In 1993, as demonstrations protesting the dictatorship of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida broke out in Nigeria, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s most prominent dissident, found himself trapped outside his native land. As the riots and government crackdown became more violent and bloody, the playwright and essayist sneaked back into his country and took an almost deadly cab ride into the heart of the demonstrations, driving through anti-government roadblocks manned by trigger-happy guards.
Soyinka miraculously survived the day. This event and other acts of resistance are chronicled in his new political memoir, “You Must Set Forth at Dawn” (Random House, 528 pages, $27). Soyinka details his life in Nigeria after he returned from London in 1960 and his career fighting for democracy and human rights. His story is a thrilling one, from the creation of his political play “Kongi’s Harvest” to his refusal to compromise with the many dictators that have looted Nigeria and murdered its citizens.
A big life
In the late 1960s, Soyinka made a desperate diplomatic effort to head off the impending Nigerian civil war, where he was rewarded with more than two years in prison, most in solitary confinement. Even in the face of two prison terms, perpetual police harassment and forced exile in the 1990s as a hunted man, Soyinka was able to live his life as a world-class writer and intellectual. The book ends in 1998, when he returned to Nigeria as a conquering hero after the death of Gen. Sani Abacha, the country’s ninth dictator since independence. Soyinka tells an ornate and witty tale of a life big enough to be lived by three men.
For Soyinka, the new memoir was an attempt to reclaim his story. “Sometimes my assiduous biographers take a piece of my existence, like when I sneeze, and feel obligated to write something definitive about it,” said Soyinka from a New York coffee shop. “I am trying to take a piece of my life back from these writers, these critics.”
At 71 years old (he’ll turn 72 next month), Soyinka is hale and handsome. With his distinctive shock of white hair, he stands out in a crowd. He is the author of 13 plays and 15 novels, books of poetry and nonfiction. In 1986, Soyinka was the first African awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He divides his time between California and Nigeria.
When Soyinka started the autobiography, his life was in danger. “I began writing this memoir during the 1990s under the Abacha dictatorship,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘Well, maybe I should put something down, in case I don’t make it.’ I was out of Nigeria at the time, but I was a wanted man. There were assassins out to get me.”
Witty recollections
Soyinka writes with wit about both his career as a playwright abroad and as a dissident at home. While staging one of his plays in Italy, he smuggled a frozen Nigerian wildcat into the country to make a sumptuous meal for a group of homesick Nigerian actors. When Nigerian army helicopters were buzzing his house to harass him, Soyinka staged a satirical press conference, threatening to bring evil spirits down on the pilots.
To develop the stories in the book, Soyinka first had to address his own bitterness. “When I started the book, I had to exorcise the dark parts of my life first,” he said. “I started writing about the death of my friend Femi Johnson and the bitterness I had towards his family for refusing to bring his body back to Nigeria from Germany. I found that mood took over the whole book. At the beginning, the book was almost pure anger and grief. I had to remember the fun moments. I had to stand outside myself.”
A chronicle
In his book, Soyinka chronicles the relentless dictatorships Nigeria has suffered through since independence. Soyinka muses over the unending coups that have scarred Nigeria.
“Power is intoxicating. Power is an addiction. It seems to addict Nigerians more than others,” he said. “Dictatorships seem to breed well in Africa. Every coup leader in Nigeria first promises to flush out corruption and to weed out the rotten eggs. No sooner than they get into power, this virus eats into them. They become corrupt and want to stay in power. What is it? Is it to control funds, to control people and lives? It is something that has never really been solved. To sit on Nigeria’s vast oil reserves just propels the dictators’ imagination.”
Not one for delegating
For Soyinka, his almost fatal trip through the 1993 riots and gunfire was unavoidable. “One thing I am not good at doing is planning demonstrations and letting other people carry them out,” he said. “I am not very good at delegating any kind of risky thing. I’m at ease only when I am inside an event. There was the guilt of letting others carry out the demonstrations. To be missing from the demonstrations was more terrifying than the other risks.”
During the riots, Soyinka’s prominent upstanding white hair made him easily identifiable to drunken soldiers and demonstrators alike, amazed that the famous “Prof” was in the thick of the mayhem. “My hair is always a perfect giveaway, but I’ve often needed it,” said Soyinka. “It has helped me get through to certain places.”
The situation in Nigeria has recently deteriorated, with President Olusegun Obasanjo moving his government closer to a dictatorship, cracking down on the opposition. “The movement against Obasanjo is very strong,” said Soyinka with a grim, determined smile. “He has brutally put down demonstrations, tear-gassing women and children. We are fighting him.”
Despite the five decades of hard dissent, Soyinka has never chosen exile voluntarily. “If the Nigerian people had been able to live in peace at home,” said Soyinka, “I might have chosen to live abroad.”
The choice to stay and fight Nigeria’s dictators was the only one Soyinka could make. “If you know your community is in the hands of a madman or lunatic like General Abacha,” he said, referring to the dictator who forced him into exile, “you are not at peace anywhere you go. Part of you is still being desecrated by that person.”
Dylan Foley is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.
