Apart from your literary career, you have played a very active political role in Nigeria, beginning many years ago. During the Western regional crisis of 1965, you took to the airwaves to denounce the falsification of election results. Could you tell us how that came about?
Wole Soyinka: Those elections were very violent and the people resisted. This was the Western Region at the time. I was then teaching at the University of Ibadan. Violent, and the incumbent government used its power of incumbency in the region, in alliance with the power of the center. It was a federal structure. In spite of that, they could not rig the election successfully. And so what they did was just start altering the results. And even that proved exceedingly difficult for them. Finally the premier of the region decided to just forget the whole thing and announce his victory on radio. And I happened, you know, by very fortunate coincidence, I learned that this was going to become a fait accompli. And since he had the support of the federal government, something drastic had to be done. And so with some assistance, some of my usual collaborators, I managed to stop the broadcast, substitute my -- I pre-recorded my own statement. So I went to the studio and I took the premier's tape off and substituted my own and went away. And so I was tried -- very, very nasty charge. I was charged with armed robbery, because apparently this event was supposed to have taken place with the aid of a gun, and so -- very cunning people, coming to frame a charge of armed robbery, for a tape! Costs under a pound or whatever, and I substituted one, anyway -- so it wasn't -- and I left that one. So where was the robbery?
Anyway, I was tried and acquitted, thank goodness. Then some years passed. Of course the seeds of what came later were already being laid and planted, from that rigging of the elections in the West, and in the rest of the country, as a matter of fact. So a military coup took place in 1966, in January. There were massacres, especially against the Igbos, because the first coup, the leaders were mostly Igbo, and so reprisal claims took place and the drums of war began to sound very, very loud. The East Igbos, who felt they had been really violated -- because they were hunted down all over the place, not just in the North -- they decided to secede. My friend Christopher Okigbo was Igbo, of course. I knew him from the writers and artists community in Ibadan. He was a founding member of the Mbari writers and artists club. When I was detained for that "un-robbery" episode, he used to come and visit me in my place of detention. I was not actually formally detained. I was just not granted bail, that's all. So he used to come to visit me at the police station where I was held and we'd read his poetry together. Or more accurately, he would read his poetry. He loved reading his own poems. He wanted you to hear exactly how it sounded, because it was a very aural, musical kind of poetry. He was a musician also, by the way, so that wasn't surprising. So we became quite close.
When I realized that war really was going to happen, I tried to -- and he (Christopher Okigbo) had left, like the other Igbo that fled to the East, where they were more secure. Chinua Achebe was in the East. We had other writers like Gabriel Okara in the East, and I felt maybe by linking up and resurrecting that tight community we might be able to do something to prevent that war, and so I traveled. By then the firing had started, the early skirmishes had begun. And I traveled by road to the East. I was promptly arrested as a suspected enemy by the Biafrans whom I had come to see, but of course, some time after, the police realized who I was and I was released. And who had come into my police station? He didn't know I was there. It was Christopher Okigbo, coming from the war front, coming for more equipment. And so we were reunited for the last time. He went back to the front. So the leader of the secessionist enclave, Ojukwu, we spoke, and then when I came back I was detained for having traveled to the East. I was accused of all kinds of things, including trying to buy jet fighters for the -- I don't know why people like to cook, you know, fantasies, around one's individual existence.
Why did you take on this role of go-between between the Biafrans and the West?
Wole Soyinka: It was very simple. I belong to the West, the Yorùbá part of the federation. And in a war, when a war is being fought, it is being fought on behalf of people. And this war committed me, as a Nigerian, it committed me, and I felt that war was wrong and I refused to accept that, to be committed in that way. The Biafrans had been violated. They had been massacred. It was more than one massacre, it was like a wave of massacres. And they were being hunted everywhere. In other words, the conduct of the Federal side, at least that portion to which I belong, indicated -- said, in plain language, even though it was not articulated as such, "You, the Igbo, are no longer part of the federation." There was no way, nothing was done to make them feel secure, at least not enough was done to make them feel secure in the rest of the nation. And then, after they had seceded, which I considered, by the way, a tactical mistake -- not a political crime, not a moral crime, no, no, no, no, no. It was a tactical error. But then, to go after them, to declare war against them on this banal basis of unity above anything else! Unity of what? I mean, who committed the act of disuniting the nation in the first place? Those who made the Igbo feel they were not part of the full entity. So for me it was an unjust war of which I could not be a part. And if I'd not gone to the East, I would have gone into exile, because I would refuse to be part of that entity which waged war against a people who had been so dehumanized. So in effect, it was for my own peace of mind, to try and do everything possible to make sure the war did not take place.
When you returned to the West, you were detained, but never officially charged. Was this because of an open letter you had published in the Daily Times of Nigeria? What was your intent in writing that letter? Wole Soyinka: First of all, the letter was published before I went to the East.
There was supposed to be a delegation going from the Federal side, a delegation of citizens, you know, high-placed citizens, traditional rulers and so on. I wanted to make sure that when they went over to the East, they didn't go mouthing pious, meaningless sentiment. They should understand that they were going to visit a wronged people, and that they should take the kind of message there that would make them come back. Well, as I expected, it was a futile visitation. The Igbo by that stage didn't trust anyone, and in any case they could not, they had nothing concrete to take over to the other side. And so I followed up my letter by visiting there, and trying to get Chinua, Christopher, the group I knew, and also talk to Ojukwu, whom I've known -- the head of the Biafran enclave -- whom I've known. We were both students around the same time, even though he was somewhat older than myself. And when I came back, I brought back certain messages and delivered those messages on return.
I should add that when I went there, we had formed what we called the "Third Force." Since the cause of the Federal side, in our view, was not just, and since the Igbo had committed a tactical error in deciding on secession, we thought there should be a third force, a neutral force, which would put on the table various concrete proposals, in effect neutralizing the positions of both sides. We could present these proposals to both sides, and to the international community, which might finally succeed in bringing them to some kind of agreement. You've made a distinction between your first arrest, in the mid-'60s, and your second arrest. If corruption, a rigged election, was the issue in the first case, what was really the issue when you were imprisoned the second time?
Days after your incarceration, your friend Christopher Okigbo was killed in the civil war. Did you hear of his death while you were in prison? Were you able to get news? Wole Soyinka: I was in solitary confinement for quite a while, but after a while, even prison has its chinks which one is able to study and explore. So occasionally, after the really hermetic isolation of a couple of months, I was able to start formulating links with the outside world. You smuggled a letter out of prison in 1967. How did it change your treatment in prison? Wole Soyinka: First of all, I was held in a maximum security prison in Lagos.
After I smuggled out that statement, the government panicked and decided to move me to Kaduna and place me in complete solitary confinement. I was shocked. It was one of the most bitter moments, bitterest moments of my incarceration, to find the Minister of Information calling an international press conference and reading what was supposed to be my confession. It's one of the most horrible things that can happen to anybody in prison, that you feel, "What else? What is going to come next? What are they going to say next? What are they speaking in my name?" Reading -- not to be accusing me, I mean, that's okay -- but actually saying, "I have here his confessional statement," and every bit of it -- except the trip to Biafra -- a complete fabrication. But after I got to Kaduna, I stayed completely quiet for some time. Didn't even attempt to reach the outside world. Just made sure they thought I was a complete model prisoner, totally resigned to being in isolation. And I began to probe the chinks and managed to start getting things outside. Even sent some poems for publication to my publisher outside, which was scribbled on toilet paper with ink I'd manufactured and so on.
You wrote about your prison experience in a memoir, The Man Died. Did you actually begin work on that book while you were in prison?
Wole Soyinka: I began writing, scribbling notes, you know, in prison. But it wasn't actually published until after I'd come out. Writing became a therapy. First of all, it meant I was reconstructing my own existence. It was also an act of defiance. I wasn't supposed to write. I wasn't supposed to have paper, pen, anything, any reading material whatsoever. So this became an exercise in self-preservation, keeping up my spirits. It also, you had to occupy very long hours of the day, you know, not speaking to anyone. And I even -- it wasn't just writing. I evolved all kinds of mental exercises, even went back to those subjects which I said I hated in school, in particular mathematics. I started to try and recover my mathematical formulae by trial and error, and created problems for myself which I solved. You know, anything to keep the mind alive. As I said, it's an exercise in self-preservation. Writing was just part of it.
Did your case ever go to court?
What led to your release in 1969? How did you go back to normal life? Wole Soyinka: Combination of events. First of all, the war was coming to an end, so the government felt they could now afford to yield to some international pressure. I think it is a combination of those two. The federal government had become very self-confident. The international community, apart from France, maybe Tanzania, had swung behind the federal government, and of course war is always won both on the battlefield and on the field of public opinion. They probably had nothing to worry about. I could shout myself hoarse, didn't matter, they got what they wanted. So they could afford to make this magnanimous gesture of releasing me. When I came out, I tried to go back to normal life, but I knew I wasn't going to be very comfortable for long. There was a triumphalist atmosphere on the Federal side which I found very grating, so I quietly made up my mind that I would go into self-exile at the first opportunity. When you went into exile, you completed your book The Man Died. Where did the title come from?
Wole Soyinka: I've never really ever gone into complete exile, you know. In other words, I've never succeeded in cutting off my environment, and I kept in touch with people at home, of course, and I got the news all the time, the misbehavior of the military especially, because we were now under full military dictatorship. And I took an interest in particular in one young man who had been brutalized by the military at a social occasion, to the extent that he had to have an amputation. I was following that case and working with others inside, within Nigeria, to make sure that he got his dues, the people involved were punished. One of them was a governor of one of these regions. And then I got a telegram one day which said, "The man died. He died from his wounds." And so I used that expression as the title, the title of the book.
You returned to Nigeria after President Gowon was deposed in 1975. How did you know it was time to go back? Wole Soyinka: Well, from the moment that he was deposed, and I studied the new, incoming dictatorship, it was obviously time for me to come back. The man who took over, Murtala Mohammed, showed signs immediately of his wanting to absolutely dismantle the oppressive machinery that had grown under Gowon. So it was time for me to return. General Gowon was the man responsible for your imprisonment during the Nigerian Civil War. How many months were you in prison? Wole Soyinka: Actually 27 altogether. Twenty-two in solitary confinement. Yet you're no longer opponents. What is your relationship like with the former leader, General Gowon, today? Wole Soyinka: Very good. Very good.
Something which I discovered when I came out of prison, some time after I came out of prison, was that Gowon was obviously an inexperienced young officer who was thrust into this position. He relied, as many leaders unfortunately do, on the kind of information he is given by his security agencies. Ultimately, the responsibility of course is his, because he signs the papers. But you find, you discover, when you investigate, when you analyze all these situations, you find that the man at the head, actually, probably is the least knowledgeable about many things which transpired during his incumbency. And the first indication -- no, in fact, by the time Gowon began to seek me out, by the time he began to seek me out, I had already come to my own conclusions.
I had already made my own inquiries. I wasn't inquiring about myself so much, but about that whole period, so I knew what was going on. I'd seen documents. One always exists within a certain network, and it's in documents and things, so I know exactly what happened, how all these lies came to be told. So nothing against him personally. When I was passing through England, he asked one of our ambassadors, asked him if he could arrange for us to meet. I said, "I have no objection." Unfortunately, we didn't really get around to meeting. He tried to arrange dinner, but I was away when Gowon was in England. We missed each other. I knew sooner or later we were going to meet. On top of that, there was a certain massacre, which made me so bitter about the conduct of that government during the civil war and which I blamed on Gowon.
The massacre took place in what is now the state of Benin, in which innocents were lined up. Men, women, children were gunned down in cold blood. I learned about that. I wrote about it. And Gowon, I discovered, did not know anything about it. And when he learned about it later, he actually paid a visit to that place to apologize to the people of Benin. He met the Asagba of Asaba, the traditional ruler, who met him in council, and he was received by the citizens and so on, because by then, the very fact that he came there to apologize made a great impression on them. So there was never known, up to a certain point, anything, any personal thing -- my holding him personally responsible ceased not long after I came out of prison, when I began my inquiries into the conduct of the civil war. Many things which I placed on his head -- and he apologized to me personally. When he did, I told him, "Listen, you don't have to apologize to me. You've apologized to people already. It's nothing, nothing at all." So we're friends.
Friends? Wole Soyinka: He even came to my birthday! I invited him. It was a banquet which was thrown by the governor of my state, and also another governor, on my 70th birthday. He was in the first rank of the guests whom I said must be invited.
Wole Soyinka: Well, it was not even Aké that I wanted to write. I wanted to capture a particular period that was disappearing, a period which was very important to my childhood. And the character I was going to use for that unique period was my uncle, Oladotun Ransome-Kuti. And he'd agreed that we'd meet and talk. He was quite fond of me and he loved arguing, so he loved me, a kindred spirit. He'd agreed he would give me his papers, which he'd saved, and so on. And then, suddenly, he died on me. I was going to try to see things through his eyes, what that period meant for him, and also aspects of me there. So I abandoned that project, and then one day, in prison, again, this need to recollect and to set down came back to me. And I began sketching out the first few chapters on toilet paper, and between the lines of some books. It's a very strange thing about recollection. When I came out of prison, some time later, I said, "Well, I think I'm ready to write it now."
I began looking for my notes, the chapters I'd written in prison. Somehow they disappeared for some time. Because I had to smuggle the books out, between whose lines I'd written some things. So getting them back together took a while, and I could not find the documents. And then one day, everything came back, and I began writing Aké: the Years of Childhood. In other words, the project had always been there. I'd always wanted to capture that period. And so I wrote Aké, and the interesting thing was that I later recovered my notes, and almost word for word, the three chapters I'd written when I was in prison tallied with new chapters in Aké. An interesting footnote about the powers of memory. I mean, virtually line by line. Of course, some changes here and there. But it was amazing how the recollection came, total recall, for about three chapters, just like in the notes in Aké.
Let's talk about your childhood. Where were you born? What were the people like in your community?
Wole Soyinka: I was born in Abeokuta, Western Nigeria. It's a Yorùbá town. I come from the Yorùbá stock. When I was born, it was still under colonial rule -- the whole of Nigeria, of course. So it was an interesting mixture of, first of all, the traditional way of life, the traditions of the Yorùbá people. But at the same time, the Christianized aspect of existence, they had the church. I grew up with knowing the pastor, the catechist, and at the same time being very conscious of the traditional religious people, their processions through town. I grew up in an atmosphere of political contestation because Nigeria, like most colonial places, was busy trying to decolonize, to free itself from British rule. So there was the polemics of nationalism, and at the same time the regular rhythm of existence was captured in the cultures, and so on.
What was home life like for you? Wole Soyinka: Oh. That is easily answered. Home life was a very disciplined one. I grew up under parents who believed very literally in that expression, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." So it was very disciplined. And at the same time, it was an atmosphere of great exploration. In other words, despite the discipline, one was able to go out on one's own and discover things for oneself.
My father was a school teacher, in fact was a headmaster in the primary school. Believed passionately in education. My mother was a sort of petty trader, you know, small items, cloths, bit of jewelry, some foodstuffs, some locally manufactured material. She traveled quite a bit. She was also -- I used to call her a lieutenant -- a political lieutenant of a very feisty, politically astute auntie of mine, called Mrs. Ransome-Kuti, who once led a revolt of the women against the traditional ruler, the Alake of Abeokuta, who was imposing some unfair taxation on women's goods. And so that led to some fracas. So I grew up in this really, really exciting atmosphere of politics, real political activism, on the one hand, and then the more, shall we say, staid political discussions which went on around my father. He was sort of the center of the small, lower middle-class intellectuals who would debate everything from the world war, you know, going on at the time, to the price of newly introduced motorcycles in the area.
Your father's position in the community as a school headmaster, did that affect your status or position as a child in the community? Wole Soyinka: No.
One thing we were taught as children was the ethos of absolute equality, especially among children. My parents, as I used to say, used to collect waifs and strays, so we had a large family. I mean, some of them were our relations, poorer than we were. And the people, the parents would come and literally donate the child. They'd say, "Look, help me educate this child," or "This child is giving me too much trouble. Can he or she undergo some discipline here?" Or maybe their parents were going away somewhere. Maybe they worked with the railway, because if you were in the civil service, certain departments of the civil service, you were likely to be transferred anywhere, anytime. If you were a teacher, also, with some missionary schools, you could be transferred. There was sort of physical, geographical mobility among many employees of the time. Traders also, people working for private commercial companies. You could get sent, for instance, if you worked for a cocoa exporting firm, you could be sent to the interior for some time. And some of these parents would bring their children to us. So the population of our household was constantly shifting, and they came from different strata of society. And so we were taught, not so much directly, but through the attitude of our parents to all the children, that there was no privilege. Everybody was a child, and if you misbehaved you got just as much punishment as the other children. So if anything, in fact, we were treated even more harshly than the other children because we were supposed to know better and to show an example. So I'm afraid the status, any kind of status, was to my disadvantage as a child!
Besides being a school headmaster, your father was a gardener?
Did you like school? Can you tell me about your earliest memory of school? Wole Soyinka: Ah, yes! That's an easy one, because one has total recall of some passages in one's existence. The first thing to state is that I was, from childhood, a voracious reader. In hindsight I think really I was a precocious reader. It'd be wrong to say I virtually taught myself to read, but I know that I began picking out words before I actually went to school.
I had a sister who was only a year and two months -- a year and three months older than I was. And when she began school she made my life miserable, because she put on her school uniform and sort of looked at me with a kind of condescension, saying, "I'm going to school. You have to stay behind." It was infuriating! And so one day -- and then of course we lived in the parsonage, which meant that there were some schools, missionary schools, sort of, whose playgrounds abutted the lawn in front of our house. So I would watch these school kids also coming out during their break to play, and then I could see also through the school room windows, not far from us, these pupils bent over their books and their papers. I mean, it was like a conspiracy. So one day I'd had enough and I followed my sister to school. I picked up books from my father's desk. For me it was the most natural thing. If you were going to school you had to have books. So I picked up my father's books, which I couldn't read, and the next thing my sister knew was that I was behind her going to school. And even she was still too young to go to school by herself, so one of the older child relations used to take her to school. And when they turned around, they saw me and she screamed at me, "What are you doing here? What do you want? Go back!" "No! Today school day." A school teacher I remember, Mr. Olagbaju, came out to see what the fracas was about. And he looked at me and he said, "But, Wole, you're not yet old enough to come to school." And I said, "Well, I'm ready." And just decided to indulge me, felt I would get fed up with it after the first day. But no. So I actually began school at two-and-a-half years of age.
It sounds like your teacher, Mr. Olagbaju, was a big influence in your early life. Who else inspired you as a young person?
Wole Soyinka: The early influence in my life I think was my father. That's the earliest influence. He and his circle of friends. Usually, in our society, children are supposed to be neither seen nor heard. When elders are around, they're supposed to very respectfully leave them alone. But I was curious. I just loved their debates. They used to get excited over issues, and so somehow I was allowed to eavesdrop, unlike the other children. And I picked up some of the ideas that they had, and I would ask questions. I was known as the questioner. Afterwards, I would ask questions, and my father would indulge me by trying to explain things to me. So that's one of the reasons I consider him the earliest influence. And also, he had a small library, and I used to go into his library and try and read the books which I found there.
Later on, as my circle of adult acquaintances increased, I think the next influence on me was my uncle, the Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti, who was another very erudite person, a great educationist. I used to visit them in Igbein, where he lived with his wife and they ran a school. So on weekends sometimes I would go there. And of course it was the usual story. I wanted to listen to them discussing and so on. Don't misunderstand me. I was also very playful. I loved disappearing by myself, climbing trees, all that I did. But additionally, I was just fascinated by the whole discourse. Exchange of ideas between adults just used to fascinate me for some reason. I was never tired of listening to them. So my uncle was my next great influence.
What books did you enjoy reading as a child? Wole Soyinka: Oh, I just picked out books. Anything at all. I read catalogues. I read the newspaper, The Egbaland Echo. Among the books, I remember reading the bowdlerized versions of Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, I remember. They were two of my favorites. They were not the full editions. These were bowdlerized versions. And also some plays. I remember I came early in contact with Euripides, and I remember exactly, it was the Medea. I can't say that I fully grasped it, but I certainly read it. It was very fascinating. So you had an extensive variety of books available to you? Wole Soyinka: Yes. It wasn't that huge. Of course the Bible was always there. I found the Bible a wonderful piece of literature. I was never a very religious person in childhood, but I read that as well. It wasn't large, it was an eclectic kind of program, but they were sufficiently varied to be of permanent interest to a young child. You said you weren't very religious as a child, but people around you were. Did that influence you in any way? Wole Soyinka: Only in a rebellious way.
First, we had to go to church every Sunday morning -- morning and evening on Sundays. Then there was Sunday school. The various seasons were observed. You know, Easter, Christmas. I enjoyed those seasons, anything to do with festivals was okay by me. And that included the Muslim festivals. Because even though we lived in a Christian missionary compound -- a parsonage, as it was called -- St. Peter's Parsonage, we had Muslim neighbors. And the interaction between the two faiths was quite a normal accommodative communal kind of existence. Not the kind of murderous nonsense you have these days, religious extremists and so on. We celebrated, with the Muslims, their festivals -- the Eid, the Ramadan, et cetera, sometimes even observed part of their fast days. And then there were the traditional religionists, as I said. I learned very early of traditional deities (of the) Yorùbá: Ogun, for instance, God of Iron, the Road, Poetry, et cetera; Shango, God of Lightning.
I found the traditional religions far more fascinating, because they didn't force me to go to the regular service and dress up and things like that. A bit more relaxed, more humanist in my view. But it didn't mean that I didn't like the other religions either. I was a member of the church choir quite early, because I liked music, and in any case, as a son of the headmaster who was also a deacon. And of course my mother was a very passionate Christian, used to go out evangelizing. So I was expected to also be religious. Well, I had no problem with the choir. I loved singing, loved music, loved the sound of the organ and even enjoyed the processions during the seasonal days. But I never really took to religion, as such. For me, religion was just another aspect, an aspect of the totality of one's existence. I think both my parents tried too hard, so I rebelled quite early and found myself more attuned to a comparative approach to religions, comparative.
You had a nickname for your mother. Wole Soyinka: Oh, the "Wild Christian?" Oh yes, she was wild as a Christian! She was also wild as a disciplinarian, so somehow, in my head, I used to refer to her mentally as a Wild Christian. Do you think the diversity of that community, and of all the visitors that came to your family home influenced your perception of culture?
Where do you think your confidence as a child came from? Wole Soyinka: It's interesting that you should use that word. Traditional society has both its virtues and its drawbacks, like all kinds of cultures. There are sets of values in any community.
There's a way in which a child is brought up in my society. The first thing is that a child is supposed to be a responsible member of the household. You had your duties, and you had better carry them out. On the other hand, a child, as I said, was supposed to be seen, not heard. In fact, preferably neither seen nor heard. You took instructions and you made yourself available at all times for any kind of extra duties that might be imposed on you. I had no problem carrying out duties. But somehow, as a child, I also insisted on my own space. And sometimes I would go far to find that space, which we were not supposed to do. You're not supposed to leave the house without telling the parents where you were going, or someone in the household. And I'm afraid I didn't take very kindly to over-restriction. So one of the expressions which I remember I would get from my mother was, "You are too overconfident. You are overconfident. That's what your father always says to you, you know. This overconfidence, that's going to kill you one of these days." That kind of a thing. But it made no difference. I just was the way I was.
I found one had to thread one's way through, on the one hand, the recognition in society of the individual stamp of every child. It's a paradox, because even in traditional religion, recognition is given to a child who, as we say, has brought his own head into the world, his personal head. But at the same time, it's not considered healthy for a child to be too individual. So you had to manage to manipulate your way through that.
A child who appeared introspective was considered to be a possible danger to himself or herself. An effort would be made to draw that child out of that child's habit of solitude, isolation. So I think it has to do with the very unique virtue in Yorùbá society, this threading of balance between the social aspect of the child and a recognition of that unique individual characteristic of the child. But with the balance in favor of the social child. The child is not supposed to desert the community, and if too much of that side is seen, then efforts are made to bring you out of it. They feel there is something wrong with you. Now, I had to fight that as a child. That led to accusations of over-self-confidence, that kind of thing.
Do you think that you were always destined to be an achiever? Do you think that you were different from other kids? Wole Soyinka: No, I don't think so. I don't think I ever felt different from other kids. I know that I tend to be more passionate about things than others, but beyond that, no. I never felt that I was set apart. No, not at all.
Wole Soyinka: No, you didn't get a scholarship in primary school. You got a scholarship only in secondary school. There were missionary schools, so children of very poor families who happened to be attached to missionary families might be assisted through school, but there weren't scholarships as such. You sat examinations. At the end of your primary school, you sat examinations to certain schools where scholarships were available. Otherwise, you had to go through the other schools where there were no scholarships. And in this case I sat for Government College Ibadan and got a scholarship. Was there pressure for you to go to Government College? Wole Soyinka: Oh yes. My father always made it clear that I had to go to Government College. The Government College was the elite secondary school, if you like, and they had scholarships, and that was important for the family. How did your parents encourage you? Wole Soyinka: The first thing is my parents realized quite early that I loved books. Therefore they encouraged me to read as much as I wanted to, my father in particular, and to ask questions about the books, which he answered very patiently, I thought. I don't think I have that much patience myself. Then, they had ways of making us understand that education was critical. Our primary responsibility was to go as far as we could in our own education. So it was letting us see that we had that responsibility to ourselves, to the family. I think it was mainly that way. Was there a particular teacher who most inspired you or challenged you? Maybe it was Mr. Olagbaju.
Wole Soyinka: I would say it was that first teacher I had who admitted me into school, in quite an unorthodox manner, Mr. Olagbaju. He was also a family friend. This is interesting. For instance, once I started going to school, sometimes I wouldn't go back to my own home. I'd just follow Mr. Olagbaju home. Then he might send a message that I'm with him, and that they shouldn't bother about me. So that also gave me some kind of independence, in addition to then getting to read Mr. Olagbaju's books and then pestering him with questions. So in that way I found quite a bond with Mr. Olagbaju, and of course with his children. So that became a second home to me as I grew older.
When I went to Abeokuta grammar school, I didn't come so much under the influence of my uncle, that was more a personal one. He was a principal of that school, but he didn't teach us that much. He taught the higher classes in the two years I was there. My father of course was also a teacher. Mr. Olagbaju in a kind of informal way. Also my uncle, the Rev. I.O. Ransome-Kuti. In what way did you receive news about World War II?
We were about 60 kilometers from Lagos, the capital, and of course in Lagos the anti-enemy preventive action was even stronger. And once, there was an explosion on board a ship in Lagos, and we got news about that. And then we really felt the war was coming very, very close. It wasn't actually German action, just an accident on a boat, but for us this was enemy action, and so we all got quite tensed up. And occasionally, when a light plane flew overhead, we learned to associate that with the war effort. Then of course, there were soldiers constantly being bused from one side of the town to the other. We had Lafenwa Barracks, and we had foreign soldiers who sometimes came through. So the war was very much a palpable event for us.
You saw a lot of change in your community because of the war. Was it also coming through in newspapers and radio? Wole Soyinka: Yes. Radios, yes, we had the loudspeaker, and there was a special section in the paper devoted to war news. I think it was over the radio I first heard the voice of Winston Churchill. It was just like a duel going on between Winston Churchill and the other man called Adolph Hitler, into which other people were roped. Your mother was part of organizing women's groups, who gathered for self-improvement. What did that teach you about dealing with the local authorities? Wole Soyinka: Not much, unless of course you're talking about the traditional ruler. Let me begin this way. It was, first of all, a women's improvement society, in which women were being taught how to be part of the evolving modern society. How to improve their dressing, for instance, comportment.
It began as a kind of middle-class movement, one which tried to absorb the peasantry, the peasant women, the little small-time traders and so on, into a lower middle-class kind of sensibility. And then it became more politically conscious, and as the women brought their problems, "This is what we experience from the servants, the policemen of the king." These were called the Native Administration Police -- they were called the akoda. They used to waylay these women and tax them on the spot on goods they were bringing from the farms. So this kind of oppressive action was brought to these meetings for discussion. So these meetings became more and more politicized. Until the focus was beamed on the ultimate traditional authority, the Alake of Abeokuta, the king, and his council of elders. And so we saw -- I was able to experience -- the divide between the peasantry, the ordinary people, and the traditional rulers. That's on the one hand. On the other side, listening to the conversations and the disputes between my aunt and my uncle, and the British district officers, political officers, I was able to see -- recognize -- also the fact that the British government, this external authority, was also an instrument of oppression and was in fact alienated from the genuine aspirations and self-fulfillment of the overall society. So I had this in two directions, this dichotomy, this conflict of interests between one group and the other group in authority.
Can you tell us what these tax officers did, and why they were so feared?
Wole Soyinka: In traditional society, pre-colonial society, there was always a levy towards the improvement of society, community levy during festivals, et cetera, et cetera, so these were traditional levies, and there was a way, a regular routine way of collecting these levies. They were hardly ever resented. If a king went beyond his authority, he was soon deposed in one form or the other. Now when the British came, then they brought their own levy -- capitation tax, poll tax, taxes on salaries -- you know. So there was an increase of the burden of extraction from regular earnings of people. And the worst part of it was that the traditional authority took the opportunity also to increase what used to be the regular, accepted forms of taxation. That taxation extended to taxation on crops. And they were collected from women coming in, bringing their crops to the market. So in addition to, let us say, the market levy, which is traditional -- markets had to be kept tidy, you know, facilities have to be made. People never resented all of that. But now came the point where additional levies were being made on the actual goods being brought from the farms. And sometimes the women would be arrested, their goods seized completely. Finally this movement of the women, self-improvement movement, spear-headed by my aunt, Mrs. Ransome-Kuti, decided to take on both the district officers and the traditional king. That's what happened.
Weren't you recruited at an early age to assist, teaching some of these peasant women to read? Wole Soyinka: Well, I was already co-opted. Anybody was co-opted who happened along. So it wasn't enough just for me to sit in and watch, no. So when I came in, Mrs. Kuti would just say, "All right, where have you reached now in your school? Take on those women. Teach them what you've been learning." It was that kind of mutual self-help. So I did teach some of the women to read. I assisted my mother, I assisted Mrs. Kuti, and I enjoyed it. Yes. You were a young boy -- age eleven -- when you left Abeokuta for Government College Ibadan. When did you return?
I was always going to go to university. In fact, I should have gone earlier, straight from school if my father had his way. But I left secondary school at a very early age. Now it's nothing, but at that time to leave school at 16-and-a-half was a big deal. My father wanted me to go straight to university, and I just felt I needed some experience of the world before going to college. So I refused to take the exams the first year, to University College. I went straight to see my uncle in Lagos. He was a pharmacist. I wanted to get a job in a newspaper. I wanted to be a journalist, a newspaper correspondent. But somehow we compromised. They still felt I was too young to strike out on my own.
I left Abeokuta and insisted on being in Lagos, so I went to work at a pharmacy, the pharmacy department. My uncle was the chief pharmacist, and eventually I was put in charge of a store. Probably the youngest person ever to be in charge. It was rather interesting. I was in charge of what you call Section B. It was actually called the "Medical Stores," the full complex, Medical Stores. Section A was a pharmacy, of course, nothing -- I wouldn't go there. But Section B, I eventually became the head of that division and was sending things like dressing, catguts (sutures), surgical equipment, to all corners of the nation -- Bauchi, Lagos, Enugu -- where the government hospitals were. Sudan Interior Mission, that's when I first came across expressions like that, and that was a missionary organization which had hospitals up north, and we'd fulfill their indents (orders) and we would put them in bales and boxes, send them to the railway station for delivery. It was very heady stuff. I came to that position of responsibility very, very early and purely by accident. I was just another sort of clerical assistant in that store, and then something happened to the head of the store, whether he was transferred or he left to go to study in England. And by default, I was the next senior, most educated person in that store, and so I stepped in there and somehow I remained there. I took a photograph, I remember, in my apron, telephone on the one side. Very proud of that photograph. I was about... just under 17.
But you eventually decided to sit for the exams? Wole Soyinka: Yes, yes. I couldn't resist any longer. In any case, I felt I was ready now. I wanted to earn some money first, quite frankly. I didn't want to go into college completely dependent on my parents, and also I wanted a scholarship. My father was ready to pay, but I knew how much he was earning, and there were other children and so on. I felt that I'd be more secure in myself if I had some pocket money. Anyway, I had to sit the exam. I got a scholarship, and so I went to University College Ibadan. What was the "Pyrates Confraternity?" Wole Soyinka: Ah. That controversial organization!
University life had always fascinated me. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I wanted to be quite mature -- at least to develop some maturity -- before going to college. I'd studied university culture, and I knew about fraternities. The fraternity culture in Germany, in the United States, in France, everywhere. So when I went to college, that's the University College Ibadan, and was shocked and rather -- there was an elitist mentality about the first-comers into the university sticks. Many of them were children of rich people, what we call the children of colonial aristocrats, and they brought that mentality of colonial aristocracy into the college setting. Totally divorced. They considered themselves divorced from the rest of the community. That sense of responsibility with which I grew up, it was just not there. They had these clubs, a number of clubs. There was the social club, for instance. Mimicking British -- what they considered British -- culture. Always dressed up in ties, jackets and so on. The college atmosphere was modeled on Cambridge and so on. You went to dinner, high dinner, high tea. You had to wear robes to go to dinner. I hated all that stuff. I didn't mind the occasional ceremonial, but to mimic British manners and so on, for me it was ridiculous. So we started, as a rebellion against this staid British formalism, we started the "Pyrates Confraternity." And one of its mottos was "Against Moribund Convention." And we used to dress as rough-and-ready pirates. We used to "sail," quote unquote, on top of a flat surface of the bookshop. We'd climb up the bookshop and we'd then knock off the ladder and sail into the horizon. It was all typical student fun. Unfortunately, in later years, mimic organizations began, which were rather nasty. Complete debasement of the confraternity idea.
Did you graduate from Ibadan?
Wole Soyinka: No. I didn't finish there because the course I wanted to take was English literature, not just a general degree. By this time I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I hated mathematics. I had no time for physics or chemistry. Even though I managed to struggle through, it was a struggle in school. Once that was done, I threw my books -- all my mathematics books -- out of the window. Concentrated on literature. And then, when I was ready to go for the final years, the honors course in literature had not been started. And so my scholarship was extended to go to England. That's how I came to go to England.
Wole Soyinka: First of all, there was the fact that you were now totally independent. You're now fending for yourself, something I'd wanted from childhood anyway. But then you were in a different culture, with a lower sense of community. Or maybe I should say, with a sense of community diffused. A more isolated kind of existence. You had to make new friends. You had to study the natives and see how you could fit yourself into it. You experienced also the racial discrimination, which was still very strong at the time, even though the British are very hypocritical about it. Even then, they always tried to pretend it wasn't there. But then you gradually began to form your own community, which meant that during the holidays you went to work in places like Hull, Liverpool, London. The West African Students Union, for instance. You have your own community. That was the main difference. When did your childhood interest in theater, including the Yorùbá traditions of ritual and storytelling and festival, become your reigning passion?
Wole Soyinka: From childhood, I'd always been interested in theater. I used to gather my siblings and perform sketches based on stories, folktales, and sometimes even improvised comic turns in which we mimicked the adults around us and their peculiar ways and so on. And then I took part in a school operetta quite early, very early. I took the lead part. It was called The Magician. And so I'd always been -- and around, as you already remarked, around me was theater, different theater forms.
That interest in theater continued after university. Did you finish at Leeds? Wole Soyinka: Yes, I finished at Leeds. Took my degree there. And then...
I was supposed to start working on my doctoral thesis, and so after, but then after the first year I found I was more -- again, I knew what I wanted to do, and somehow I got my -- I wanted to write. I sent a play to the Royal Court Theatre in London, and it was not immediately accepted for performance, but sufficient interest was generated for the artistic director to invite me over. So I spent most of my time just watching rehearsals, reading plays in London instead of doing my thesis in Leeds. So I consider myself a doctoral dropout.
You were still living in London when you wrote your first well-known plays, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel. What was the impetus for writing those?
Wole Soyinka: I was trying to recapture certain features. Community, we spoke earlier of the community. In The Swamp Dwellers, for instance, I was trying to capture a sense of community which I'd known in Nigeria. And The Lion and the Jewel was also, again, it's a comedy of course, and it is to capture the transition between traditional society, the concept of Western, quote unquote, "civilization," and trying to see the weaknesses in either. One was not necessarily a progression on the other. These were just expressions of my own observations of society.
At this time, the movement for independence in Nigeria was coming to a head. How did you see that at the time?
You returned to Nigeria in 1960, just as your country was gaining independence. Can you talk about the early years of independence and writing the play A Dance of the Forest? Was it written for Nigeria's independence celebration? Wole Soyinka: Well, the period of close scrutiny began while I was in England.
These waves of nationalists used to come for conferences to discuss independence in Nigeria, and I couldn't help observing that yes, they were committed nationalists, but at the same time... You see, I always had, probably because of my background -- elitism and privilege are subjects to which I respond confrontationally immediately. Because I really had ingrained in me this egalitarian principle and the sense of service. And I saw the first-comers as being very -- almost as if their basic motivation was to step into the shoes of the departing colonial officers, the British colonials. Some of them were already positioning themselves to take over power. Power and privilege seemed to be more important to them than service and commitment to the community.
Perhaps this will become even more understandable if you took into consideration the fact that I was already heavily politicized. I was acutely aware of what was happening in South Africa, the hardening of the South African apartheid system. My very first play in England was directed at apartheid South Africa. It was called The Invention. And a group of us, during the holidays we'd come together, go to work to earn pocket money, and sit down at the West African Union, discussing politics. National politics, continental politics. We felt that our main mission, our first mission, was to go and liberate South Africa. We had no doubt at all in our minds that this was our immediate mission. Now this got derailed when we then encountered the first flag-bearers of our national independence.
We began to ask ourselves, "Shouldn't charity really begin at home? Isn't this the first line of concern we should have?" Because I began to see them as neo -- as potential internal colonialists. And of course, events have proved us right. So my attention became diverted towards Nigeria. And I couldn't wait to get back, and of course I wrote The Dance of the Forest as a warning play, that what we saw indicated quite clearly that we might have to fight the war of independence all over again, this time against our own leaders. So all this came about because of this politicization and the habit I had developed of examining issues very carefully. In other words, not getting carried away by slogans. Trying to see what lies behind the slogans, and how after one phase of struggle is ended, the next phase might have to be confronted.
In your memoir The Penkelemes Years, you discuss your first years back in Nigeria after independence. What did you mean by that title? What were "the Penkelemes Years?" Wole Soyinka: "Penkelemes" (pandemonium) summed up for me the mess, the political mess into which we'd got ourselves. It was an expression, actually, by one of the politicians who was a great populist, by the way, a very fascinating character, but representative of the corruption of the politicians of that particular time.
"The Penkelemes Years," I use that expression to describe the abortion of our expectations. The crudeness which accompanied politics, the violence, the ballot-rigging, the violence which carried over even into the House of Assembly. The fissures had become quite open, had blown wide open. And so I eventually settled into the politics of Nigeria itself, which for me was sad. It was a sad recognition, even though it's just affirmation of what I had predicted, but it was still sad to find it coming to pass. So receding constantly was that vision of the entire continent marching down south to liberate South Africa, which I'd thought should have been our priority in the first place. And so I got that frustration from the two sides. Frustration from a diminishing of that continental vision, because I saw Africa as one entity, and then a frustration about not being able to right the anomalies within my own society. I got deeper and deeper involved in Nigerian politics.
When the British left Nigeria in 1960, they falsified the national census, tipping electoral power to communities that were less progressive. Why did they do that?
Wole Soyinka: Well, because colonial powers never really want to leave anywhere. They leave only because they find they are compelled to, by war, direct militant action, or because they are clever enough to realize that they can maintain a continuing neo-colonial linkage with their possessions by granting independence. But they keep the contact. And they do that by leaving their surrogates behind. And that's what the British did. They picked on the least progressive part of the country, falsified the census, falsified elections to make sure that when they left, they handed over power to them.
You were still able to play a constructive role. What led you to founding the Road Safety Corps?
Wole Soyinka: I just got tired of going to the funerals of my colleagues and my students. The Ibadan-Ife road, I named it "Slaughter Slab." There was no day I would drive on that road when I didn't come across a fresh accident. I would take the injured to the hospital or take them to the morgue. Just virtually no day. And each time I was teaching in Ife, there'd be a new space in my classroom, lost to the road. So my most brilliant colleagues, one at least that I can think of immediately -- brilliant medical doctor -- surgeon, became a paraplegic as a result of spinal injury he sustained on that road. And finally I said, "I'm tired of feeding heads with knowledge and then scooping up those brains on the road. Something has to be done."
So I sat down and drafted a proposal for a kind of voluntary force made up of respectable, knowledgeable citizens, who would have higher powers of education, discipline, and so forth, complemented by a small, uniformed corps, which would educate and also discipline people on the road. The idea grew, and people came from other states to come and learn what we were doing, and went back to form similar things. Eventually, when another military regime came, the statistics went up, because the politicians came in and virtually dissolved the Road Safety Corps. See, they didn't like the Road Safety Corps. We've talked about elections and corruption and so on. During the elections, the roads, naturally, have to be free for elections to be rigged. It's a phenomenon, the connection between all of these. The thugs take over the roads. They are carrying fake ballot boxes from point A to point B. They are storing them. Some of them are also transporting fake military uniforms and guns and so on.
One of the first things I taught my corps was to respect nobody on the road who committed any infringement, whether he were a judge, whether he were a soldier. The first thing is, "On the road, everybody has got to be equal." Which meant that the Road Safety Corps would stop these vehicles, because they never even behaved -- all they had to do was behave themselves on the road and get their, you know, criminal material from A to B. But no, that was not enough! They had to show their power on the road. They had to defy everything. And of course they collaborated with the police. So the one organization which could and did -- many times -- prevent aspects of election rigging was the Road Safety Corps. The number of vehicles we stopped where we found stuffed boxes, fake ballot boxes, fake police uniforms, and we were able to track them to warehouses, where all this illegal material was stopped. It was just too much for the political party in power. And so, when the next elections were approaching, they decided to uproot some kind of colonial law which arguably gave the right for official presence on the road to the Ministry of Roads and Works, or Transportation. And so Road Safety Corps all over the states were shunted off to one side. And of course the statistics rose. So when the military came over, and even they began to lose their soldiers by the score on the road, much more than on the battlefront, the military government appealed to me to please resurrect what we did in Oyo State on a national scale. So that's the story of the Road Safety Corps, my involvement with it.
You were the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Where were you when you first heard that you had won the Prize? Wole Soyinka: It was an interesting story. I was actually in the air, flying. I was teaching at Cornell at the time, and I was on my way home, stopping in Paris for a meeting of the International Theatre Institute, whose president I was at the time. I was in my cousin's apartment. I arrived, and the rumors had gotten very, very strong. He was very excited, and I tried to douse his enthusiasm. He was working at UNESCO. I had a meeting at UNESCO that day. And he said, "Haven't you heard?" I said, "Heard what?" So I said, "Oh Yemi, come on. These rumors are always flying around. Just relax. Leave me alone." He said, "No, no, no. This is quite serious." I said, "Yemi, forget it. Nobel Prizes don't just drop in your lap like that. Let me sleep." And then a journalist came. My cousin went to work, but he'd let in a journalist.
Apparently that journalist had been sent by the Nobel Academy. Wherever possible, they like to send somebody physically to deliver the news, and -- or was it? No, his newspaper sent him to try and catch me and find my reaction. That newspaper, it was a Swedish newspaper which tries to get the immediate reaction of the Nobel laureate. So he came in and asked me. I said, "You, too?" He said, "No, no, this is it. This is quite true." So I said, "Thank you very much. I'm going to sleep. I've just flown across the Atlantic. I'm tired." "Oh," he said, "but aren't you going to wait and hear the news?" I said, "What news?" He said, "Well, it's going to be announced by such-and-such a time." I said, "Fine, I'm going to sleep." But the phone didn't allow me to sleep. So finally I gave up, made my coffee, offered this man some. Then he was going from -- switched on the television, switched on the radio, and he got tuned into the equivalent of national public service, this posh station. And then there was a program also by Bernard Pivot, a cultural program. And that man, he would go twiddle the knob. I started drinking my coffee and reading newspapers. And at the end of the program, he said, "But they haven't announced it!" And of course I'd heard. So I enjoyed that moment. Because he missed it while he was at the radio. I think Bernard Pivot -- somebody came in with a piece of paper, handed it to Pivot. He looked at it and put it beside him. And at the end of the program, he said, "Oh, the Nobel something has just been announced and it's a Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka." You know, so -- the man -- and he said, "They didn't announce it!" I said, "Announce what?" He said, "The Nobel Prize, they didn't..." "Oh," I said, "they did, they did." He said, "Who? Yes, yes, yes?" I said, "Wole Soyinka." He said, "Well?" I said, "Well, what?" I said, "Isn't that what you came for?" He said, "Yeah, yeah, but..." I said, "What do you want me to do? Get out the drums and start drumming, or singing, or faint or what? What do you want exactly?" He said, "But why didn't you tell me?" I said, "But you didn't ask me, as you recall, if it was announced, you were busy, all over the place." That's how I heard about it. I enjoyed the moment, actually, at the expense of the journalist.
When you made your acceptance speech, you dedicated your Nobel Prize to Nelson Mandela. How did you make that choice? Wole Soyinka: Well, as I confessed earlier, my political orientation was very much South Africa-bound, very heavily so, obsessively so. Even to the extent that I undertook military training. I registered for Officer Training Corps at Leeds University, because a group of us felt that this was our mission, to liberate southern Africa. I wrote one of my earliest plays, The Invention, which was staged at the Royal Court Theatre, on the situation in South Africa. So Mandela, of course, came to symbolize for me, as for most of the world, the struggle in South Africa. It was inevitable that I should dedicate it to him. But you're a Nigerian, and you could have taken the opportunity to direct that attention to your own country instead of South Africa. Why was that?
Wole Soyinka: Many people outside my own country are closer to me in spirit, and as far as I'm concerned, in blood, than many who pretend that they are leaders in my own country. Some of them, as far as I'm concerned, dropped from Mars. So I don't have any kind of a -- what you might call, basic patriotism. I lack it completely. I recognize communities. I'm very glad we spoke of communities. I recognize communities as being close to me. I'm a member of a certain community which is both internal, which happens to be located in the nation space called Nigeria, but that community also extends outside the Nigerian borders. And that community, as far as I'm concerned, is without color, without gender, without class. All those details for me are irrelevant. And they are my family, wherever they are. So Nigeria? Why should I dedicate my Nobel speech to Nigeria? Nigeria is just for me a figure of speech.
We want to talk for a moment about the election of June 12th, 1993. If you could take us back to that election, and its subsequent annulment. Wole Soyinka: That was another watershed loss for the democratic struggle of Nigeria, which was allowed just to trickle away,
When, despite all obstacles placed in their way, the Nigerian people trooped out in the most disciplined manner you can imagine and registered their votes. And it was annulled, as the announcements were being collated and so on and so forth. Just annulled. And of course the people rose in protest. I was, again, involved in some of the protestations and witnessed the brutality of the military and the police during that time. And since then, Nigeria has not had one credible election. Everything has been manipulated, and so we had years and years of waste, even after the brutal military dictatorship. We'll be haunted, Nigeria will remain haunted by that day for another generation to come. I'm convinced of that.
You're still very critical of events in Nigeria. Do you think it will take a grassroots movement, or will the pressure of globalization finally bring about change in Nigeria? Wole Soyinka: A grassroots movement, yes, a very effective one. The problem with a grassroots movement, which is a very powerful tool, is the fact that all the blades of grass can gather themselves and go dutifully to the polls, raise their votes, and when it comes to counting time, miraculously, all these millions of blades of grass vanish and their voices are swept into the box that belongs to power. That really is a problem. The grassroots movement is very strong in Nigeria. Unfortunately, that grassroots movement has not yet reached a point where it can actually battle for its voice, which was where it all began in the West. The people were resolved in the Western Region, and cast their votes, and yet power took over their votes and pronounced them its own, which is what led to my original intervention. Are there any actions you would like to see the international community take? Wole Soyinka: The international community can only play a peripheral role. Symbolic, and at the same time actual. For instance, Obama's travel to Ghana, his first visit to Africa, when he deliberately bypassed Nigeria. Nigerians do not miss the significance of that gesture. So things like that, the isolation of a nation which refuses to treat its people like equal citizens, which constantly deprives them of their voices, which brutalizes them in many ways. Extrajudicial killings, repression, misuse of state power, of the army.
The international community can constantly, directly or indirectly, sanction such nations, and where crimes against humanity have been committed, place the names of the perpetrators -- after they make their own inquiries, which is never difficult, all the facts are there -- place the principals under interdiction, ban them, most especially the most egregiously corrupt. Make sure they cannot come into their countries to enjoy their loot. Collaborate with the nongovernmental organizations in supplying information as to where the loot is, so that it can be recovered for the country. And also, open their doors, as for instance, a number did during the struggle against Sani Abacha, the most brutal dictator Nigeria has ever known. Open their doors to genuine refugees, not hassle them further with rejection, or with bureaucratic red tape. Sometimes, you know, some of these countries behave as if you need to bring your death certificate by extrajudicial execution before you're admitted as a political refugee. Sometimes these governments can be so obtuse. So a more openness towards the genuine dissidents in other countries. Those services, external services, are quite sufficient to enable those whose principal concern it is -- the dissidents within the country themselves -- to take action necessary to relieve themselves of oppression.
Is civil war in Nigeria a thing of the past?
Wole Soyinka: No. The oil situation -- I find there's a low-key civil war going on at the moment, which may be coming to an end, I think, but that's been more localized. It's been this contest over resources. The protest of the people of the oil-producing region about neglect, about the degradation of their normal organic production systems -- their farms, their fishing ponds, and so on. Over which a writer has also lost his life -- Ken Saro-Wiwa -- he and his companions who were hanged by Sani Abacha. That's the brutal dictator I mentioned earlier. So that kind of insurgency is still going on at this moment. But a full-scale civil war, well, I hope it's unlikely.
Since General Abacha's death, you've returned to Nigeria several times. One of the things you did, not long after that first return, was to pose for a public service announcement with a 38-year-old mother of four who had HIV-AIDS. What message were you hoping to communicate?
Well, first of all, people in the country were not taking HIV-AIDS seriously. My cousin was a Minister of Health under Babangida, and that was long before Abacha, because Abacha came after Babangida. And during that period, even during that period, the government was not taking HIV-AIDS seriously. And so when I was approached -- my son was involved in this particular film, by the way, and suggested it -- I accepted immediately. I felt somebody with, quote-unquote, a "high profile" might have some impact on people, and get them to be a bit careful. Within Nigeria we'd lost a number of people, even -- the cause of death not publicly acknowledged. Countrymen -- my cousin, of course, Fela Ransome-Kuti -- Fela "Anikulapo" Kuti, the son of my uncle, Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kuti, whom I mentioned earlier -- he died of AIDS. And so it was time for public awareness on any possible -- augmentation, because some of it was already going on. And that's why I agreed to do that.
What has been the most exciting moment of your professional career?
Wole Soyinka: Most exciting moment? I assure you it was not the Nobel thing. Maybe people think a prize like that should count, but no, not at all. I would say, if I directed a play on stage, and I see the excited face of my company, when they really feel they've pulled off something, and I've also got the same vibrations from the audience. I think that's when I really feel very fulfilled.
Do you regard yourself as a playwright first, rather than a poet or novelist? Wole Soyinka: I use the expression usually that I come alive when I'm working in the theater. That's really my métier. But a bit of everything. Did playwriting offer you an outlet for political expression not found in the other media?
Wole Soyinka: I call theater the most socialized form of literary expression, simply because it involves people all the time, and there is a kind of dynamic which exists in the theater which you do not find by reading a book or reading a poem. Different sensibilities completely. Reading a novel is almost, it's an individual exercise. You know, even when you -- unless you take it to the stage and you're doing an open reading. Poetry's even more personal, more intimate. Theater is where the community expresses itself most directly.
In your writing, do you see it as your purpose to raise social consciousness? Wole Soyinka: I don't know that I am conscious of that kind of purpose when I write generally.
However, when I want to raise political awareness, sensitize the people, I use the form which I call the guerilla theater. I formed a small group, a very tight group, when I returned -- after the large "1960 Masks," which dealt, if you like, with mainstream theater. I found I needed a smaller, tighter group, which could take a theme, current theme, improvise around it, and perform in the marketplace, on the lawns, in front of civil service headquarters, outside the House of Assembly -- any open space -- as well as in the theater hitting directly at unacceptable conduct, events with recognizable mimicking, acting recognizable individuals, pillorying power, government, and so on. Now that is directed, without any ambiguity, at people and direct situations. But generally a theme preoccupies me and I write a play around it.
How do you define truth? Wole Soyinka: When I encounter that kind of question, I take refuge in the expression of Tierno Bokar, a philosopher from Mali, who was known as the sage of Bandiagara. And he used to say that there are three kinds of truth. There's your truth, and there is my truth, and there is the truth. And then I take that one stage further, and I say possibly there is a fourth, and that there is no truth. Have you ever had doubts about your abilities? Do you worry about failure?
Wole Soyinka: I don't think I ever doubted my ability, for the simple reason that if I'm doing something, if I'm working on something and it's not working out, then I just leave it alone and can do other things. I've so many interests. And I know there are a number of other things I would have wanted to be, for instance. I'm very passionate about architecture. I would have loved to be an architect. I also consider myself a failed musician. I would love to be a musician, just to spend more time with music, and so on. So I have interests, and so I do not see them as -- anything I'm working on is just something I'm working on, and it may work, it may not work. As I said, I just do other things if it's not working.
What writers do you find inspiring today?
What do you think will be one of the big achievements in the next quarter century? Wole Soyinka: Something which I'll be sad to miss, unfortunately, and that is regular space travel. I'm a space nut! I follow all launches everywhere. But I'm having the nearest to it. Very soon, on July 11th, I'm going to have the zero-G experience. Where are you going to experience that? Wole Soyinka: In San José, California. Somebody had a spare ticket and asked me to nominate someone to give the ticket to. Some organization. So I wrote them and I said, "You want me to nominate somebody?" I said, "Do you think you can take on a 75-year-old man in above-average health who's willing to give up some self-indulgence just to be fit on the day?" And I got a note back saying, "Would that be you by any chance?" I said, "Who else? I'm nominating me!" So I'm going to have that experience. I think that's what's going to happen in the next quarter century. Space travel is going to be normal, quite normal. Have a fantastic time! We'll be thinking of you. Wole Soyinka: Thank you. What advice or encouragement would you give to your grandchildren? What would you like to leave behind as a verbal footprint? Wole Soyinka: That question comes up again and again, and I say that I don't really know.
I think it's up to people to decide what they want to extract from what I've done, or left undone. But the advice I always give to my young children, or to young writers, or those who want to be activists in some way, who come to me and say, "What shall we do about this situation? How can we contribute?" I just say, "Follow your instincts." Don't feel you have to follow the paths of others, because you may not be temperamentally fitted for it. And so you'll just harm yourself and your cause and others. But just follow your instinct, and don't ever pretend to be what you're not.
This will be our last question for the day. What impact do you think President Barack Obama's election has had on world views of the U.S.? Wole Soyinka: It is impossible to quantify, but there's no question whatsoever that people are looking at the United States, for a change, as a space of opportunity for its own self-fulfillment. See, the United States had garnered a lot of good will, international good will, and then frittered it away over the years. Frittered it away like that. So people are looking at the United States, and saying, "So this is possible within the United States. Then maybe other things are possible."
I think a kind of rigid, automatic hostility towards the United States in many parts of the world is beginning to sort of fray around the edges. People look at the United States, willing to give her a second chance. And Obama's ascension to power there is suddenly going to alter also certain policies, certain global policies. There has been reflex action against the United States. Anything that the United States does, especially in the Third World, in the Middle East, and so on, it's that, "We should take the opposite direction because there's something sinister lurking in the U.S. position." Even if people cannot analyze it, they say it's there, and so, better go a different way. Well all that, I know, is changing, quite a lot. The only continent which may find itself out on a limb -- and I keep telling my associates that -- is the continent of Africa itself. For those who feel that Barack Obama, because he has some African ancestry, therefore will make Africa his priority, for me that's foolish thinking. Why should he? He's an American, and there are certain pressing issues all over the world. I think he's intelligent enough to give to the African continent just a proportionate share of the attention which is commensurate with the condition of the world. I have a feeling that he's going to be very even-handed.
Thank you so much for talking with us today. Wole Soyinka: You're welcome. It's been a pleasure.
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