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The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka

August/September 2024Interviewsvol8-no3
Soyinka

Illustration by Ekundayo R. Baiyegunhi for THE REPUBLIC.

THE REPUBLIC INTERVIEWS

The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka

As he turns 90, Wole Soyinka discusses the current state of the world, the power of African literature, the social climate in Tinubu’s Nigeria, and the world ahead.
Soyinka

Illustration by Ekundayo R. Baiyegunhi for THE REPUBLIC.

THE REPUBLIC INTERVIEWS

The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka

As he turns 90, Wole Soyinka discusses the current state of the world, the power of African literature, the social climate in Tinubu’s Nigeria, and the world ahead.

Support for this essay came from the Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. If you would like to support our work to make African ideas more accessible, email us here. 

In the annals of African literary history, few names command as much reverence and admiration as that of Professor Wole Soyinka. In July 2024, he turned 90. Ahead of his birthday, we had the opportunity to discuss the many ways in which his work continues to illuminate the darkest corners of the human experience and inspire hope. Our discussion happened in April 2024, following a series of email exchanges. I wrote from Lagos, while he wrote back from Johannesburg. Our conversation covered the state of the world, the power of African literature, and the socio-political climate in Nigeria under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. 

Professor Soyinka’s journey as a writer and activist began in earnest during Nigeria’s struggle for independence, and his works have since become synonymous with the fight against oppression and tyranny. ‘Nigeria is a product of British imperialism,’ he told me, ‘the writer a liberator from!’ Our conversation began with a reflection on his seminal 2004 Reith Lecture, ‘Climate of Fear’, and its relevance to today’s world 20 years on. Soyinka’s assessment is stark and unflinching: ‘The direst fears expressed in those lectures have been over-subscribed,’ he said. ‘I shudder at the bequest we are leaving the coming generations.’  

We discussed the ongoing genocide in Gaza, how Soyinka’s visit to Palestine in 2002 left an indelible mark on him, and he expressed his profound dismay at the current situation: ‘The ongoing cruelty is unbelievable,’ he explained, ‘rendered literal in that metaphorical expression—OVERKILL! The atrocity by Hamas on October 7, 2023, has been buried under rubble from sheer vengefulness and the sheer weight of slaughter of Palestinian innocents.’ Turning to Africa, we discussed the growing influence of China and Russia on the continent, and the resurgence of military coups in West Africa. Soyinka expressed a sense of relief that the younger generation seems acutely aware of the ‘New Scramble for Africa’ but also worried about the lack of unity and foresight among current African leaders: ‘We should all feel ashamed to remain inert booty for any predator—East, West, North, or South. Just what goes on in the heads of African leadership? And followership also!’  

I took the opportunity to ask Soyinka about Tinubu’s Nigeria, especially the fall outs he has had with Peter Obi’s supporters, ‘Obidients’, since the controversial 2023 elections. I noted that Soyinka has been criticized for appearing soft on supporters of President Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress while referring to Obidients as fascists. The professor, however, disagreed. According to Soyinka, ‘War was declared by the so-called Obidients and camp followers,’ moreover, ‘I took pains—I always do!—to comment on more than one side of the picture.’  

Our conversation also ventured into his satirical works, A Play of Giants and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, both of which will celebrate milestones this year. To many around the world, Soyinka’s literature and literary career serve as reminders of the profound impact one individual can have in the relentless pursuit of truth and justice. But when I asked Soyinka if he thinks of his legacy, he replied characteristically, ‘Legacy? I have never embarked on that project. It is more than enough to dedicate one’s energy to existential challenges.’ Our full interview continues below. 

WALE LAWAL

Thank you, Professor, for honouring our request for an interview. I wanted to start with a few questions on the state of the world today, before turning to African literature, Nigeria, and your plans as you turn 90. Twenty years ago, you gave the Reith Lecture, ‘Climate of Fear’. I’ve listened to it a few times and read the book version. I thought we could start our conversation with the following question: How does our world today compare with the world you addressed back then?  

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

I shall be blunt! If I were a young man just setting out in life in this era, I would not bring children into this world. The direst fears expressed in those lectures have been oversubscribed. I shudder at the bequest we are leaving the coming generations. 

WALE LAWAL

In your lecture, you remarked that: ‘even in the supposedly egalitarian domain of death, some continue to die more equally than others.’ I’ve thought about this a lot recently and especially considering Israel’s assault on Gaza, which as you know, through social media is being documented in real time. You visited Palestine in 2002, and what you saw deeply affected you. Did you leave with any hope? Fears? Did you imagine that we might arrive at a point in world history where we would watch live as Palestinians documented what can only be called their extermination? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

The ongoing cruelty is unbelievable, rendered literal in that metaphorical expression—OVERKILL! The atrocity by Hamas on October 7 has been buried under rubble from sheer vengefulness and the sheer weight of slaughter of Palestinian innocents. Yes, I visited Palestine with my colleagues from the International Parliament of Writers. We spoke exhaustively to leaders on both sides. During our stay, grievous as the situation was, I never remotely imagined Apocalypse. I try sometimes to imagine another meeting with Yasser Arafat—what would I say to him? How to express this carnage? Offer what remedial action? 

WALE LAWAL

There’s a sense in which this moment feels like the dawn of a new global era. I felt this in the urgency with which South Africa took some form of moral leadership, while the biggest Western governments lacked moral clarity about Israel’s siege on Gaza. Were you struck in any way by South Africa going up against Israel at the International Court of Justice? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

That principled action by South African leadership redeems, to a large extent, its amoral support of Russia over Ukraine. 

WALE LAWAL

Closer to home, this new era feels even more imminent, with the growing presence of China and Russia in Africa, and the decline in attitudes towards the West. Like many in my generation, I often worry that there is a new scramble for Africa underway, which our current leaders have underestimated, failed to grasp and/or cannot unite themselves against. When you look at the political climates across the continent today (which in West Africa has seen a wave of military coups), what worries you?  

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

I feel some sense of relief that your generation is taking notice of the aptly described New Scramble for Africa. We should all feel ashamed to remain inert booty for any predator, East, West, North or South. Just what goes on in the heads of African leadership? And followership also! Watch our cherished ‘masses’ abetting and jubilating at this e-installation of a khaki belt across sub-Sahara! A congenital slave mentality that relishes the yoke of appropriation? Senegal came as a relief, but it was close! 

WALE LAWAL

So, what gives you hope? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Hope is a word I abandoned long ago, together with its traveling companions such as ‘optimism’ or ‘pessimism’. I work with what there is. If it needs changing, I try to make a dent in it. Let others also do their bit. 

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WALE LAWAL

I wanted us to talk a bit about the role of literature in all this or how literature can guide us through these shifts. One of my favourites of your plays is A Play of Giants. The play satirizes some of the most notorious African dictators, whose names you only slightly disguised. Did you have any worries writing it? Did any of those dictators ever react to it? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

All those ‘giants’ portrayed in the play—do you think they ever read? However, we know that they are told, they are kept informed by their co-opted image makers who love to identify ‘enemies’. So, they do know and react to material like Giants in any form. While doing some exile teaching in Ghana, the Head of a police Intelligence unit sent for me to request that I keep a low profile during an unscheduled visit by Idi Amin. He confirmed that the ‘genial giant’ had formally complained to the Ghanaian government that it was tolerating an ‘enemy’ who deserved to be dealt with unceremoniously. I was then editing the journal, Transition, and we had taken on Idi Amin, so it was not simply on account of one play.  

WALE LAWAL

A Play of Giants will be 40 this year and I find myself drawing connections between the play and your recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. The novel is also satirical and political, but its characters don’t seem as obvious as those in a Play of Giants. Are there conversations or narratives (about power, corruption etc.) you began in a Play of Giants that you found yourself continuing in Chronicles? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

There is always a thread of continuity somewhere in the works of most writers. In Chronicles, however, I hope it is also apparent that my target includes the citizenry itself as sometimes its own worst enemy, often more liable than leadership. 

WALE LAWAL

It is widely believed that your writing and political activism nourish one another. Do you agree with this? Have there been moments where you felt you should be doing one more than the other, or should be doing something else altogether? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Yes, to all of the above. The pendulum has swung in more than the two scientific directions! The ‘Yes’ answer to the second part is especially agonized. Yes verily, there are periods when I wish I were engaged in anything at all but literature! 

WALE LAWAL

I find it interesting that some of the most political writing emerges under repressive regimes. In our hyper-consumerist age of the internet, artificial intelligence etc., does literature still have a political purpose?  

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Technological aids should serve human intelligence and creative thinking, not replace them. There are any number of motor skills that the human construct should never abandon. If I ever find myself charged with a ministry of education, I will compel school pupils to engage routinely in those functions. It is not too early for a global agreement on Artificial Intelligence—I believe the call is already being made—so, let’s not get ‘wise after the event’. That is where philosophy makes its pitch. Within immediate existential concerns, however, we should keep their eyes, ears but—most especially, minds—wide open and constantly. diagnostic. The world is embarked on a spree of accessibility that will mend or break humanity, very likely the latter. Even literature may be laid prostrate under its dominion. Soon, it will be impossible to address that insistent question in any confident manner: Where is Truth? Or, perhaps, more modestly: What are FACTS? 

WALE LAWAL

In the Nigerian literary community today, there have been several debates around who gets to identify as a Nigerian writer. Considering the high rates of emigration and our fast-growing diaspora, many wonder if literature by Nigerians in the diaspora can still be considered Nigerian literature. It is a much more layered debate than this interview permits me to describe but emigration is not a new phenomenon, so this debate is not exactly new. Moreover, emigration is not always definite: you, for instance, have lived and worked from many parts of the world while still producing what many agree is Nigerian literature. I wondered: how do you define a Nigerian writer? Are you always or have you always been a Nigerian writer? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Literature—like all arts—takes its roots in culture. ‘Nigerian’ defines one thing, ‘writer’ another, rooted in culture. Along the way, the twain do intersect and create a category of literary convenience. Nigeria is a product of British imperialism, the writer a liberator from! Not all the time but essentially. The taste of the pudding is in the eating—over to the consumer! What matters is that they at least savour the product, then pontificate to their stomach’s content. 

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WALE LAWAL

Looking more closely at Nigeria today, what are your thoughts on President Tinubu’s first year in office? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

All right, the year’s assessment ledger is thrown open. Acknowledged experts will give their verdict on what weighs most, deservedly, on the Nigerian mind—the economy. Are current measures working? Is salvation around the corner? I defer to their opinion, being frankly deficient in that department of intricate calculations and risk content. Related to economy, however, is of course—Security! If banditry and religious terror drive farmers off the land, simply replace the word economy with starvation, and little else is required in the way of exposition. Having participated in some in-depth and holistic brainstorming on this challenge under prior regimes, as well as internationally, I can only deplore the continuing failure to adopt, or adapt existing proposals for the drastic transformation of security concept at its most basic, central to which is structural decentralization and civic involvement—obviously not in totality, but in hierarchical formation.  

Check the various submissions on this challenge both at the federal and state levels. I see no sign yet of Tinubu’s government blasting its way out of the hermetic box installed and inhabited by previous regimes. It is not as if this existential burden is peculiar to Nigeria, or to the African continent. It does not require time, for instance, but will, to redress a situation where some state vigilante squads are authorized to carry sophisticated weapons for their own security while others are confined to the bow and arrow, the patrol cudgel and sakabula (backyard ironmongery). Again and again, I have urged governors—if the centre does not budge, and urgently, on this issue, resort to self-procurement, even in defiance of the centre. Let that unit seek redress in the courts on constitutional responsibilities for tiers of governance, but this lop-sided policy of concessional whims should be stopped cold. Acquire what you need and build your own civil defence structures! However, even Security belongs yet again in my area of amateurism, which is where, as readily conceded, we Nigerians tend to be most vocal. My main territories of confident assertiveness rest largely on corruption and human rights. Come to think of it, the right to life and secure existence is also central to fundamental human rights, so maybe I am not entirely out of line. 

Regarding that innate birthright of all humanity, surely a year in office is more than sufficient to plug the holes in the canopy of elementary citizen equity and entitlement. There can be no excuses for subsisting violations in a democracy, such as illegal incarceration of victims of religious bigotry and high-handedness. I raise yet again the case of Mubarak Bala, which simply serves as departure point for all others. The charge of ‘blasphemy’ does not exist in the nation’s criminal code. Murder does, and prominently. Yet murder, even under public glare, goes unpunished, even openly applauded and celebrated by public figures in our midst, instigating emulation by both closet and strutting psychopaths. Such grotesque assaults on the public do not require a whole year for the emplacement of severely corrective mechanisms—there is no statute of limitations for murder. One law for all—nothing less guarantees social cohesion and claims to the most elementary implementation of—Justice. 

WALE LAWAL

During the elections, you criticized Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi’s online supporters, ‘Obidients’, as being fascist. As you already know, Obidients called this criticism unfair. Some I have spoken to argue that much of their action was virtual via social media, while in cities like Lagos, agents from other parties reportedly used violence and intimidation to force votes but did not receive similar attention or criticism. Could you share your thoughts on our last election and on this view from Obiedients in particular?  

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

I see you’ve opted for diplomatic provocation here! Not to mince words, war was declared by the so-called Obidients and camp followers, and it proved a campaign as obscene, distortive and unprincipled as we have learnt to expect from prime movers in any illicit, conspiratorial agenda, when exposed and—thwarted. Ironically, however, that confrontation proved equally enlightening. Let me begin by observing—as a few have indeed attempted to interject only to be howled down!—that the critical interview and follow-up statement were severely shortchanged in the reporting. I took pains—I always do!—to comment on more than one side of the picture, which meant that space was devoted to deploring the violence to which you refer. I even ridiculed the resort to ‘juju’ mumbo-jumbo tactics of intimidation, including ritual animal sacrifices at cross-roads! The press had however launched the theme, and the disgruntled followed. 

Next, however, I am extremely gratified that the response pattern did take the form it did. It served to define, through massive self-exposure, the full meaning and practice of fascism in its lurid colours. It served to crack wide open the carapace of pretence among the least suspected, exposed yet again the time-discredited tactics of manipulative hysteria to distract attention from a frustrated plan of action. Fascism is made manifest when you exercise your right of opinion in Kontagora, only to have your grandmother’s home burnt down in Anambra. That is when we are moved to remind the illegitimate offspring of Josef Goebbels that we did not face down monstrosities like Sanni Abacha only to be intimidated by Black clones of Donald Trump. I am willing to engage any denier of that charge on any podium, but all takers are advised to first browse through Number XII of my Intervention series, titled ‘Baiting Igbophobia’. An augmented edition is in the press, perhaps even a third, and a fourth…this is an issue that takes us back in history and also questions the entire concept of nation-being.  

For now, let us simply declare that this yet inconclusive chapter has led to my deep re-assessment of much that one had taken for granted, all the way back to pre-independence, including presumptions of self-regulation and commitment to principle. At one stage or the other of our existence, we all identify a defining phase of social struggle. For me, that watershed, a Life-and-Death demarcation line was set by Abacha and his regimen of sheer horror. What that means, in practical terms, is that anyone who considers it legitimate to promote even a fraction of the blasphemous falsehoods propagated by Abacha and his squalid squads to dehumanize a number of us in that struggle has placed himself or herself beyond the pale of our concept of the human family. 

WALE LAWAL

You’ll be turning 90 later this year; do you find yourself thinking often about your legacy? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Legacy? I have never embarked on that project. It is more than enough to dedicate one’s energy to existential challenges. 

WALE LAWAL

So, what excites you currently about the future? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

Children.  

WALE LAWAL

You once mentioned that, as artists, ‘you have to battle for your creative space.’ Are you still battling for yours? In what ways? 

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

I go into hiding. I wear disguises. I fake identity⎈

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