African Intellectual War :Mazrui Vs Soyinka

[Ali Mohamed Jama]

It all started with Mazrui's uncomplimentary Critique of Gates TV
Series "Wonders of the African World"........and Wole Soyinka quick
defence of his protege..... Gates............Enjoy..........

A PRELIMINARY CRITIQUE OF THE TV SERIES by HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

By Ali A. Mazrui <ama...@binghamton.edu>

Since I have myself done a television series about Africa, perhaps I
should keep quiet about Skip Gates' WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD
especially since I agreed to write a blurb for his companion book. I saw
the book as a special *African-American view of Africa*. But I had not
seen the TV series when I wrote the blurb for the book. In any case Skip
is a friend with whom I have profound disagreements.

I believe the TV series is more divisive than the book. The first TV
episode sings the glories of ancient Nubia (understandably) but at the
expense of dis-Africanizing ancient Egypt. On the evidence of a European
guide, Gates allows ancient Egyptians to become racist whites trampling
underfoot Blacks from Upper Nile. Are ancient Egyptians no longer
Africans?

The second episode of the TV series on the Swahili supremely ignores the
scholarly Swahili experts on the Swahili people. He interviews none on
camera. Instead Gates decides to confront either carefully chosen or
randomly selected members of the Swahili community with racial-questions
which were abstracted from survey-forms of North American opinion polls.

The program is obsessed with RACE in American terms. Did the people Gates
was interviewing have the remotest idea what he was really talking about?
What is more, his translator seems determined to give the worst possible
interpretation of what was being said by interviewees in a place like
Lamu.

Who is the best authority on Muslim atrocities in Zanzibar? Well, of
course a Christian missionary priest in Zanzibar! Gates does not find it
necessary to balance the testimony of such a biased witness with anything
else. Any journalist worth his salt would have done better than Gates!

I thought that in episode three, which concerned the Trans-Atlantic slave
trade, Gates would at last regard the West and the white man as relevant
actors in the African tragedy. Before seeing the episode I said to a
colleague in Ohio that surely Gates could not deal with the Trans-Atlantic
slave trade without regarding the West and the white man as crucial! Boy!
Was I wrong? Gates manages to make an African to say that without the
participation of Africans there would have been no slave trade! How naive
about power can we get?

Without the involvement of Africans, there would have been no colonialism
either. Without the involvement of Africans, there would have been no
apartheid. Without the involvement of African Americans, there would have
been no segregationist order in the Old South. Without Jewish capital,
there would have been less trans-Atlantic slave trade. Why did Gates pick
on the Asante (Ashanti) as collaborators in the trans-Atlantic slave-trade
and never mention European Jews at all as collaborators in the
slave-trade? (Leonard Jeffreys paid a price for involving the Jews in the
trade, but will Gates pay a price for involving the Asante?)

I was so afraid that Gates' fourth program would be insulting to Ethiopia
that I was relieved that it was merely disrespectful. I wished he was more
politely dressed when he was granted an audience to a major religious
leader. I wished he kept his sarcasm about the authenticity of the
Covenant in check. I wished he did not make as many snide remarks which
trivialized other people's values. And I wished viewers were not kept
informed on camera as to how many car breakdowns he had had. Surely he had
better footage of African scenes!

His fifth programme on Timbuktu returned to the issue of Africans
enslaving each other. Gates seemed incapable of glorifying Africa without
demonizing it in the second breath. Mali and Benin, countries of great
*ancient* kings, were also countries of *contemporary* slavery.

Gates refused to listen when he was told that the new "slave" could
disobey his master, and was free to take autonomous employment. Gates was
given this information and chose not to pursue it. Was it really a case of
slavery?

In this fifth episode Gates chose to denounce "the barbarity of female
circumcision". And yet the institution had just been mentioned in passing.
There was no attempt to introduce the viewer as to why millions of
Africans belonged to this culture of female circumcision in the first
place. Africans were not, after all, innate barbarians. So why had this
tradition survived for so long? The institution was mentioned as a
throw-away "play to the Western feminist gallery" (I am myself opposed to
female circumcision but I do not call its practitioners barbarians).

His sixth episode on Southern Africa was to be the least upsetting. Gates
did try to capture the glories of pre-colonial Southern Africa and did
pose some of the challenges of the post-colonial and post-apartheid eras.
But even this sixth program was more of a tourist travelogue than a
serious portrayal of a people. It is hard to believe that such a TV series
was the product of such a brilliant mind!

These are my first reactions. If I can bear to view the series again,
perhaps I should give it a second chance! But I fear that we have been let
down badly.

Ali Mazrui is Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert
Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, State University of New York at
Binghamton, New York, USA; Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large, University
of Jos, Jos, Nigeria; Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large, School of Islamic
and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia, USA; and the Andrew D. White
Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.

-30-

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West Africa Review (2000)
ISSN: 1525-4488
THE PROBLEM WITH YOU, ALI MAZRUI! RESPONSE TO ALI'S MILLENNIAL "CONCLUSION"

Wole Soyinka

Dear Ali Mazrui

You are of course an adept at the anticipatory deflection tactics. You are
practised in the craft of crying "Foul" even before the stone that was first
cast by you ricochets and turns you into a target. You know full well that
the sustained intensity of your attack on the Gates' series would sooner or
later lead to a questioning of the originator, and his motivation. Was I
surprised when, in your response to Biodun Jeyifo, you accused him of trying
to shift the focus of discussion from Skip Gates to Ali Mazrui? I could not
help smiling to myself; it was all so predictable.

But as Jeyifo responded, it is you yourself, as always, that make such an
outcome inevitable. You bring it on yourself, since you have never yet
learnt to take the ego of Ali Mazrui out of straightforward, intellectual
exchanges. What is truly behind this single-minded but relentless pursuit,
on that gives a new meaning to Leavis' The Critical Pursuit? Credibly an
avowal of love for the black race? - "not because I love you less, but that
I love Black America more" (Urgh!). Or is it some purpose far less corny but
no less stomach- churning? What stake does Mazrui have in the reception
(positive or negative) of the Gates' series? Why does he resolutely ignore
the genre of the series, and thus its aesthetic options, its presentational
mode, which of course is a de rigeur consideration for any serious critic of
the video arts, made for a wide but varied audience - as much intended for
"leisure viewing" as for enlightenment? Why does Mazrui distort,
extrapolate, slander, indeed - lie, yes, lie - against the actual content of
the series? We shall not bother with evaluation, of the attribution of
ideological impulses - these remain fair terrain of exploration for the
critic but are also, quite often predictably subjective. Why, above all, has
Ali Mazrui turned this into a personal, relentless crusade - jihad, lest I
be accused of eurocentricity! - a battle taken into town meetings, extended
into radio interviews and insinuated into literary conferences?

Your Millennial epistle, one that cynically invites a conclusion to the
"dialogue" with your own summary, repetition and even further expansion of
earlier pronouncements, narrates the travails of THE AFRICANS and your own
experience at the hands of unenlightened, or simply misunderstanding groups
of critics. You do not appear to have learnt the right lesson from that
experience; on the contrary, you are determined to take upon yourself,
single- handed, the combined roles of these varied ideological detractors of
THE AFRICANS. Why are you, Ali Mazrui so evidently resolved to demonize Skip
Gates, to accuse and convict him, in effect, of race treachery? Whenever the
dispute appeared to slacken off, you could be trusted to find an excuse to
stoke up the flames of cyber space, taking the discussion to new depths of
absurdity, of distortions, of sheer - no other expression for it - syruppy
malevolence - "I am prepared to believe that you think like a genius....you
write like a distinguished author....your natural brilliance.....Nature has
made you a great wit, but......!" You permit yourself, Mazrui even the
perverse pleasure of falling through the trap door of a passing era, to
invoke the Millennial spirit yet ensure that this dispute follows us into a
new era - why? Of all the hyperboles that I have ever encountered in the
world of criticism, or historic projections, none has been so gratuitous, so
arrogant and self- preening as your proposition that:

....it is conceivable that your television series is the most serious threat
to relations between Africa and African Americans since the United States
authorities destroyed Marcus Garvey's movement in 1922 with Garvey
indictment for mail fraud
This surely, represents the outer limits of afflatus and presumptuousness,
of a total loss of perspective and sense of proportion. You quote Alexander
Pope; a pity yet again that you do not recall Pope's deep contempt for
humbug, and his fulminations against what he termed "enthusiasm" - that is,
the lack of a sense of proportion, of balance. We may permit ourselves to
think of a pyrotechnic who sets fire to a warehouse of disused tyres. It
smoulders on for days and weeks and months, as with such fires that give off
lots of smoke, stench and pollution, expends the time and energy of relays
of firemen seeking in vain for a source, casts a pall, indeed a smokescreen
indeed over the entire city, sets off an epidemic of pulmonary and allied
diseases etc. etc. Then our little man goes around with a billboard round
his neck proclaiming that he has set off the greatest conflagration of the
century. At least the nerd in that sit-com whose name I cannot recall has
the bewildered grace to coin the refrain "Did I do that?" after each comic -
not cosmic - disaster. Just what is happening to Ali Mazrui, and how much
longer are we to be afflicted by this ingenious smokescreen that has induced
so much phlegm, distorted so much vision, generated so much heat but has
offered scant illumination?

I am on record as cautioning you - from your very first salvo - to
disqualify yourself from this debate. Oh yes, I know that I now stand poised
to be accused by you of attempting to deprive you of your freedom of
expression but, I shall not rehash those arguments here, though I am willing
to take them up in another place. In any case, you yourself did concede the
possibility of inappropriateness of your participation in, or more
accurately, of your inauguration of the assault, so you do admit it is a
debatable issue. The African American world that you love so much is not
without minds as perceptive and pens as articulate as yours, and you
certainly should have left the field of demolition to others. You have a
vested interest in the failure of the series, and you cannot escape the
charge of self-promotion - and please do not reduce this, as you have tried
to do in your Millennial encyclical, to dollars and cents. There is what we
call the marketplace of ideas, of authority and reputation, an arena in
which the instruments of competition often prove far more deadly, and are
wielded far more unscrupulously than in the struggle over material goods. My
charge of self-interest has become even more sustainable after your clear
demonstration of a lack of professional self-discipline and lack of fidelity
to facts in this crusade, your rabble-rousing tactics, suitably smothered in
treacly accents of pain, sorrow and thwarted admiration.

I am more than gratified that you have yourself evoked the spectre of your
performance at the ASA conference in Philadelphia; I have sent for a tape
recording of that event, since I do want to obtain the direct flavour of the
atmosphere that has been conveyed to me by quite a number of colleagues who
witnessed your performance, one or two of whom, while sharing some of your
views on the Gates' series, were troubled by your obsessive need to bring
down a colleague and render him a racial pariah within his intellectual
community. There is still something called decorum even within the
dog-eat-dog politics of academia - it is my view that you have long
abandoned the constraints of that word, which of course goes beyond a mere
word and defines a code of conduct. The result of your lack of professional
self-discipline - rushing to rubbish on a "preliminary" basis, a work that,
from planning to final execution has taken at least a year of intense
research as well as creative labour, a gruelling process with which you are
yourself very familiar - has been a cruel revelation -not of the maker of
the series, but of Ali Mazrui. What has become glaring is that you have
sought to buttress a private warfare with a series of deliberate
falsifications that should shame any claimant to disinterested criticism. We
shall proceed to examine some of these.

It so happened that, a few days before your "preliminary" review, I attended
the event that was, in effect, the formal outing of the series. This was in
Boston where I was able to see the clip of the "clitoridectomy" sequence.
Later of course came your outburst in which you accused Professor Gates of
calling its practitioners "barbarians." (Oh, I know how you phrased that
accusation, so shall we save each other the trouble and change my "accused"
to "insinuated"? Just leave it as evidence the smear tactics with which we
are so familiar?) When I read that comment, I immediately telephoned Skip
Gates. Was there another section of the series in which he returned to the
subject, during which he used such an expression? Skip's response was
exactly the same as he has detailed in his own "preliminary" response. What
he actually said was that the practice was barbaric. Now, we all use the
same medium of the English language in which, you Professor Ali Mazrui,
multiple chair-holder in numerous institutions and triple Professor-at-
Large, must be considered an adept. I certainly do not consider it merely
incidental that you should have chosen to insinuate that Skip Gates employed
a loaded, emotive, "euro- attitudinal" derogatory expression. This was no
careless or sloppy listening. You were consciously playing the race- emotive
card, and deliberately manipulating the responses of your black readership.
I find this not merely dishonest, but intellectually criminal. There are
millions of people in the world who hold the view that the tradition of
slitting the throat of a ram, considered central to the African ritual of
sacrifice, as well as Moslem and Jewish usage, is barbaric. Will you next
claim that this accuses the holder of such an opinion as describing the
practitioners as barbarians?

And what do we make of your descent into outright defamation: "The Ghanaians
I have spoken to since Gates' television series are convinced that the
Ghanaian guide at the slave fort was given an "inducement" to blame the
slave trade on Africans." There is no other word for this desecration of
critical discourse - it is simply contemptible. Only an agenda outside the
merits and demerits of the material in question could have driven a
university professor to stoop to such low tactics in his attempt to
discredit a colleague by ascribing to him such a despicable recourse in
order to buttress a point of view. Since then of course, we have been
presented with testimonies - uncontested by you - to the effect that the
statement credited to the Ghanaian emerged from the guide's regular tourist
rap, and was not delivered to the filming crew alone. Do tell us, did
Professor Gates also travel to Ouidah in the neighbouring Republic of Benin
earlier that same year to "induce" President Kerekou to make the
pronouncement which I had posted, without comment for this debate? I cite
just a portion of it to refresh your memory:

The Head of State.....asked the forgiveness of all Africans of the Diaspora,
highlighting the responsibility of Africans in the betrayal of the Black
race which he described as shameful, as a crime against humanity, and as
abominable.
Kerekou went on to propose a "Grand International Conference of Forgiveness
and Reconciliation on the eve of the Year 2000." Those who remained in
Africa, he insisted, "have a duty to ask for forgiveness." Just how much did
Skip Gates pay Kerekou to say those words, and would Gates have been within
his rights to interview Matthew Kerekou, if he had known of the Colloque at
Ouidah at which that pronouncement was made

This was another moment for you to have retreated. A critic with an iota of
self-discipline would have realized that he had crossed the bounds of
propriety - but not the great Ali Mazrui, the academic Double-O7 with
licence to libel. It is either we abandon all pretence to civilised
discourse completely or we demand a certain minimum standard of respect for
one another - oh yes, I know that the word 'disrespect' is very much in
vogue especially in the Mazrui armoury of indictments. This and that is
'disrespectful' of our continent, of our culture, of our brothers and
sisters. But we are speaking, for now, about a far more manageable territory
of respect - respect for truth with regards to one's colleagues. Avoidance
of cheap gossip or sleazy fabrications in order to paint a colleague in
mercenary colours. That is a wide enough territory for a beginning.

Dear Ali Mazrui, you refer to yourself - that familiar Ali Amazrui
condescending signature - as "a senior and elder Africanist" of Professor
Gates. And again in this latest communication, you describe yourself as "an
old man and your elder brother" in relation to your victim. I regret to
inform you that your conduct over these series has been more one of an
ageing minotaur afflicted by muscular dystrophy, thrashing about in a
self-created maze of confusions. Africanist you may be but - mentally
African? I wonder. And this is because the elder's position in most African
cultures that I know of - mine, very definitely - precludes the market
mother from leading the prayer against a rival, invoking the gods to
guarantee, in effect, "May your wares find no buyer on the market." The coy
preamble to this blasphemous prayer only made the event even more
distatesful: "I know that maybe I should not be involved in passing
judgement in this case, but.....!" The quintessential Uriah Heep! The
beginning and end of your supplication are summed up in the passsage: "I
have no doubt that there is a significant market for 'Wonders of the African
world', but probably not at many African Studies Centres in major U.S.
Universities" (my emphasis). You raised the issue of markets yourself, and
thank goodness you always manage to give yourself away. Defend your turf by
all means, but do not subsume your real objectives under any Ralph Naderite
championship of the consumers' health and bill of rights. There is only one
other series by an African or Africa/American "Africanist" contending for
attention in those markets - of popular or "academic" authority - and that
erstwhile monopoly is held by none other than you.

Have you offered the public apology that you guaranteed you would if your
accusation against Gates that he was against Reparations was proved wrong?
Of course not. Mazrui may know the word, he does not understand the gesture
of apology or its meaning. An apology is a product of grace, of humility but
not of self-abasement. It does not diminish; on the contrary it confers
integrity. It also carries with it the burden of avoidance of the initial
error, of greater caution in negotiating the minefield that originally blew
up in one's face. As with many other careless, or deliberate distortions or
Gates' views, this one has been easily exploded with verifiable evidence.
But why was the error committed in the first place? Why was it necessary to
attempt to foist on Skip Gates a position that he has never held, never
articulated? Simply for the gratification of somehow equating Skip Gates
with the arch-conservative Jesse Helms and the self- hating Keith Richburg.
Your capacity for yoking incompatibles is already notorious but, in this
instance, you have truly excelled yourself. In a moment, I shall demonstrate
that you are in fact closer to Jesse Helms than you attempted to make Skip
Gates appear.

Tears from a Consummate Crocodile
But first I must frontally address the question, preferably as you confront
your mirror: who, or what is Ali Mazrui? Who is this scholar who feels the
need to precede every communication - snail mail, email, faxes, newsletters
etc. - with a bunting of his academic positions - triple Professor-at-large,
all meticulously detailed, plus Emeritorial and Distinguished Scholar hats
piled one on top of another - giving off the image of an insecure salesman
of dubious intellectual wares? Since you are constantly into politics -
politics of race, politics of culture and even politics of history - it is
time that you frankly demand of yourself - what exactly are your politics?
Fortunately, you have yourself offered many public cues, but are you truly
conscious of the summation they offer? Here follows what has provoked this
interrogation.

Of the many astonishing interjections involved in your wholesale resolve to
undermine any and every aspect of this series - including what is not
there - a quite legitimate exercise, since this involves editorial choices -
I find myself personally aggravated by your reaction to a question in
Philadelphia referring to Gates' omission of Nigeria in the series and his
reason for doing so. Skip Gates had of course stated quite clearly on
several occasions that he would not film in Nigeria because of the political
situation there at the time, specifically citing the fact that the writer
Ken Saro-wiwa had been hanged by Sani Abacha after a travesty of judicial
process that was roundly condemned by the entire world - African governments
included - we need to emphasize that, to anticipate charges of western
conspiracies! Among such leaders of integrity, let us simply mention Nelson
Mandela. Skip Gates also referred to this Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, a
personal friend and former teacher, who had been forced into exile, placed
on trial in absentia for alleged treason with a price placed on his head. At
this rapid execution panel which - we have to take your word for it, I
suppose - was convened independently of your will - during the ASA meeting
in Philadelphia, you contemptuously dismissed Skip Gates' right to invoke
such a political and personal judgement. Even your captive audience found
your response so glib and ridiculous that they laughed. Your supporters were
embarrassed.

Next perhaps, we shall be instructed that the campaign for the cultural and
sporting boycott of apartheid South Africa was wrong, that the province of
Art and scholarship should remain sacrosant and impervious to any political
considerations. Now, this time frankly employing your favoured process of
extended sequiturs - just to give you a taste of your own medicine - our
revered Professor Ali Mazrui must now be counted as the soulmate of Margaret
Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Hastings Banda etc. etc. - all those
reactionary rationalisers black and white, who insisted that a cultural
boycott of a tyrannical regime was wrong-headed and counter-productive.
Dennis Brutus was wrong, Nelson Mandela and the ANC were wrong, the galaxy
of principled playwrights, film stars, singers and other artistes of every
genre were wrong. American universities which proceeded to disinvest in
South Africa were of course wrong and the krugerrand should have been
allowed free circulation in the world of commerce.

Your 'fatwa' Predisposition
My reports indicate that you gave a performance that was worthy of the
fundamentalist culture that has become a scourge in the body of most
worthwhile religions in contemporary times. From the floor came the
question: should we now declare an "infantida" - or was it pronounce a
"fatwa"? (my informants were somewhat uncertain about which it was but were
agreed that it was one or the other) - should an infantida/fatwa 1 be
promulgated against Skip Gates. That question was of course an inevitable
product of your inflammatory zeal and lynch- mob rhetoric. Your answer,
Professor Mazrui, was a kind of generous concession that it need not go that
far. Skip, you are quoted as saying, was your friend, that you were really
good friends despite disagreements, and that you were not really advocating
such extreme measures against him. Need I tell you that my white hairs
crackled with static electricity during the narration of this episode?
(Despite the fact that this is intended for private circulation - private,
along the parameters of the family quantification of Ali Mazrui - I shall
apologise to you openly if you can produce reliable witnesses who testify to
the contrary.) I do believe this account of your reaction however both
because of the absolute reliability of my informants - far more credible
than your mythical Ghanaians, and because I have had a personal encounter of
this nature with you in the past.

Do you recall how you took the trouble to transfer to the pages of the local
newspapers in the predominantly moslem Northern Nigeria a portion of the
exchanges which took place between us on the pages of the journal of ideas,
TRANSITION, taking that exchange out of its immediate context? In that
specially selected part of your own response, you accused me of being a
hater of Islam, this being published at the very time when I had come to the
defence of Salman Rushdie and condemned, as murderous incitement, the fatwa
placed on his head by the Ayatollah Khomeini. You knew damned well that
after my defence of Salman Rushdie, religious extremists in that part of
Nigeria (including some university student fundamentalists) had demonstrated
in the streets of Zaria and Kaduna, carrying placards with slogans reading
DEATH TO WOLE SOYINKA. Several had written to Nigerian newspapers that a
fatwa be placed on my head in turn. You picked that time to publish, in a
highly charged religious atmosphere, a portion of an intellectual exchange
that was taking place in the United States. The account of your response to
the infantida/fatwa comment from the floor in Philadelphia is therefore one
that is totally in consonance with the obvious but unpronounced jihad that
you have launched against the creator of WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD. Just
what kind of a scholar do you claim to be, really?

Since you were so eager to shed crocodile tears on behalf of Nigerians who
were deprived of their place in the cultural limelight of television - they
of course needed this cultural exposure to enable them survive Sani Abacha's
terror - let me simply offer you a Nigerian proverb: please do not dye your
mourning weeds deeper than the indigo of the bereaved. We, the bereaved,
knew where the rain was beating us in Abacha's time, and we did not then
inhabit a world of wonders but a mundane environment of horrendous
realities.

Stirring up murky waters
I began the preceding portion by inviting you to truthfully demand of
yourself just what politics you truly believe in - I have even more urgent
reasons than WONDERS to invite you onto this path of self-interrogation,
since you are determined to make a habit of fishing in troubled waters. Your
latest adventurism is both typical and instructive: just when Nigerians
appear to be groping fitfully along the road to some potential mending, a
state within that nation (since followed by two more) declared itself a
theocratic state and imposed the sharia as the official law of that state.
Now, this was again the moment that you considered most appropriate to
publish, in our local journals, a two-part article extolling the tolerance
and secular virtues of the religion of Islam over that of Christianity, and
debunking the "secular" claims of western democracy. Let me rush to state
quite clearly that the issue is not whether you are right or wrong. I hold
no brief for the claims of western democracy or Christian or Islamic
tolerance, although I cannot resist warning you not to expose your flanks so
masochistically by the carefully selective illustrations that you permitted
to buttress your thesis! A primary schoolboy can make mincemeat of such
gratuitous selectiveness in mere minutes, so will the women of Afghanistan,
or the Ba'hai of Iran. I merely ask myself, as other Nigerians have done -
why has Ali Mazrui picked this moment to dabble in Nigerian affairs, and in
this manner? This is my personal constituency, my troubled, fragile and
frustrating constitutency and I find myself obliged to demand of you - what
really goes on in Ali Mazrui's mind?

Now of course, it is all cleverly done. By now we do know the modus operandi
of Ali Mazruish incursions into the politics of African cultures and
religions. Take issues with him over this dangerous intervention and of
course you are labelled, with impeccable logic, a defender of
Judeo-Christian, European values, and a hater of Arabs and Islam alike.
Cunning gamester that you are, you pretend that the issue of liberty of
thought and the tolerance virtues of a secular ideal are posed exclusively
between the Islamic world and the Christian west. Conveniently forgotten is
the famous "triple heritage" and thus, the profound and antecedent question:
what of the tolerance virtues of precedent African religions and religions
over which both Islam and Christianity contemptuously trampled? How does the
uncorrupted indigenous spirituality view the political intrusion of religion
into secular life? The trouble with scholarly lip service is that once it is
paid, its implications in real life are forgotten. In this case we have a
structural ploy that never really took hold of your mind but served merely
to erect a systemic framework for the seduction of the unwary. I shall be
dealing at greater length - this time, openly - with your essay, but within
the Nigerian media on which you chose to inflict it.

Suffice it to advise at this point - and to implore your internet family to
caution you - that you should tread very gingerly in this explosive
situation that may actually signal the disintegration of the nation still
known as Nigeria. Secure in this "hypocritically secular," deeply flawed
democratic environment in which however you are not at risk for any
infractions of the sharia, such as wine-tippling with the rest of us, it is
perhaps beneath you to empathise with those who face the dehumanising
consequences of the theocratic insanity going on in other places. In Zamfara
state for instance - just a little taste of actualities - a local chieftain
has given all the women in his local government three months to get married
or else! - all in the name of sharia's moral requirements. This is therefore
not an academic exercise; it is an issue of human dignity, respect for
individual choice, and even, as you know very well - a life and death issue
in many parts of the world. It transcends the presumed "witticism" that is
contained in throwaways such as your favourite (and frankly now boring)
remark that no presidential candidate in the United States has ever
presented an Islamic spouse - proof of course that the western secular state
is hypocritical in its claims to tolerance. And you accuse Skip Gates of
sophomoric humour? "Irrepressible boy," "mischievous boy" - I find these
condescending expressions of a cultivated geriatricism in addressing a
colleague rude and offensive. They fail in their attempt to be patronising
because they are signs of a lack of confidence in the claimed objectivity of
your position. And they suit you ill as you have yourself a penchant for the
very kind of "jokes" that supposedly make Skip Gates deserving of such
responses. (I refer you to your article in Nigeria's Tempo and other public
performances of yours at which I have been present.) Why don't you simply
try locking up Bill Clinton with an attractive Islamic female and see what
happens - oh yes, I could not resist that either! This level of reductionist
games may go down very well in the populist game of the western put-down -
we all indulge in it from time to time, it is known as playing to the
gallery and sometimes it helps to lighten the burden of the real issues that
weigh down our immediate existence, and our impotence in dealing with the
real causes. I only ask you to try and be more serious when you wade into
the crisis of secularism and theocracy in volatile nations like Nigeria. If
you cannot help with the problem, kindly do not trivialise it. More of this
later however, and in the appropriate place.

Your profession of love for Black Americans makes one begin to understand
why you cannot begin to understand Skip Gates' protestation of "tough love"
for one's community, close or extended. Of course you are probably more
acculturated here now than many of us are, those of us for whom this remains
a strange, outer- space society in which everybody "loves" everybody else,
including the ones they gun down the next moment, where entertainers bounce
onto the stage with that opening embrace for all of the teeming, faceless
audience - "I love y'all" - and conclude on the same refrain. You must
forgive me therefore if I find the invocation of "love" nauseating. I find
it yet another department of the competitive debasement of language in
(mostly) white American society. Do you really LOVE all of Black America,
Mazrui? Is it the concept, the culture, the people, the politics or what?
Has it anything to do with what values they represent? Do you LUR-UR-URVE
the Kweisi Mfumes same as the Carole Mosely-Browns? Congressman Donald Payne
same as - who was that President of the Baptist Convention who took Abacha's
money but found the Nigerian gods of Apportionment waiting to serve for him
back home? Love Randall Robinson same as the Idi Amin-loving and
Abacha-loving Roy Innis? Congreswoman Maxime Waters same as Congressman
Donald Jefferson? Ambassador Walter Carrington same as Keith Richburg? The
Congress of Black Mayors same as the Association of Black Publishers? I have
of course deliberately utilised here the subjective parameters of a Nigerian
from that nation's recent travails. I doubt very much if a Nigerian would
readily spread the same accommodating cloak of love as you appear capable of
materialising from the permissiveness of your personal computer.

Enough please, of this "I am much more prepared to criticize the West than
you are" credentials! If you must go Shakespearian, do avoid the Coriolanus
syndrome, the competitive display of the wounds of confrontation with the
enemy. Criticism has the same texture as love. There are criticisms that
merely play to the gallery but also criticisms of conviction and action. At
the very beginning of the sixties (and much, much earlier for others) some
of us, barely out of college, were already in the United States, seeking out
our black artist kinfolk embattled for their rights and dignity to demand
what help we could offer in their liberation struggle - Ed Bullins, Ernie
Maclintock, Imamu Baraka, Haki Madhubuti, Ethelridge Knight and others. Make
enquiries today in Nigeria and discover which pioneers from which university
first injected Black American literature and history - including the history
of the Nation of Islam and the Black liberation movement - into our colonial
university curriculum. You may then begin to understand how the political
and cultural bond has been manifested since those turbulent days till the
present, with all its passages of mutual criticism, fall-outs but always -
solidarity. Go through the pages of TRANSITION and tell me what other
journal on the African continent denounced Governor Rockefeller to the world
for his crime against humanity during the Attica riots. Find out how
TRANSITION lost its sponsorship from an American Foundation of some
convoluted origin - but of course you are already aware of that history.
(Skip Gates, incidentally, was part of that history. Still is.) This is the
nature of engagement that I understand as "love," meaningful love, critical
love, creative love, "tough love," very different from marshmallow love that
turns the object of love into a namby-pamby, lacking in resilience, a
hibernating mole incapable of sustaining the searchlight of truth, or simply
unpalatable ideas. The African America that you speak of needs less and less
of that kind of love. And the African continent is much better off with
none. Of course there is also the cobra love, but I believe that Skip Gates
is perfectly capable of deciding what value to place on any protestations of
love that his series have generated from many quarters.

"Since I am myself descended from both slave owners and slaves....." A-ah!
Is this perhaps where we shall find the critical clue to your hidden angst,
the genie in the bottle that periodically forces itself out? Others, like
myself, have attempted to maintain a delicate silence over this - not that
it is any secret - but I am glad that the "outing" has been done by you in
this specific context. Of course, you knew that it was bound to happen
sooner or later, and your preemptive throwaway is quite in character. I am
certain that, as you acquire greater self-confidence and internal peace, you
will take us into the fullest dimensions of "slave owning" by your
illustrious family. For now, I only wish to propose that, in many of your
statements and much of your public conduct, this Mazrui is ingeniously but
compulsively attempting to deflect a background of racial guilt. You are
playing a game of transpositions, foisting on others a typology that derives
from a lineage history that you wish to exorcise. Yes, I agree with your
sociological observation: "the lineage system in Zanzibar...does permit
people to continue to be Arab or Persian generations after their Arab or
Persian forebears." What choice, within this permissive lineage usage, has
Ali Mazrui truthfully made, and does it matter in this discourse? Is he at
peace with that choice? What we, black Africans with no hang ups in this
respect must do to help you find peace, is to constantly reassure you that
we do not hold you responsible for the sins of your forebears. That your
ancestors did enrich themselves in the enslavement and merchandising of
black peoples does not detract from your credentials as a human being and a
credible and quite fascinating scholar (I really should interject some
lur-urve at this stage, even of the cobra kind!). So let me offer you,
privately - later, I shall also do so publicly - full absolution, asking in
return only that you now conduct himself as befits a true African elder.
Avoid, as another saying goes, the conduct of an elder who "takes his tongue
to lick his plate clean after a feast, then thinks he can summon a child to
bring him his walking stick, claiming the authority of an elder."

Do stop and take a deep breath, Professor Ali Mazrui. Dry off the phony
lather of race indignation. Our continent is burning. Its humanity is daily
impoverished by bad or indifferent leadership, its cultures and communities
devastated by AIDS. Our peoples could do with a tenth of the energy you have
devoted to spreading the gospel of hate against an intellectual colleague
and organizing lynch mobs that are reminiscent of the very racial conduct
you claim to condemn. We all age, our acuity of judgement loses its edge,
our capabilities diminish, but there is no need to create for ourselves an
old age crisis. If we can no longer be productive, or be combative in truly
worthy causes, let us at least try not to miseducate those who follow us,
and endeavour to cultivate the art of ageing gracefully.

Wole Soyinka

*NOTE: In response to Ali Mazrui's challenge, the pages of TRANSITION will
be open either from the next issue, or in one single issue (to be
editorially decided) to further debate on the Gates series. I have reserved,
as more appropriate, the second part of my contribution, which will be
restricted to a formal review of the series, for the pages of TRANSITION.
W.S.

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© Copyright 2000 Africa Resource Center

Citation Format

Soyinka, Wole. (2000). THE PROBLEM WITH YOU, ALI MAZRUI! RESPONSE TO ALI'S
MILLENNIAL "CONCLUSION". West Africa Review: 1 , 2.[iuicode:
http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.1.2.20]

Wole Soyinka's informants may have meant "Intifada," after the Palestinian
uprising that began in December 1987 and lasted until close to the Gulf War.
[Editors]

** Table of Contents

0.1. Tears From a Consummate Crocodile
0.2. Your 'fatwa' Predisposition
0.3. Stirring up Murky Waters

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West Africa Review (2000)
ISSN: 1525-4488
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. SOYINKA: THE STRANGE CASE OF NOBEL SCHIZOPHRENIA

Ali A. Mazrui

I. On Fatwas and Falsehoods
II.. On Politics and Identity
III. On Images and the Media
IV. Soyinka's Martrydom and Mazrui's Nigeria
V. The Politics of Ancestry
VI. Concluding Observations APPENDIX: "A 1992 Plea for Reconcilation"

Henry Louis Gates Jr. reminds us that behind every civilization is a theme
of barbarism. Similarly, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) alerted us that
within every individual is a Dr. Jekyll (good) and a Mr. Hyde (bad). Skip
Gates tries to deal with this dualism at the civilizational level. Stevenson
handled it at the individual level.

Dear Mr. Soyinka,

Let me recapitulate a few Jekyll/Hyde contradictions about your open letter
to me. You ask of me, you demand of me "decorum in handling colleagues", yet
you make this demand within the most indecorous diatribe to hit the Internet
since the Gates debate began.

Your recent unrestrained critique of me is full of false, dangerous, and
libelous inaccuracies. You implicitly accuse me of being in support of the
death-penalty fatwa issued by Imam Khomeini against Salman Rushdie when I am
and have been an unrelenting opponent of capital punishment in all cases.

You charge me with being an "academic Double-007 with license to libel" -
while you serenely and falsely accuse me of once trying to incite your own
assassination. How dare you! You demand of me "respect for the truth with
regards to one's colleagues" while you accuse me of publishing articles in
Nigeria of which I have never heard: Articles that you claim were
deliberately intended by me to add fuel to the flames of sectarianism in
Nigeria!

You accuse me of lying yet you yourself perpetrate one falsehood after
another from Philadelphia to Kaduna. On the one hand, you claim to uphold
high ethical standards, yet on the other you are willing to engage in the
most scurrilous, uncivil and unsubstantiated attacks on my character.

I. On Fatwas and Falsehoods
Paranoia makes many African rulers tyrannical. Those who are paranoid think
that those who disagree with them are trying to incite others to assassinate
them. Paranoia must explain why Mr. Wole Soyinka both in 1992 and in 2000
implied that I was "diabolically" trying to encourage Northern Nigerian
Muslims to eliminate him once and for all.

Paranoid African dictators strip some of their rivals of citizenship. Mr.
Soyinka, using his own tactics, has repeatedly tried to strip me of my
Africanity. (Because he is not a chief of state, he does not have the legal
power to strip me of my citizenship.) Furthermore, you have tried to strip
me of democratic legitimacy in Western circles by portraying me as a Muslim
fundamentalist in support of Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In your
public rantings against me, you have disgraced the meaning and the search
for truth. Why?

Being an inexact and careless scholar, Mr. Wole Soyinka thinks he knows what
my position is with regard to Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa on Salman Rushdie.
How far is Mr. Soyinka prepared to carry his Islamophobia?

Mr. Soyinka's first intellectual failing with regard to the Rushdie affair
involves his failure to understand that critics of Salman Rushdie's Satanic
Verses are not necessarily supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against
him. This simple distinction is beyond this Nobel Laureate's ability to
grasp. I disliked Rushdie's book intensely but I never have supported Iran's
fatwa against the author. I said that from my very first public statement
about the Satanic Verses in a public lecture at Cornell University in 1989.

The Iranians sentenced Rushdie to death. However, in my Cornell lecture I
declared that I was against the death penalty not just when applied to
Rushdie but when passed against anybody and for any offence whatsoever (a
very unusual position for a Muslim to take publicly). My Cornell lecture has
been widely disseminated, published in several different scholarly journals,
and translated into other languages. And yet I am almost certain you, Mr.
Wole Soyinka, you have never read it - otherwise you would not have
continued to assume that my criticism of the book translated into my support
of the fatwa and of the Iranian death penalty. Such rash and false
conclusions are unworthy of you and are dangerous! Despite your lack of
accuracy, you lecture others about "respect for the truth."

A young Egyptian in Philadelphia at the African Studies Association
Conference this last November wanted to know if Skip Gates was to the black
race what Salman Rushdie had been to the Muslims of the world - a "cultural
traitor". Unlike Mr. Wole Soyinka, the young Egyptian had done his homework
on my writings (extensively, as it happens) and was challenging me if I
would apply to RACE what I had applied to RELIGION - the concept of
"cultural traitor." Basically I told the young Egyptian that the concept did
NOT apply to Skip Gates - since Gates was genuinely struggling with a
dilemma and had not crossed to the other side (or words to that effect). I
do not regard Skip as either a "cultural traitor" or a "racial traitor". It
seems that Wole Soyinka wants to create enmity between Skip Gates and me
where none has existed so far. But please do not go about trying to inject
poison into my relationships with other people! Skip and I are in serious
disagreement about one particular project: "Wonders of the African World."

You promised to apologize publicly if you got this Philadelphia story wrong.
You did get it wrong. If it is on tape, you will hear the real exchange. I
shall await your public apology.

In my criticism of Skip Gates' "Wonders of the African World", I found it
incomprehensible that Professor Gates could fail to film in Nigeria, an
undeniably crucial country. If Skip Gates' reason for not filming in Nigeria
was because Nigeria was under a reprehensible military dictator (Sani
Abacha), why did Gates film in Sudan which was under a regime widely
regarded at the time as morally more repugnant? This was precisely the
question I had posed when I had criticized Gates for ignoring Nigeria.

In any case, since Gates could film in Sudan and subsequently denounce Sudan
's policies towards the Nubians, Gates could have filmed in Abacha's Nigeria
and subsequently denounced Abacha's human rights record in Gates' "Wonders
of the African World"! Gates could have filmed in Nigeria and still said
nasty things about Abacha in the final TV product.

In your critique of me, you mentioned Randall Robinson of TransAfrica as one
of the African Americans you approve. I hope you will not change your mind
about Randall Robinson when you learn about his reaction to Skip Gates'
"Wonders of the African World". After having watched the series, Randall
wrote to Skip with one ringing and eloquent verdict - " SHAME "! Perhaps you
may like to publish Randall's letter to Skip in your projected special issue
of TRANSITION magazine. Randall's letter is a miracle of brevity as a
television review! Please get Randall's permission to publish! Here is one
person who was a crusader against President Sani Abacha - but Randall has
also been disgusted by Henry Louis Gates' "Wonders of the African World".

II. On Politics and Identity
In a letter addressed to you in 1992, and copied to Skip Gates, Kwame
Anthony Appiah, and Henry Finder, I begged you to end the "fratricidal"
warfare between us. I said that many younger African scholars and
intellectuals were disturbed to see their elders in such brazen
confrontations. I begged you to bury the hatchet. I attach a copy of that
letter to this open memo as an appendix.

Until the Gates TV series this last fall, I thought you had heeded my
appeal. I had not seen any personal attacks on me in international
publications since our debate in TRANSITION magazine in 1991-92. I thanked
the Lord that two aging African intellectuals had indeed decided to bury the
hatchet. Your Dr. Jekyll seemed triumphant.

When "Wonders of the African World" hit the airwaves in the fall of 1999,
our mutual friend Skip Gates - who had played such an important part in our
reconciliation in 1991-1992 by allowing us to thrash out our differences in
Transition - became the inadvertent cause of your new declaration of war on
me in 1999 and 2000. This time you had decided to go for the jugular. You
leave me no choice but to defend myself in the strongest possible terms. It
is you who abandoned decorum first. Your Mr. Hyde is now alive and well.

Your most despicable attack involved your questioning my Africanity. I do
not need either your permission or your recognition to be an African. As a
celebrated human rights campaigner, it is unworthy of you to be a champion
of racial purity!! My African identity is not for you to bestow or withhold,
dear Mr. Soyinka.

You have been going around the world asserting that I am a religious bigot;
I do not plan to go around the world saying that you are a racial bigot. Yet
from your own statements about me I have more evidence of your racism than
you have of my alleged religious bigotry. The idea that any African who has
Arab blood needs special permission to remain an African is a new form of
racism that Africans will not and cannot countenance. Or is your anti-
Arabism a new form of anti-Semitism, given that Arabs too are Semites?

You are on very dangerous ground. Did you know how the Nazi Holocaust
gathered momentum? When Nazis were unsatisfied with whether or not German
Jews were really German! The Nazis searched for Semites (Jews in this case)
to eliminate them. Are you willing to play a similar, dangerous racial game?

Mr. Soyinka, now you want to know whether certain Swahili families (like the
Mazrui) are really African. Are you aware of what you are doing?

For the Nazis Jews could not be German. For the Nazis it was not enough that
a 70 year- old German Jew had been a patriotic German all his life. With
mattered was that he was a Jew. Dear Mr. Soyinka, is it not enough that a
near-70 year-old Ali Mazrui has been a patriotic African all his life? Is
that insufficient? Are you insisting that what matters most about Mazrui is
that his African blood is mixed with Arab blood, thereby making him less
African or not an African at all? It is out of racist logic of this kind
that such evils as ethnic cleansing and fascism are born. Do you want to be
associated with such evils?

Intending to exclude me as an African, you say "we, black Africans with no
hangups . . ."! I am told that when my TV series first came out, you said "a
TV series by a Black African is yet to be made"! In the United States they
used to quantify how much "Negro blood" was necessary to make one a "Negro".
Have you decided on how much blood we need to fit your category of "Black
Africans"? Does President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana (being technically
half-white and half-black) belong to your category of "Black Africans"? How
do you regard our distinguished poet, Dennis Brutus?

If purity of race is your basis for defining who is an African, why did you
ever boycott apartheid South Africa? It pains me that your racial paradigm
has a lot in common with the kind of society the white racists there were
trying to create. And yet I know you were trying your best to boycott South
Africa and fight apartheid. Why spoil your record by appearing to be racist
in your old age?

Regarding my public criticism of Skip Gates' "Wonders of the African World"
at the ASA conference in Philadelphia in November 1999, you said I tried to
destroy Skip Gates' credibility as a scholar there. It is true that I was
one of the strongest critics of his television series at the session in
Philadelphia. On the other hand, I did try to get Professor Gates to come to
Philadelphia to defend his TV series. Similarly, Professor Phil Curtin was
invited to the ASA to defend his notorious letter to the Chronicle for
Higher Education in 1995. Phil Curtin accepted the invitation; Skip Gates
did not.

If Gates himself could not come I had asked earnestly if Kwame Anthony
Appiah could come to Philadelphia in his place. Both the President of ASA
(Professor Lansine Kaba) and myself wanted Gates to "have his day in court"
in Philadelphia. Those actions of mine were not the actions of someone who
wanted to destroy Gates professionally.

In your critique of me, you are offended that I spoke as Skip Gates' elder
brother. Was Skip himself offended by my brotherly tone or was Wole Soyinka
pretending to be the offended voice of Skip regardless of Skip's real
feelings?

Switching to the language of brotherhood is totally in the African
tradition, my touching on the presumptive rights as an elder brother is also
totally in the African tradition. Can we expect Mr. Soyinka to remember
those African basics? The Nobel Prize can be intoxicating!

There is one statement I made about "Wonders of the African World" that I am
prepared to reconsider. Should the series be used at major centers of
African studies in the country? At first I thought it should not be so used
at all. But now I feel that at the graduate level there is room for a TV
series which can generate so much debate. On the other hand, in high school
and at the undergraduate level this advantage is outweighed by the principal
negative message: that the main architects of the Atlantic slave trade were
Africans themselves. This incorrect message is even more damaging to younger
audiences.

In order to challenge the false political and historical implications of
"Wonders of the African World", I did challenge Skip Gates to a debate in
TRANSITION magazine.

If you want TRANSITION to be a serious venue for a debate on Gates' TV
series you had better entrust that special issue to a GUEST EDITOR - someone
other than Gates, Soyinka, Appiah or any employee of the magazine. The
debate has now become so acrimonious that only a Guest Editor could have the
necessary credentials for editorial impartiality. You personally have taken
the debate to new depths of inexplicable animosity.

III. On Images and the Media
In your critique you say that you plan to answer a two-part article on Islam
that was allegedly written by me and which appeared in a Nigerian newspaper.
I know nothing about this article! It would help if you would send me copies
of the article to prove your point. And if you are going to answer me in a
Nigerian newspaper, it would help me if you sent me a copy of your response
also. For the moment I have little option but to regard your allegations
about the article as further proof that you may be prone to either an
overactive imagination or poetic hallucinations!!

When you write to express concern about Islamic militancy in Northern
Nigeria, I hope you will not forget to express concern about ethno-cultural
militancy in Southern Nigeria. Both trends are deeply worrying.

Since you are a non-Muslim Nigerian, you are understandably worried about
the rise of SHARIA based state (SHARIA-CRACY) in one Northern state after
another. But non- Yoruba Nigerians (and the Yoruba President of the country
Olusegun Obasanjo) are equally worried about some of the activities of the
Odua People's Congress (OPC) (ETHNOCRACY) in the South-West.. Those of us
who genuinely love Nigeria are indeed worried by both trends. Have you
compared which trend so far is costing more lives - SHARIA-CRACY in the
North vs. ETHNOCRACY in the South-West?

One more falsehood in your account about Nigerian newspapers and my
relations with you. I did not send to the Northern Nigerian newspaper in
1992 "a specially selected part" of my article in which I ostensibly accused
you of being "a hater of Islam". I sent my ENTIRE article "Wole Soyinka as a
Television Critic" to BOTH The Guardian in Lagos and The Democrat in Kaduna.
Why did I seek to share that article with Nigerian audiences, both North and
South? See my letter to you of 1992. (Copy attached here).

Is it possible for an article of mine to be published in a newspaper abroad
without my knowing anything about it? Of course it is. This was brought home
to me when I was visiting Harare in Zimbabwe in January 2000. The
lead-letter to the Editor in The Herald newspaper on January 19, 2000, said
the following:

"EDITOR - I was interested to read in The Herald of January 6, 2000
Professor Mazrui's article titled 'Globalization and Development'. He said
'No country has ascended to first rank technological and economic power by
exclusive dependency on a foreign language. Japan rose to amazing heights by
'scientificating' the Japanese language and making it a medium of
instruction."
Until I saw that letter to the Editor, I had no idea that the Herald in
Harare had carried any article of mine on any subject in a long time. And I
might never have found out if I had not been in Harare on January 19, 2000.

In other words, some of the articles I write become syndicated and are
published in different countries of the world. The same article on language
and globalization that appeared in Zimbabwe might also have appeared in
Malaysia and Ghana, without my knowing about it. Do I really have to explain
all this to a celebrity like you?

Therefore, even if there was a "syndicated" article on Islam in a Nigerian
newspaper by Ali Mazrui, it was not specially written for Nigeria. It
follows therefore that your entire charge that I was deliberately fanning
sectarian flames in Nigeria falls to the ground! After all, the article was
written for a global audience and was never targeted at Nigeria.

Alternatively, the Nigerian newspaper might have helped itself to a
conference paper I presented in Edinburgh or Washington or Oxford. The
newspaper might never have acknowledged the conference -- it just published
my paper as if it were written for a Nigerian audience!!

All these are wild guesses on my part and may be unfair to the Nigerian
newspaper. But, dear Mr. Soyinka, you just bombard us with allegations as
usual, with next to no hard information about either the articles or the
newspaper in which they were published. Or is the whole story another
instance of an active poetic imagination?

In his 1999 Oxford-based mystery novel The Remorseful Day Colin Dexter makes
a simple observation in chapter Four:

"It is possible for persons to be friendly towards each other without being
friends. It is also possible for persons to be friends without being
friendly towards each other."
At the turn of the millennium Skip Gates and I have been friends without
being friendly towards each other. I would like to believe that the cause of
the unfriendliness has been localized and limited. It has been his
television series, "Wonders of the African World". Mr. Wole Soyinka, you
have been trying to escalate the dispute.

If you were to compare my criticism of Skip Gates to Martin Kilson's "Master
of the Intellectual Dodge", Martin's attack was far more devastating, going
to the extent of implying financial impropriety and manipulation of
colleagues by Gates. Now that you as Mr. Hyde have attacked me so viciously,
should Martin Kilson brace himself for a similar counter-blast from you?
Does anything I have said which allegedly questions Gates' professional
credibility even remotely compare with Martin's merciless exposé of Gates?
Are you going to abuse Martin Kilson next? Or do you, Mr. Soyinka, choose
your adversaries with careful circumspection and cautious self- interest?
(Forgive me, Martin, my friend of over 30 years standing, but I do need to
know how this man chooses his victims!)

IV. Soyinka's "Martyrdom" and Mazrui's Nigeria
I do go to Nigeria to lecture almost every year. It may surprise you to know
that the people who invite me are not "Muslim fundamentalists." In 1999 my
lecture was sponsored by General Olusegun Obasanjo (President-elect) and his
political party. My co- lecturer on the same platform was the late President
Julius K. Nyerere. To the best of my memory neither Nyerere nor myself
referred to Islam. If we did it was part of a concern for religious
reconciliation.

In 1998 my main host in Nigeria was the Institute of Governance and Social
Research in Jos headed by Professor Jonah Isawa Elaigwu. My lecture was also
sponsored by the University of Jos. Again my presentation had almost nothing
to do with Islam nor were my Nigerian hosts Muslims.

In the year 2000 I am expected in Nigeria three times. On the first occasion
my hosts will be bankers, entrepreneurs, and insurers, almost none of whom
are interested in a lecture on Islamic fundamentalism. They have asked me to
lecture on a developmental subject.

On my second Nigerian visit my hosts are explicitly interested in my Black
civilizational credentials as contrasted with my Islamic civilizational
credentials. My agenda is "Black Civilization in the New Millennium".

My third probable visit to Nigeria in the year 2000 is likely to focus on
the theme "Comparative Civil-Military Relations: African and Latin
American." This will be a conference rather than a lecture. On this
occasion my Institute is likely to be a co-sponsor of the conference.

What does all this information tell us? My relations with Nigeria are not,
repeat not, sectarian. The relations have continued to involve all ethnic
and religious groups. These Nigerian brothers and sisters have been prepared
to raise my airfares and hotel accommodation costing thousands of dollars
time and time again, just to hear me. Would they have done so if my message
was divisive and sectarian?

You say to me: "Please do not dye your mourning weeds deeper than the indigo
of the bereaved"! Were you not the man I invited to East Africa in 1972,
gave you a platform in Nairobi from which to speak, introduced you to a
Ugandan living in Uganda as your Chair for your lecture? You knew that Idi
Amin killed people on the basis of guilt by association. You insensitively
and cruelly endangered the life of your chairman by denouncing Idi Amin
while the Ugandan (going back to Uganda) presided.

From the audience I was so scared for your chairman (Tony Gingyera- Pinycwa)
that I sent him a note urging him to vacate the Chair while you were still
speaking - and offering to occupy the Chair myself. I was appalled that I
had exposed Tony to an insensitive Wole Soyinka by asking Tony to chair your
Lecture and endangering Tony's life!

If you were so brave why did you not go to denounce Idi Amin in Kampala,
Uganda, instead of risking the lives of Ugandans from Nairobi, Kenya?

Tony Gingyera-Pinycwa was a brave man. He rejected my offer to replace him
as Chair, while Soyinka played the anti-Amin card at the risk of somebody
else's life. Tony survived Idi Amin - but it was no thanks to Mr. Wole
Soyinka!! On that occasion who was dyeing his mourning weeds deeper than the
indigo of the bereaved?

You address me as someone totally alien to Nigeria. Let me educate you about
my credentials. I have biological sons who are Nigerians. I have a wife who
is a Nigerian. I have a mother (or mother-in-law) who has lived with us in
America who is Nigerian, and who is back in Jos. I have my wife's siblings
(male and female) who are Nigerians and live in Nigeria. I have their
children (my Nigerian nephews and nieces) who are in Nigeria.

Maybe you have not heard that families are created by marriage as well as
blood. My family relationships with Nigeria have been created by both
marriage and blood. Do not lecture me about my not "dyeing my mourning weeds
deeper than the indigo of the bereaved." I am the bereaved! There is a
saying in Kiswahili: "Asiejua shemegi yake hamjui ndugu yake." (He who does
not know his in-law does not really know his sibling).

Dear Mr. Soyinka, are you sure you understand family? It is, after all,
another phenomenon of collective love - something you have found difficult
to grasp. You shrink from loving those who are culturally very dissimilar.
No wonder you are alienated from Northern Nigerians.

V. The Politics of Ancestry
I am descended from both slave-owners and slaves. Am I different from Skip
Gates? Am I different from half the population of African Americans who have
slave- owners (not just slaves) among their ancestors? Am I different from
Malcom X, W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr.? Each of those had
slave-owners, as well as slaves, among their ancestors - as do half the
population of Black America, if not more. Why, dear Wole, do you regard me
as different? Please spell out. Now is the time.

How early in my life did I identify with the African side of my ancestry? My
answer is that I became a Pan-Africanist as soon as I became politically
conscious in colonial Kenya. By the time I was an undergraduate at the
University of Manchester in England I was Pan-African enough to be elected
President of the African Students' Association, leading a membership which
included Nigerians, Ghanaians as well as East Africans. They all looked to
me for leadership. As an African I never looked back.

I do not need Wole Soyinka's stamp of confirmation that I am an African. My
identity is in my blood, my ancestry, my history, my commitment, my life. If
I was somebody constantly looking for approval from people who were
"blacker" than me, I would have kept a low profile instead of becoming a
controversial African political analyst. If I was looking for the stamp of
approval from governments which were "blacker" than me, I would not have
challenged Milton Obote and Idi Amin of Uganda, Daniel arap Moi of Kenya or
Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania. Obote was sometimes tempted to detain me or
expel me; Idi Amin eventually wished he had eliminated me; and Julius
Nyerere was in recurrent debates with me. Moi does not know what to do with
me. And yet none of the politicians have tried to dis-Africanize me - unlike
Wole! What a pity! Why do you descend to ethnic politics?

Mr. Soyinka, your interpretation of my behaviour as a human being is so
simplistic that it does not do justice to you as a writer and intellectual.
Shall I tell you how I would have behaved if I wanted to live down my
ancestry and play to the gallery of those who claim to be "purely Black"?
First and foremost, I would not have used the name "MAZRUI" as my surname.
Since surnames are a Western tradition, I could have used instead the name
of my father or grandfather as my surname. There are other members of the
Mazrui clan who have chosen to do without the Mazrui name, including some
very distinguished Kenyans. They have thus disguised their ancestry.

The name "Mazrui" is well-established in East African history. By CHOOSING
it as my surname, I decided I could be an African without denying my
historic ancestry. That was not a sign of guilt-ridden opportunism.

Secondly, if in the post colonial era I wanted to play down the Arab side of
my descent, I would avoid the Arabs. I have done nothing of the kind.
Although I have both Arab friends and Arab relatives, they treat me as their
AFRICAN relative. I lecture about Africa in the Arab world, and often wear a
kente scarf instead of an Arab turban when I speak in the Middle East. I do
not try to affirm my Africanity by rejecting my Arab relatives. Is that a
sign of guilt-ridden opportunism?

Thirdly, I came from an African country where Muslims are a minority
(Kenya). If I wanted to play to the dominant Christo-secular gallery in
Kenya, I would not choose to be highly visible as a spokesperson for Muslim
minorities. Indeed, I would not choose to become one of the most highly
visible Islamicist scholars from Africa. I have chosen not to affirm my
Africanity by hiding my Islamicity. Is that a sign of guilt-ridden
opportunism?

I have never worried about religious tolerance from followers of African
traditional religion. I have said time and again that I regarded the
indigenous tradition as the most ecumenical of Africa's triple heritage. Mr.
Soyinka, you have not read my writings. You do not have to. But do not
pretend you know anything about what I stand for. If you had only seen my TV
series, or read the companion book The Africans: A Triple Heritage, you
would know that I repeatedly give full credit to the tolerance and
ecumenical spirit of Africa's traditional religion. It is a pity you like to
attack a TV series you have never seen (like mine) and defend some other TV
series before you have ever watched it (like Gates'). If you have to be
judgmental, I can think of more rational ways of evaluating television
series than your idiosyncratic methods.

Fourthly, if I was insecure about my Africanity and was afraid of the
disapproval of the so-called "pure Black Africans", I would have kept a low
political profile in the sub-region of Africa where I belong. Let me repeat.
I would not have gone around either irritating or infuriating powerful
"Black African" Presidents in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. I certainly would
not have engaged in public debates on sensitive policies with Milton Obote
when he was in power in Uganda. On one occasion he attacked me in a
presidential speech in the Uganda Parliament - but he never used a single
ethnic epithet against me.

To the credit of all those African politicians, they never questioned my
Africanity. They knew more about the Mazrui in history than you do. They
certainly did not make their recognition of my Africanity dependent on my
good behaviour, as you seem to be doing. Our East African leaders might have
had many faults, but (apart from Idi Amin with regard to Indians) they were
less "racially purist" in public posture than Mr. Wole Soyinka. I spoke my
mind and criticized their faults. Was that the behaviour of an insecure
guilt-ridden Arab opportunist? My relationship with Idi Amin had its ups and
downs. But even when I criticized his policy towards Uganda Indians, he
never questioned my Africanity.

Like you, I have interacted with the high and mighty in politics, diplomacy,
the military, high society as well as academia. But unlike you, I am a minor
player and could easily have been brushed aside in ethnic terms. Yet as far
as I know only you, Bioden Jayefo and William Ochieng (a Moi academic
supporter in Kenya) have ever publicly played the ethnic card against me.
Yours is an exclusive club of three racial purists among African
intellectuals! Congratulations!!

When President Idi Amin in Uganda did not like the challenge of Frank
Kalimuzo, he said Kalimuzo was not a Ugandan. Amin later killed Kalimuzo.
When Frederick Chiluba, President of Zambia, did not like the challenge of
Kenneth Kaunda, Frederick Chiluba said Kaunda was not a Zambian. When
President Konan-Bedie of the Ivory Coast did not like the challenge of
Alassane O. Outtara, the incumbent president said the challenger was not
Ivorian.

Similarly when Wole Soyinka does not like the challenge of Ali Mazrui, Wole
Soyinka says that Ali Mazrui is not an African!! Can you imagine? How
different is Soyinka from the likes of Idi Amin, Frederick Chiluba, and
Konan-Bedie apart from the fact that Soyinka does not control the state
apparatus? The authoritarianism in Kongi Soyinka is unmistakable!

VI. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
Let me paraphrase from the 2nd Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1933):
Soyinka: You are extremely offensive, aging Mazrui!
Mazrui: As a matter of fact, we both are. The only difference is that I am
trying to be offensive, while you can't help being offensive! At least your
Mr. Hyde can't!
I can fully understand why Mr. Soyinka would want to defend Gates. But until
this latest dirty exchange between Soyinka and myself, I have never been
sure why he was so hostile towards me. The Southern Sudanese scholar, Dr.
Dunstan Wai, called these symptoms "MAZRUIPHOBIA". But a more elaborate
psychiatric explanation for Soyinka's "Mr. Hyde" mentality and his animosity
towards me personally comes from another distinguished Nigerian literary
figure. ("Soyinka, their Soyinka"). According to this literary critic, there
was one coincidence in 1986 which was bound to disturb a mind as proud as
Wole's. Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize and Ali Mazrui aired the first
global TV series by an African both in 1986. For at least a few months as
many people discussed Ali Mazrui's TV series as refered to Soyinka's Nobel
Prize. This was intolerable to Soyinka's monopolistic pride, especially
since Ali Mazrui was a Muslim. Soyinka did not want to share the limelight
even for a few months with an African Muslim! Mr. Hyde was possessive in any
case about the limelight! But my being a Muslim was the last straw.

So Soyinka (or his Hyde) embarked on a crusade to demean and denounce my TV
series. That campaign of yours is fully documented. You turned against me
from 1986. You called me a born-again Islamic fundamentalist because I had
dared to share the limelight very briefly with you in 1986.

Kwame Nkrumah would be uneasy in his grave if he thought his children (whose
mother was Egyptian) were vulnerable to the intolerance of racial purists.
Mr. Soyinka reportedly resents President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana because
Rawlings was at one time on friendly terms with President Sani Abacha of
Nigeria. Mr. Soyinka, are you sure that the real reason for your anti-
Rawlings stand is not the fact that Rawlings is only half Black? What is
worse for Rawlings in your eyes - having been pro-Abacha or having had a
Scottish father?

You ask why I mention my different professorships whenever I publish or
circulate anything academic or professional written by me. I hope my reasons
are as good as Skip Gates' reasons for wearing a Harvard T-shirt from one
African township to another. Since you have asked me why I mention my
universities, have you asked Skip why he wears his Harvard T-shirts before
cameras?

In my case I mention all the schools that have honored me partly to avoid
having to choose which one to associate myself with publicly. Secondly, one
or two of the schools which have honored me are very young and could do with
the exposure that I and other faculty give them. But Harvard is too
distinguished to need Skip Gates' T-shirts as a publicity-stunt.
Nevertheless, I respect Skip's loyalty to his university. Why not?

I am not sure why you make such a fuss about my original cautious note at
the outset of the Gates' debate that since I had myself done a television
series on Africa, I was hesitant about entering the debate about Gates. My
hesitation was not in the least ethical or moral - anymore than I would
regard it as unethical to review a book about Africa simply because I had
written twenty books of my own.

My original hesitation about going public with my reservations about Gates
was a matter of prudence. Was it wise to review Gates' TV series (not was it
"ethical")? My conscience remains completely at peace with itself on that
issue.

On the other hand, was it "wise" to risk being bruised by the likes of Wole
Soyinka? Was it "wise" to risk having one's motives so deliberately
distorted? That question of wisdom and prudence still remains.

Is comparing Gates to Garvey a hyperbole? I certainly hope so! I certainly
hope that the negative impact of Gates on Pan-Africanism is not as lasting
as the positive impact of Marcus Garvey. But who is to know? Marcus Garvey
died almost a pauper in 1940. Few people thought his influence would be long
lasting.

And yet in 1999 the natural scientists of Africa (chemists, biologists, and
physicists) gave him a posthumous Distinguished Award for his services to
Africa. The African Academy of Science gave this award at their conference
in Tunisia in April, 1999.

I was designated to receive the award in Tunisia on behalf of the family of
Marcus Garvey. I also gave the acceptance speech. I brought the award back
to the United States and handed it over to Dr. Julius Garvey, Marcus Garvey'
s son. Receiving the Garvey Award on behalf of his family was one of my
great honours of the 20th century. And yet this man, Marcus Garvey, died
almost a pauper and in obscurity sixty years ago.

Skip Gates is not a pauper, and may the Lord grant him continuing
prosperity. Skip has remarkable access to the highest echelons of the
Western media. Is it really that far-fetched to envisage a scenario in which
Skip Gates would leave his mark on Black perspectives? If Skip does become a
major historical figure, I hope his impact will be much healthier than that
of "Wonders of the African World". Skip may not himself be encyclopedic, but
he is controlling encyclopedias! Garvey had no such mechanisms of
dissemination.

You are right that in 1999 I wrote far too often in the Gates debate. But
the frequency of my interventions was neither a crusade nor a jihad.
Originally I envisaged three interventions in all - my first one ("The
Preliminary Critique"); secondly, a reply to the hundreds of Internet
participants who responded to my "Critique"; and thirdly, my response to
Gates himself in his rebuttal of my arguments.

What provoked additional responses from me was not Gates himself but Biodun
Jeyifo and his startlingly personal attacks on me. I thought B.J. singularly
lacked "decorum" and brazenly lacked "proportion". But that was before you
lately joined the debate. The vitriol of your latest onslaught!! You used to
combine rudeness with art. Now there is only rudeness. Alas, the pity of
it!!

Dear Mr. Soyinka, you clearly have no idea what the concept of collective
love means. If someone sincerely says "I love my people" of course he or she
includes those who have fallen from grace as well as those who strive for
perfection. Likewise, when I said "I love Black America", I did not simply
mean I loved the Randall Robinsons and the Martin Luther Kings. I also meant
I loved those on death row, and the millions of others damaged by history. I
also loved simply those whose views or values I regarded as fundamentally
wrong. That is what loving a whole people means, Mr. Soyinka. Even
patriotism means loving the saints and the sinners.

Obviously collective love to you means discarding Carole Mosely-Brown and
Roy Innis and anybody else who does not put the latest dictator in Africa at
the centre of their global and universal moral code. We cannot abuse our
brothers and sisters in the Diaspora by the yardstick of whether or not they
are polite to Daniel arap Moi or some other African tyrant. Before harassing
African Americans who had dealings with Sani Abacha, have you resolved never
to speak to hundreds of thousands of fellow Nigerians who had many more
extensive dealings with Abacha?

In December 1992 I wrote to you a letter and begged you to stop quarrelling
with me. I said:

"I would like to return to the normality which once characterized our
relationship. Younger Africans look up to us as intellectual elders. We have
lately been disturbing their peace of mind . . . . If you would stop abusing
me in public, we could be friends and serve our people better." (See
Appendix)
Instead you have opened the new millennium with your new HATE MAIL! The pity
of it; yes, the pity of it!

Please re-read my 1992 plea for reconciliation that is attached here. Each
time you have attacked me, it has been totally unprovoked. You slapped me
last evening; I am slapping you this afternoon. Even if you and I cannot be
friends, can we at least end this public brawl?

If it will keep the peace between us, I will even settle for the aphorism of
Thomas Szasz

(The Second Sin, 1973):

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the
wise forgive but do not forget.
Let us settle for the silent wisdom of forgiving even if we cannot forget.

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BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY
P.O. Box 6000;Binghamton, New York, 13902-6000 607/777-4494; Fax
607/777-2642

December 2, 1992

Ali A. Mazrui
Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities
Institute of Global Cultural Studies

Professor Wole Soyinka
Chair of the Editorial Board
Transition
1430 Massachusetts Avenue, 4th floor
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

1992 PLEA FOR RECONCILIATION
Dear Wole:

We missed you in November at the African Studies meetings in Seattle. Many
people were disappointed that you were not able to come. I hope you are well
(health- wise). We were concerned.

Upon my return from Seattle I found Transition No. 57. I do appreciate your
desire to put an end to this fratricidal warfare between you and me, though
your concept of giving me "the last word" seemed a little ambivalent! You
allowed yourself a couple of additional pages of entirely new accusations of
"diabolical" proportions.

The Democrat newspaper in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, is not my "mouthpiece".
I respect the newspaper. But even before I alerted The Democrat, I had
alerted The Guardian in Southern Nigeria (through Dr. Olatunji Dare) that I
was about to answer Wole Soyinka's repeated attacks on me and my TV series.
Given that you had been attacking my TV series since at least 1988, it was a
fair assumption that some of your attacks were made within Nigeria. When I
finally wrote my response for readers of Transition, I wanted to alert
Nigerians also of what I had to say in my defence. I therefore alerted The
Guardian in the South and The Democrat in the North about the Transition
debate and where I stood. As you may know, The Guardian had lead-time since
I was their 1991 Distinguished Anniversary Public lecturer. I tipped The
Guardian off about the impending Transition debate!! Was that also
"diabolical", to use your word?

On the basis purely of your own reaction, I deduce that The Guardian ignored
my disagreement with you, while the northern Nigerian newspaper, The
Democrat, did not. Did the former publish nothing while the latter published
my defence? Is that what happened? I had nothing to do with which newspaper
published what. Indeed, I still have not seen what you say The Democrat
published. The Democrat did not send me a copy of what they had used. They
did not consult me before going to press. Above all, I am not guilty of
trying to incite Northern Nigerian Muslims against their distinguished
compatriot, as you seem to suggest. Heavens forbid. Nothing "diabolical" was
conspired.

Are The Guardian and The Democrat the only newspapers I alerted about the
Soyinka/Mazrui debate? As you know, I am myself a Kenyan. I have written
articles from time to time for the Sunday Nation in Nairobi. I alerted the
Sunday Nation about my defence against your original charges. The paper made
its own selection of what to publish. I had nothing to do with what the
newspaper selected. (However, it was good East African publicity for
Transition! Definitely nothing "diabolical" there!)

You refer to a "Satanic Trilogy" - presumably omitting both your original
article in Transition No. 51 which provoked my response, and your final
two-pages in Transition No. 57 implying a diabolical conspiracy between a
Kenyan Muslim and a Northern Nigerian Newspaper. Clearly you do not think
your original charges were "Satanic"? Nor do you Satanise your final two
pages (after allegedly letting me have "the last word"). Alas, our
differences in perception are about more than a mere television series. I,
the victim of unfounded charges, is turned into the culprit of a "Satanic"
debate.

Wole, nothing would please me more than to put all this fratricide behind
us. But it does not help when you come up with new allegations in every new
response.

By all means let us stop arguing in the columns of Transition. But what can
I say in semi-private correspondence to convince you that (a) I am not an
intolerant religious fanatic (b) my TV series does not denigrate indigenous
African culture (c) I am as African as you are and (d) I have not entered
into a conspiracy with The Democrat to incite Northern Nigerian Muslims
against you? (In any case, I do not regard Nigerian Muslims as fanatics
waiting to be incited! But I do agree that Nigeria as a whole has a
sectarian problem.)

I would like to return to the normality which once characterized our
relationship. Younger Africans look up to us as intellectual elders. We have
lately been disturbing their peace of mind with our quarrels. If you would
stop abusing me in public, we could be friends and serve our people better.

Best wishes of the season and Happy New Year to you and to your loved ones.

Yours sincerely,

Ali A. Mazrui, D.Phil., (Oxon)
Director, Institute of Global
Cultural Studies

AAM/nal

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© Copyright 2000 Africa Resource Center

Citation Format

Mazrui, Ali A.. (2000). DR. JEKYLL AND MR. SOYINKA: THE STRANGE CASE OF
NOBEL SCHIZOPHRENIA. West Africa Review: 1 , 2.[iuicode:
http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.1.2.26]

** Table of Contents

0.1. I. on Fatwas and Falsehoods
0.2. Ii. on Politics and Identity
0.3. Iii. on Images and the Media
0.4. Iv. Soyinka's "martyrdom" and Mazrui's Nigeria
0.5. V. the Politics of Ancestry
0.6. Vi. Concluding Observations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------

[Phnew1]

hello am jama:
thanks for forwarding the
masrui/soyinka argument.
can you please direct me to
the source. thank you again.
feysal

[abdull...@my-deja.com]

salaan dhamaantiin.

Waxa aad moodaa in uu "gameka" siyaasada uu sii badanayo, taas oo
keeneysa is faham waa iyo buuq sii dheerada. I am not a politician, and
I do not intent to be one. Wixii aan fikrad qabo ayaan mar walba waxaan
jeclaa in aan idin la wadaago. awal intii ay xaalada siyaasada
qaboobeey, dhib lama qabin. Laakiin hada waxaad moodaa in wareerku iyo
isfaham waagu uu sii badanayo. Dad badana ayba ka heleyaan in ay buuqa
iyo wareerka sii badiyaan. Hawlahaas nin ku fiican ma ahi. Marka idinka
oo ika raali ah, waxaan goostay inta dhinaca siyaasada ay qaboobeyso,
in aanan halkaan oo ahayd meesha keliya ee aan wax ku qoro aan halkaas
ku joojiyo.

Ismaqal danbe waakii xaaladu qaboobto.

Abdullahi Abdiqafar

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[abdull...@my-deja.com]

waxaan jeclahay in aan qeexo labo arrimood oo ku saabsan qoraalkeykii
hore: "gameka" siyaasada iyo waxa aan ula jeedo is faham waa iyo buuq
sii dheerada. waa midoo, "gameka" siyaasada waxaan ula jeedaa, ayada oo
qof waxa uu yiraahdo si kale loo fasirto ama loo qaato, ayada oo ay
ujeedadu tahay in lagu xumeeyo ama lagu magac tilo, si loo gaaro dan
gaar ahaaneed. taas oo soomaalida, gaar ahaan dhinaca siyaasada iyo
wargeysyadu iyo meelahaan lagu xaajoodo ay aad ugu badan tahay, hadana
ayba ka sii dareen siyaasada kulul awgeed. Waa mida kaloo, buuqa iyo is
faham waaga sii dheeranaya waxaan ula jeedaa in inta badan markii uu
qof wax qoro loo qaato in ay fikrada qofkaas iyo mida ay reerkiisu
qabaan ay isku mid tahay.(ka waran haddii reerku qabo fikrado kale
duwan, ma wanaagbaa mise waa xumaan?) Taas ayaa waxay keentay in buuqa
iyo is faham waaga ka dhexeeya soomaalida uu sii bado, xalna la isku
waayo, tuhun awgeed.Si arintaas loo kala saaro, ayaan waxaan cateeyey
fikradeyta waxa ay tahay, si aan wax la iskugu khaldin, ama aan loo
maleyn in reerku weerar soo yahay. wax intaas sii dheer, qofkii u
fasirta, asaka ayaa cirka roob ku og. Waad mahadsantiin. Waana inoo
balanteenii.

Abdullahi Abidqafar

In article <8m8qk0$f6a$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,