{"id":12913,"date":"2022-04-12T11:35:21","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T11:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86"},"modified":"2022-04-15T11:16:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T11:16:42","slug":"soyinka-at-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86","title":{"rendered":"Soyinka at 86"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Lesotho. <\/strong><\/span>In 1976 Wole Soyinka became the first African to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature (he was later to be joined by the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz and the South Africans Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee). Poet, playwright, novelist and essayist, he has excelled in all genres, being prolific, provocative and sometimes hugely entertaining.<\/p>\n

He is often considered to be a \u201cdifficult\u201d author: witness much of his poetry and a play such as The Road, which is deep and complex\u2014and I would argue one of the very greatest plays written in English in the second half of the last century.<\/p>\n

But he can also be straightforward and very funny, as in his satirical songs (he accompanies himself on guitar) or in a play such as \u201cThe Trials of Brother Jero\u201d, which crops up as a schools\u2019 set-text all over the place.<\/p>\n

Many readers of thepost will remember his one and only visit to Lesotho, around the year 2000, when he came with the theatre company Nawao (that\u2019s Nigerian for \u201cwow!\u201d) as producer of his political satire King Baabu, which was given two performances at the Conference Centre, Maseru.<\/p>\n

Both Soyinka\u2014who can be prickly and demanding\u2014and the actors and technical crew (from Switzerland, Germany, the UK and Nigeria) were extremely happy with the event, especially as it followed a not very successful tour of South Africa.<\/p>\n

In the Republic Soyinka had refused to give interviews, but in Maseru after the first performance he submitted to a question-and-answer session with the audience, \u201con any subject you like,\u201d he said, \u201cexcept for beauty contests.<\/p>\n

\u201d That stipulation because he was sick of a row he\u2019d got into over remarks he\u2019d recently made. For Soyinka is nothing if not controversial. All well and good, except that he doesn\u2019t always check his facts.<\/p>\n

Some weeks after the southern African tour he published an article in The Scotsman newspaper in which he confused Lesotho with Swaziland. Trust me, readers, I told him off.<\/p>\n

Soyinka has been continuously engaged in political controversy. In 1967 he was jailed in Nigeria for almost two years and spent most of the next few decades in exile.<\/p>\n

His book The Man Died is perhaps the most important prison diary to come out of Africa, and I am not forgetting the many superb works of that kind produced during and after apartheid.<\/p>\n

At the age of 86 Soyinka is proving to be as feisty and combative as ever. One recent and very attractive example of this is his commentary on the fouling of democratic practice in the run-up to Uganda\u2019s January 2021 Presidential election.<\/p>\n

Interviewed on this by The Guardian newspaper, Soyinka comments in a way that is both trenchant and laced with mordant humour. In the event, Yoweri Museveni claimed victory with 58% of the vote, his main opponent, Bobi Wine, reputedly coming in a poor second.<\/p>\n

Soyinka begins his The Guardian account by referring to recent events in Washington, noting that \u201cone casualty of the Capitol riot will be Uganda\u2019s election; global outrage at the storming of the US Capitol risks diverting attention from repression by Uganda\u2019s president, Yoweri Museveni.<\/p>\n

\u201d A fair point, except that the world regularly diverts its gaze from abuses in Africa, witness my recent comments in this paper on its tolerance of the dictatorship in Cameroon.<\/p>\n

Soyinka says of the youthful, brave and vigorous Bobi Wine, \u201cTo me, he represents the spirit of Africa\u2019s future. \u201d Yoweri Museveni is a much more difficult call.<\/p>\n

As a freedom fighter, he was instrumental in the overthrow of Idi Amin. But he has hung on to power since 1986, and Soyinka comments: \u201che has become in effect the very thing he fought against.<\/p>\n

Museveni\u2019s going to fight to the end, and he\u2019s going to fight dirty because he believes power is his natural birthright. \u201d Then, as he continues to lambast Museveni, Soyinka\u2019s sense of the ridiculous kicks in: \u201cI wasn\u2019t impressed by his intelligence .<\/p>\n

I remember we were in Davos and we were on a podium and afterwards I met some of his people and I said \u2018Look, just tell your man not to talk about things he doesn\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n

\u2019 And you know what one of them said? He said: \u2018Look at you. You only had him for a few minutes. We have him all the time!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Far less attractive than his piece on Uganda has been Soyinka\u2019s response to the work of two writers, Caroline Davis and Juliana Spahr, who have dug up again the matter of CIA funding for African writers and literary journals in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t read the essays by Spahr (Davis is a historian of publications at Oxford Brookes University and I have read her book on the affair), but the fact that the CIA\u2014directly and indirectly\u2014provided such funding during the Cold War, in the hope of getting African writers and editors on to the side of the West, is very well documented.<\/p>\n

One had thought the matter had been laid to rest, especially with the work of the brilliant Canadian scholar Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, who has cleared up misconceptions in earlier accounts.<\/p>\n

Davis\u2019s book struck me as being scrupulously objective, and she accuses Soyinka of no more than carelessness or naivety in his search for funding in the early 1960s).<\/p>\n

Whatever the case, Soyinka\u2019s reaction to Davis and Spahr is shallowly vindictive, as he threatens to pursue them \u201cto the end of the earth and even to the pit of hell unless they supply proof of their allegation or retract what they published.\u201d<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Lesotho<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Lesotho. In 1976 Wole Soyinka became the first African to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature (he was later to be joined by the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz and the South Africans Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee). Poet, playwright, novelist and essayist, he has excelled in all genres, being prolific, provocative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":13035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,8,16],"tags":[233,246,245,1552],"class_list":["post-12913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-culture-and-art","category-homepage-english","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-lesotho","tag-lesotho","tag-soyinka"],"yoast_head":"\nSoyinka at 86 - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1976 Wole Soyinka became the first African to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature (he was later to be joined by ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Soyinka at 86\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 1976 Wole Soyinka became the first African to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature (he was later to be joined by ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lesotho\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-04-12T11:35:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-04-15T11:16:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/sites\/62\/2022\/04\/87.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"455\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"319\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Soyinka at 86\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-04-12T11:35:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-04-15T11:16:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86\"},\"wordCount\":949,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/sites\/62\/2022\/04\/87.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Lesotho\",\"Lesotho\",\"Soyinka\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"culture and art\",\"homepage-english\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/soyinka-at-86\",\"name\":\"Soyinka at 86 - 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