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