Towards the end of 2012, an explosive new
book by Africa’s first literature Nobel
laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, titled:
‘Harmattan Haze on an African Spring’ was
quietly released to the reading public. I
guess this must have been about the same
time that Professor Chinua Achebe’s highly
controversial and contentious book, ‘There
was A Country: A personal history of Biafra”
also emerged on the country’s literary
firmament. The focus of Achebe’s book is
Nigeria and the civil war that rocked the
country to its very foundations between
1969 and 1971. On its part, Soyinka’s latest
literary offering takes an incisive look at the
African condition exploring how her tragic
and bitter past has shaped the present but
may also contain those elements necessary
for the redemption of a much abused
continent.
‘Harmattan Haze on an African Spring’ is a
characteristically ‘Soyinkaesque’ tour de
force traversing diverse spheres of human
knowledge including history, geography,
political economy, literary and visual arts,
philosophy and psychology among several
others. Without exculpating Africans from
responsibility for the present condition of
the continent – its backwardness, ceaseless
conflicts and deepening underdevelopment
– Soyinka insists that a confrontation with
the continent’s history and a refusal to
sweep its lessons under the carpet is
foundational to understanding Africa and
charting a viable path to her socio-
economic, moral and political rejuvenation.
I am not very much concerned in this piece
with Soyinka’s rather controversial advocacy
of a return to pristine pre-colonial African
spirituality as part of the necessary
processes for the salvation of the continent.
Like Achebe, Soyinka extols the tolerance,
accommodation and liberal spirit of African
traditional religions comparing this to the
perceived totalising authoritarianism and
hegemonic aspirations of Islam and
Christianity on the continent. Traditional
African spirituality, he believes, has a lot to
teach contemporary Africa on the virtues of
religious tolerance but also stemming the
destructive tide of sectarian extremism in
diverse parts of the continent. For me, the
most moving parts of Soyinka’s rendering of
our history are those in which he dwells at
length on the slave trade and its’ terribly
dehumanizing implications for the black
race.
Soyinka’s vivid imagery confirms Chief
Obafemi Awolowo’s press statement on
28th June, 1961, that “From the beginning
of recorded history, the black man has been
the conspicuous butt of all manner of
inhuman treatment. In the palaces of the
Arabian potentates – both in the Middle East
and in North Africa – he was degraded and
enslaved. When the so-called ‘Dark Continent
of Africa’ was discovered, the European
marauders hunted him down like a common
beast, captured him, and sold him into
slavery in the Americas and West Indies.”
Awolowo goes on to detail the negative
consequences of colonialism and neo-
colonialism for the African continent.
Of course, we are aware of Walter Rodney’s
seminal work, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped
Africa’, which proved incontrovertibly that
the very same exploitative forces of slavery
and colonialism responsible largely for the
underdevelopment of Africa also played
pivotal roles in the socio-economic and
industrial ascendancy and triumphalism of
the West. Yet, there are those who, despite
these glaring facts of history, see in the
position of scholars like Rodney only an
attempt to push onto others the
responsibility for Africa’s predicament while
denying Africans of any culpability. This was
certainly the view of President Barak Obama,
when in his speech to Ghana’s parliament
on Saturday, July 11, 2009 he said: “It is easy
to point fingers, and to pin the blame for
these problems on others. Yes, a colonial
map that made little sense bred conflict, but
the West is not responsible for the
destruction of the Zimbabwean economy
over the last decade, or wars in which
children are enlisted as combatants.”
This kind of superficial reading of history
will surely benefit from the following insight
from one of Africa’s foremost scholars, the
late Professor Claude Ake: “The slave trade
disorganized and devastated Africa on such
scale that she was forever available for
domination by virtually everyone. Not
surprisingly the Europeans carved up Africa
among themselves, colonized her and
proceeded to complete the work of
disorganization and debasement which had
begun with the slave trade. A great deal of
emphasis has been placed on the
detrimental economic effects of
colonization. But this was not necessarily its
most damaging effect. In all probability, it
contributed less to our problems than the
political and cultural policies. Colonialism
was premised on the inferiority of the
colonised. That premise is the very content
of the ‘civilising mission’”. Ruminating on
these issues reminded me, once again, of
the indelible role of the late Chief M.K.O.
Abiola in the history both of Nigeria and
Africa. Mention the name Abiola today, and
what comes to mind are either his
numerous philanthropic activities or his bid
for the country’s presidency in the historic
but cruelly aborted June 12, 1993,
presidential election.
But Abiola meant much more than these. He
was easily the wealthiest black man in his
life time. A key mission he adopted later in
his life was the vigorous campaign for the
payment of reparations to Africa for the
depredations of slavery, colonialism and
neo-colonialism. Abiola selflessly deployed
his enormous resources towards the
attainment of this end of correcting a
historic injustice and monumental crime
against humanity. Given a rationale for his
crusade in a speech in London in 1992,
Abiola declared “Our demand for
reparations is based on the tripod of moral,
historic and legal arguments. Who knows
what path Africa’s social development would
have taken if our great centres of civilisation
had not been razed in search of human
cargo? Who knows how our economies
would have developed…?”. In December
1990, Abiola convened and sponsored the
first world conference on reparations at the
Nigeria Institute of International Affairs
(NIIA), Lagos, where he formally inaugurated
the reparations campaign. The campaign
moved to the continental level in June 1991
when the Heads of State and Government of
the Organization of African Unity now the
African Union as well as the 55th Council of
Ministers of the Union passed a resolution
recognizing the injustice of slavery in Africa
and affirmed the continent’s right to
reparations.
The Eminent Persons Group set up to steer
the reparations campaign convened the first
Pan-African conference on Reparations in
Abuja in April 1993 with participants drawn
from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. The
conference issued a communiqué
reiterating the imperative of paying
reparations to Africa for the physical and
psychological brutality, socio-cultural
dislocation and economic dysfunction
caused by slavery, colonialism and
imperialism in general; acts of injustice
without parallel in human history. All of
these efforts were personally funded by
Chief MKO Abiola even though the
Babangida regime later donated the sum of
$500,000 to the cause. It was as the
campaign was gaining momentum that
Abiola ventured into politics to contest
Nigeria’s presidency on the platform of the
Social Democratic Party (SDP) – a distraction
that led to his eventual tragic fate.
But why did MKO abandon the reparations
crusade? Could he have seen that paying
reparations to largely corrupt, decadent and
oppressive African states would be like
pouring water down a basket? Could he
have noticed that most African leaders in
their brazen contempt for and mistreatment
of their own people are no better than the
pre-colonial slave masters and their African
collaborators? Could he have noticed that
the majority of African leaders have slavishly
and voluntarily sold their intellects to
western International Financial Institutions
like the IMF and World Bank and lack the
capacity to pursue autonomous policies that
can liberate the socio-economic potentials
of an otherwise well endowed continent?
Indeed, Professor Nworisara Nwolise of the
Department of Political Science, University of
Ibadan, recently noted that if a slave ship
were to berth on the ports of African
countries today, millions would voluntarily
scramble to get aboard and be relieved of
the agony of an existence no different from
hell on earth. Surely, it cannot get worse
than that. True, the case for reparations to
Africa for the depredations of slavery and
colonialism remains unassailable. If the Jews
have been paid billions in reparations for
the holocaust that lasted roughly twelve
years, how much should Africa be
recompensed for dehumanizing slavery and
colonialism that lasted over 400 years,
deprived the continent of the best of her
human resource while also mercilessly
exploiting her natural and mineral
resources? But right now, African leaders
simply lacks the moral integrity to make a
case for reparations. Indeed, the way Africa
is largely misgoverned today simply validates
the case of those who argue that the slave
raiders actually did the captured slaves a
favour by liberating them from the ‘heart of
darkness”. What a great pity.

REF: A.O. Ali; University of Jos ''Blacks in Diaspora'' 2001.
Ayodele Ogunsola; Student of History and Diplomatic Studies, Tai Solarin University of Education.
The Nation Website.
www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v3/v3i1a3.htm
www.allafrica.com/../200309120260.html
www.thenationonlineng.net
www.osondu.com/../reparationssummit.htm