I've watched Pete Seeger sing in the new administration at least fifteen times in the past twenty four hours, I'm just so happy to see him, happy for him. I wish that another wise old man were up there, too. I wish they had Soyinka up there on the screen somewhere.
I've valued Wole Soyinka's perspective and voice on politics since I first heard his work spoken on stage in 1986. When the political activist is a Nobel laureate for literature, the writing produced is pretty damn illuminating. I want to know what the former political prisoner who has been tortured thinks Obama will do as President of the current United States of America.
So for kicks, I've complied what I could google of Soyinka on Obama. The best source comes from theBBC, The Inauguration of Barack Obama - Open Letters to a new President (audio file). (Scroll down for Soyinka's link.)
(Updated to replace "gray eminence" with wise old man. Turns out, that phrase doesn't mean what I thought it did.)
More below.
Obama Will Face Threats
The News - November 10, 2008
Prof. Soyinka: From the autonomous Republic of Ijegba to the United States, a toast to Obama.
By Wole Soyinka
....The first thing is that this is no surprise.
....
Again we always have to remember that it is an American President that we are dealing with. I do not expect drastic changes in America’s relationship with the rest of the world, but a very serious re-examination. To expect overnight change will be impracticable. But I am convinced that even as Obama was campaigning, he was already re-assessing American policies and taking certain decisions with regards to America’s misconduct all over the world. I am convinced that one of his prime targets is to change the image of America, not because he is Obama as a black man, but simply because the policies of America towards the rest of the world have been abysmal. The eight -year reign of George W. Bush plunged America down into the abyss of disrespect and opprobrium in the eyes of the rest of the world. In all Obama’s speeches, from his preparation, we know that he is going to make strenuous effort to reverse that trend without abandoning the principles and beliefs for which America stands.
The express significance for the youth is to adopt that mobilising, actualise and bring to fruition that marvellous strand of Obama’s yes, we can campaign. That is, for the youth to say, yes I can. For the youth to stop saying, no I can’t, so let me join them. The youth need to stand aside and say individually yes I can and then collectively, yes we can. In other words, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are, how disadvantaged you think you have been and even how advantaged you have been because of your birth or connection. No. I hope the youth will take away from the Obama experience the yes I can spirit.
....
Nigeria Exchange
He also described the election of Obama as a historical breakthrough saying "I have announced everywhere that it is time not just for America or Africa, but for the world to start celebrating an inevitable change: the end of the years of misrule, of deception, of hypocrisy and of lying to the people, parallelled only by the eight years we experienced here about the same time.
"We had the twin rulership across the Atlantic – one end on the axis of America; one end here. What lessons are in it for a country like Nigeria? They have a song in Kenya, that it is easier for a Luo to become the President of US than that of Kenya. To me, that is a sobering statement: it is easier for a Luo to become the president of far away America than that of his own country."
"People like that Mugabe enter their holes and cover their heads in shame,"
"Part of the Obama lesson for this continent is that those who believe that leadership depends on religion, race, ethnic and other related issues are obviously living in the past. They are completely antiquated and are not to be counted upon as civilized people.
"What America has done is to gate-crash so many of us into the third millennium. Nigeria had an opportunity to show the way. Zimbabwe had an opportunity too. But we lost it because a few antiquated people never accepted the fact that all men are created equal, and that it is actually possible for a virtual outsider, but who is qualified to be a citizen of a nation, to rise to the top position of the country."
From The Punch: D–Day: Obama carries lead into last hour
By Emma Anya, Akeem Lasisi and Waheed Bakare with agency report
Published: Tuesday, 4 Nov 2008
About 40 million absentee and early votes were believed to have been cast in more than 30 states as at Monday, more than ever before. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the pre-election day voting in key states.
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Sunday night, predicted victory for Obama in the election.
He spoke of an impending historical occurrence in the poll at the award night and presentation of prize to the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, organised by the Lumina Foundation.
At the event where Nigerian US-based writer, Nnedi Okoroafor-Mbadu, won the $20,000 prize with her work. Zarah the Windseeker, an elated Soyinka said philosophically, "I want to say in a few days that history will be made."
In a jovial endorsement of Obama, Soyinka argued that the Democratic Party’s candidate hailed from "an abule (village) next to mine in Abeokuta," giving the name of the village that sounded like Kenya from where the man of the moment originally hails from, Soyinka, however, reminded the audience of the moral and political lesson in the Obama phenomenon, saying, he "has not got two heads."