of learning, one that honours its followers
as People of the Book, historic proponents of the virtues of intellect
and its products. There is no religion without contradictions – it is
the primacy of human dignity and solidarity that serves as arbiter. We
call upon the fastidious warrior class of the intellect, steeped in a
creative contempt and defiance of enemies of the humanistic pursuit. We
speak here of that Islam that inspires solidarity with the Naguib
Mafouzes of our trade, with the Tahar Djaouts, with the Karimas and the
Mariama Bas, not the diabolism of al Shabbab, Boko Haram and their
degenerate ilk. Let us join hands with the former, and enshrine their
mission as the history prescribed destination of our creative urge. What
Nairobi teaches – and not just this recently - is that there is no
place called Elsewhere. Elsewhere has always been right here with us,
and in the present. I urge upon you this mandate: seize back your Islam
and thus, take back our continent and, in that restorative undertaking -
take back our humanity.
Soyinka is a Nobel Laureate in Literature
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