Wole Soyinka a persona non grata in the United States of America?
Cornelius Hamelberg
US Revokes Wole Soyinka’s Visa Permanently ?
Is that a fact? Of course such a ripple is bound to cause international reverberations and not only in literary circles
It’s time that we revisit Soyinka’s Reith Lectures
God forbid any holier-than-thou from me to you or the late Oswald Mosley, but here’s some good advice: Moshe Chaim Luzzatto : Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Just
Putting it mildly: Trump is peeved that Wole Soyinka is a Nobel Laureate, whilst he, the Mighty King Donald Trump is yet to be awarded the Prize that he covets so much. Instead of “so much”, I almost wrote schmuck . a Yiddish word I learned over there in New York.
There are folks that would be willing to make a deal with the devil just to be awarded a Nobel prize or two
What else to expect from Trump? Democracy ? Freedom of Speech?
Well, there’s The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and all that jazz, but if you are a bona fide American citizen and your criticism of America's Greatest Emperor ever goes over the top, I fear, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride and that whether your name is Jonathan Swift or Barack Obama or James B. Comey or Kamala Harris or Lyin' Hillary or John Bolton , or , when it comes to colour, you’re Black Ben the Blacksmith or merely some “West African Sepia" from one of Trump’s shitholes, then I’m the messenger sent to tell you that you could be heading for the penitentiary or for the death penalty, heading for the permanent title “persona non grata” followed by obliteration and the HaOlam haBa or the other place Jahannam, because it looks like the castle of your skin will be surely going to prison if you mess with the king of America - and - if as a moral reaction, in righteous indignation, the castle of your mind starts speaking truth to power then you could be meeting the same fate as in “The Man Died “
Indeed, just as Apartheid is now permanently under arrest in South Africa, so too US Has Revoked Wole Soyinka’s Visa Permanently
It’s history being made, it’s one of the sure signs of the end times, and Wole Soyinka explains it all here
(https://www.google.com/search?q=Wole+Soyinka+explains+about+Visa+Revocation
Also, here, in a mode known as challenge, Brer Soyinka was adding, not sugar but pepper and fire to fuel the palaver: Unending Saga: Idi Amin In Whiteface
https://www.google.com/search?q=Unending+Saga%3A+Idi+Amin+In+Whiteface
“Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don’t win the race
It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth” ( I and I)
At this stage, making things worse could only be exceeded , superseded, exacerbated by another war of words , worst case scenario, jungle Brother Wole Soyinka titles his next play, not The Glass Menagerie or Blues for Mister Charlie or The Zoo Story but something as incongruous as “The Monkey in the White House” or, still signifying, comes out with his next masterpiece, in the genre known as ribaldry : “The Black Saint and The Big White Ape” -an experiment in literary criticism
The past couple of months I’ve been missing Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad terribly - I imagine that if he had been around these past two years - since 7th of October , 2023 he would have been socking it to Trump & his Habibi verbally; other famous last words was Charles Taylor saying he wasn’t going to be taking any marching orders from the “ white boy” in the White House….
Kamasi Washington : My Family
Heads up : Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Correction ( a link that works )
If criticism of Trump is sufficient reason to revoke Wole Soyinka’s visa, then it could soon be a very long list of persona non grata
He could start with e.g. Noam Chomsky ( in Chomsky’s case it could be deportation or banishment from Trump’s kingdom, grab ‘em by the you know where , Trump’s Garden of Eden which the Serpent doesn't want Trump to make great again.
There are other Trump bashers such as John Mearsheimer who is a fellow American and Americans don't get sent to Guantanamo
There’s George Galloway ( Scotland
IT would have been interesting if Julius Malema had accompanied Cyril Ramaphosa for that White House visitation
There are many foreign ( Non-American) critics of Donald Trump
If it was the whole world or even just Europe that had to vote, to decide who will be elected the next President of the United States, then Trump would have to concede defeat before the voting even started, because , as he already knows he wouldn’t have the ghost of a chance