Ken Saro-Wiwa

[lumukanda]

i remember when i was at school, hearing about the execution of the nigerian writer and activist ken saro-wiwa, his main concern being the oil companies taking over the delta and displacing his people, the ogoni, here's a brief bit about him, and also a link to a website in his honour, one of the good guys imo.

The Life of Ken Saro-Wiwa

I’ll tell you this, I may be dead but my ideas will not die. Ken Saro-Wiwa 1995

Ken Saro-Wiwa was born in October 1941, the eldest son of a prominent family in Ogoni, which is today in Rivers State, Nigeria. After leaving university he initially pursued an academic career.

During the Biafran war (1967-1970) he was a Civilian Administrator for the Port of Bonny, near Ogoni in the Niger Delta. He went on to be a businessman, novelist and television producer. His long-running satirical TV series Basi & Co was purported to be the most watched soap opera in Africa.

Two of his best known works were drawn from his observations and experiences of the Biafran war. His most famous work, Sozaboy: a Novel in Rotten English, is a harrowing tale of a naive village boy recruited into the army. On a Darkling Plain, is a diary of his experiences during the war.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was consistently concerned about the treatment of Ogoni within the Nigerian Federation and in 1973 was dismissed from his post as Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State cabinet, for advocating greater Ogoni autonomy.

During the 1970s he built up his businesses in real estate and retail and in the 1980s concentrated on his writing, journalism and television production.

Throughout his work he often made references to the exploitation he saw around him as the oil and gas industry took riches from the beneath the feet of the poor Ogoni farmers, and in return left them polluted and disenfranchised.

In his book of short stories, Forest of Flowers (1986), the following passage from the story Night Ride, reflects Saro-Wiwa's anger at what he was seeing around him:

An old woman had hobbled up to him. My son, they arrived this morning and dug up my entire farm, my only farm. They mowed down the toil of my brows, the pride of the waiting months. They say they will pay me compensation. Can they compensate me for my labours? The joy I receive when I see the vegetables sprouting, God's revelation to me in my old age? Oh my son, what can I do?

What answer now could he give her? I'll look into it later, he had replied tamely.

Look into it later. He could almost hate himself for telling that lie. He cursed the earth for spouting oil, black gold, they called it. And he cursed the gods for not drying the oil wells. What did it matter that millions of barrels of oil were mined and exported daily, so long as this poor woman wept those tears of despair? What could he look into later? Could he make alternate land available? And would the lawmakers revise the laws just to bring a bit more happiness to these unhappy wretches whom the search for oil had reduced to an animal existence? They ought to send the oil royalties to the men whose farms and land were despoiled and ruined. But the lawyers were in the pay of the oil companies and the government people in the pay of the lawyers and the companies. So how could he look into it later?

In 1990, Saro-Wiwa started to dedicate himself to the amelioration of the problems of the oil producing regions of the Niger Delta. Focusing on his homeland, Ogoni, he launched a non-violent movement for social and ecological justice. In this role he attacked the oil companies and the Nigerian government accusing them of waging an ecological war against the Ogoni and precipitating the genocide of the Ogoni people. He was so effective, that by 1993 the oil companies had to pull out of Ogoni. This cost him his life.

http://www.remembersarowiwa.com/images/Ken_3.jpg

http://www.remembersarowiwa.com/lifeksw.htm

[synergy777]

there was a poem, short, 3.4 verses, i cannot remember its name, they published it here in the uk, the times or guardian. i will try to find it.

[synergy777]

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/flash/page/0,,1944783,00.html

a podcast docu bro.

[lumukanda]

thanks for that man, the name ken saro-wiwa is one that has stuck in my head for years, you seldom hear of him, even though what he said, and stood for back then, is every bit as topical today as it was back then, i'd heard about the bus monument they made in his honour, but this is the first time i've seen shots of it.
here is a man who knew what he believed in, and wasn't afraid to say it, all the way to the gallows, british oil companies, as well as the then nigerian military junta, have the blood of that man, and his compatriots on their hands.
bastards.

[felakuti]

thanks for that man, the name ken saro-wiwa is one that has stuck in my head for years, you seldom hear of him, even though what he said, and stood for back then, is every bit as topical today as it was back then.

Of course you won't hear of him.

The only ''good'' Africans in the eyes of the Elite-controlled western media are Nelson Mandela (for letting them off with their stolen South African loot), and Morgan Tsvangerai (for opposing the man that wants to return Zimbabwean land back to its rightful African owners.)

[synergy777]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2953454.ece

An African hero: Biko - the forgotten martyr

Thirty years after he was murdered in police custody, the African trade unionist remains a thorn in the side of the ANC and a stark reminder of a more radical approach to dealing with apartheid and its aftermath.

By Raymond Whitaker

Published: 12 September 2007

I met Steve Biko once. His miserable death on the floor of a South African prison cell, 30 years ago today, still lay a few years in the future. So did his friendship with the white newspaper editor, Donald Woods, resulting in the book and film, Cry Freedom!, which made him an icon. But if the name of Biko became a thorn in the side of the white regime, today's commemorations will be equally uncomfortable for South Africa's black majority government.

In the early 1970s, few whites had heard of Steve Biko. I had, because I was covering "alternative" politics – such stirrings against apartheid that white liberals and their allies in other communities could get away with – for a South African newspaper, The Star. However it was anything but a full-time assignment.

Never did the grip of apartheid seem as complete as it did then. Nelson Mandela had been locked up on Robben Island for the best part of a decade; in the all-white parliament, the lone dissenting voice was that of Helen Suzman. Blacks could only practise politics in the "homelands" created for them in the poorest, most arid parts of the country.

A handful of organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), of which I had been a member not so long before, sought to keep the non-racial flame alive. But the enforced segregation of the universities, and the sheer gulf between the daily lives of whites and the rest, made it increasingly difficult to find any common ground. To the horror of the well-meaning whites at the head of Nusas, their black counterparts began to accuse them of holding back the cause of black empowerment through paternalism and unconscious racism.

At the forefront of those levelling the charge – which many of those liberals might now admit had considerable truth – was a young activist called Steve Biko. A former leader of strikes and sit-ins at his segregated medical school near Durban, he had quit his studies and formed the South African Students' Organisation, which excluded whites. Now he was coming to Johannesburg for a conference where the split with Nusas would become final, and I hoped to interview him about his espousal of Black Consciousness, which argued that blacks had to overcome the feelings of inferiority instilled into them, the "oppression within", before they could deal with whites as equals. "It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life," he explained in 1971.

Had I understood the concept better at the time, I would have realised that there was no chance of getting Biko to talk to a paper like The Star, which in his view shared all the faults of the whites in Nusas. But just to encounter him, or watch him glowering at an exam-room table behind a cardboard sign bearing the name "Saso", was to feel his charisma. Tall, handsome, articulate – "Why do you call yourself black, when your skin is brown?" a judge once asked him. "Why do you call yourself white, when you are actually pink?" he shot back – he bore himself with rare confidence that showed no hint of any "oppression within".

The apartheid government of Prime Minister John Vorster should have realised immediately that Biko was a threat, but all it saw was his call for blacks to work separately from whites. In its glee at the discomfiture of Nusas and similar organisations, it gave Saso room to operate. By 1973 it realised its mistake, and "banned" Biko, confining him to his hometown in the eastern Cape and prohibiting him from writing or speaking in public and anyone else from quoting his words. But it was too late: when first the students of Soweto, then black townships across the country, rose up in 1976, the Black Consciousness movement was their inspiration. It had filled the vacuum left by the African National Congress, most of whose leaders were jailed or in exile.

If the townships revolt undermined the myth of white omnipotence, Biko's death destroyed any claim the regime had to morality. Not only was he beaten unconscious while being detained without trial in Port Elizabeth, he was then carried nearly 1,000 miles in a police van, naked and in a coma, to Pretoria, where he died of a brain haemorrhage on 12 September, 1977. The police minister, Jimmy Kruger (memorably played by John Thaw in Cry Freedom!) claimed Biko had been on hunger strike, telling parliament: "His death leaves me cold."

That added to international revulsion against South Africa. In 1980 the singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel had a world hit with Biko, in which he sang: "You can blow out a candle/ But you can't blow out a fire/ Once the flames begin to catch/ The wind will blow it higher." His words referred equally to the resistance inside the country and the pressure by Western publics on their governments to withdraw support for the apartheid regime.

For the first time countries began imposing sanctions against South Africa, starting with the UN Security Council mandatory ban on arm sales to the country. Cry Freedom! in 1987, with Denzel Washington as Biko and Kevin Kline as Woods, gave Steve Biko the same kind of international name recognition as Nelson Mandela. So why is it that Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, never mentions the name of Steve Biko once?

After he became president, Mr Mandela made some amends, saying on the 20th anniversary of Biko's death: "That he was indeed a great man who stood head and shoulders above his peers is borne out not only by the testimony of those who knew him and worked with him, but by the fruits of his endeavours.

"History called upon Steve Biko at a time when the political pulse of our people had been rendered faint by banning, imprisonment, exile, murder and banishment. Repression had swept the country clear of all visible organisation of the people. But at each turn of history, apartheid was bound to spawn resistance; it was destined to bring to life the forces that would guarantee its death.

"It is the dictate of history to bring to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko, a fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people."

Although Mandela claimed in the same address that the ANC welcomed Black Consciousness from the early 1970s "as part of the genuine forces of the revolution", an unhappy schism has existed.. More than a decade earlier the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had split from the ANC in protest at the desire of Mandela and his peers to work with all races in South Africa. The Black People's Convention, which Biko founded as an umbrella movement of Black Consciousness groups, threw in its lot with the PAC in post-apartheid South Africa, and has ended up on the political margins, with scarcely any representation in parliament.

If Biko were alive today, it is quite possible, given his charisma, that he would be the leader of a far more vigorous opposition to the ANC government than the existing one. Instead, the ANC successfully co-opted most of his following. As a martyr, however, he remains potentially unsettling: the commemorations of his death have included an international conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT) examining his politics and relevance to modern-day South Africa, touching on politically sensitive issues such as land transfers and black economic empowerment. Organised by the Steve Biko Foundation, it is part of a series of events across the country which the SBF has named 30:30 – 30 years since his death, and his age when he died.

His son Nkosinathi, who manages the Foundation, was just six at the time of Biko's death. "In his short life he made a tremendous contribution not only to the political freedom of South Africa, but to the mental liberation of black people worldwide," he said. "In popular culture, he is a very powerful symbol of hope, an icon of change. He helped to articulate our understanding, our own identity that continues to resonate in young South Africans to this day. His ideas have a real influence well beyond the political field, in cultural organisations, in research organisations and in churches."

Not enough, according to Premesh Lalu, an associate professor at the University of Western Cape. While it was important to remember Biko's death, said Mr Lalu, "I personally think there is much more to be said about Biko and done with Biko's thoughts." To an ANC government vulnerable to left-wing accusations that it has pursued rigidly orthodox capitalist economic policies that have not done enough for the masses, it is not an entirely comforting thought.

There is disenchantment among young South Africans, who see the country's leaders embroiled in scandal and a new black elite growing richer while most blacks find it harder and harder to keep up with inflation.

Though most of the wearers are too young to remember him, Steve Biko's face, given a Warhol-style treatment, has become a popular icon on T-shirts recently. Nkosinathi rejects any suggestion that this might be trivialising his memory, arguing: "He is one of the attractive symbols of popular culture. Not just here but on the streets of New York, Brasilia and Liverpool, he is someone who resonates well." Kopano Ratele, a researcher with the University of South Africa's Institute of Social and Health Sciences, agreed, saying: "People who were teenagers or in their twenties in the 1970s still remember Biko with nostalgia, and they credit him for giving them a sense of pride in themselves."

It will be interesting to see how President Thabo Mbeke, whose obsession with maintaining control of the ANC and the government is entirely at odds with the kind of grass-roots activism for which Biko stood, will reconcile these contradictions tonight when he delivers the eighth annual Biko Memorial Lecture, which will bring the conference at UCT to a close. Mr Ratele is in little doubt. If Biko were still alive, he said, he would be disappointed to see his ideas compromised by poverty and inequality. "If you are unemployed and poorly-paid and you see the rich blacks, of what use is your pride?"

Additional reporting by Ian Evans in Cape Town