E-mail a friendNgugi wa Thiong'o
airdate December 12, 2007
Writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o is one of East Africa's leading novelists. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and his Weep Not Child was the first major novel in English by an East African. His writings on corruption in his native Kenya led to his ‘77 imprisonment. Upon release, he was barred from college/university positions and went into exile. He's taught at several institutions and is currently a professor at UC Irvine (CA). Wizard of the Crow is his first novel in nearly two decades.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Tavis: I'm pleased an honored to welcome Ngugi wa Thiong'o to this program. The heralded Kenyan novelist has been called one of Africa's greatest writers. In 1977 he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government for his courageous play "I Will Marry When I Want." He's written a number of notable novels since then, including his latest, "Wizard of the Crow." Now a professor of literature at UC Irvine here in Southern California, professor, nice to have you on the program.
Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o: (Unintelligible.)
Tavis: And it's good to see you.
wa Thiong'o: Thank you.
Tavis: Tell me what "Wizard of the Crow" is, before I go back into your storied past.
wa Thiong'o: Yeah, actually, "Wizard of the Crow" is what I call a global epic from Africa. It is set in a fictional African territory, but it covers many grounds, from Africa, Asia, to America. Yeah. I call it a global epic because the main story or the main idea is a study of dictatorships in the 20th century Africa, and also the Third World.
Because we went through a period when we had dictators like Mobutu (unintelligible), we had Idi Amin, we had (unintelligible) from Central Africa and (unintelligible) Marcos from the Philippines and Pinochet from Chile. And (unintelligible) draw on all those different features, because I was very much interested in those dictatorships.
Because they're very peculiar kind of dictators in the sense that although they were rooted in the (unintelligible) in Africa, but they were also, in so many ways, sponsored by the west, so they were kind of western dictatorships in Africa because it was in most cases they were also products of the Cold War. So they became a very (unintelligible) that had no - they don't feel they were accountable to the people of Africa or (unintelligible) and so on.
At the same time, although they were serving western interests in Africa and so on, but at the same time they were not also - it's like when you take a genie out of the bottle, you cannot always put it back. And those are the kind of things I was really interested in.
The other thing is the tendency of dictatorships to equate themselves with God. So they create this aura, the mystical aura around them. For instance, when Mobutu (unintelligible) used to appear on television, he would descend from the clouds. So another theme, then, in the novel is how do you deconstruct a dictatorship?
Tavis: Let me jump in, speaking of how you deconstruct a dictatorship. First of all, I never knew, until your writing, that dictatorships provided such rich material for a novel to begin with, dictatorships around the world, certainly on the continent of Africa. That said, though, because the issues that you are discussing are so real, why choose to take these issues on, to tell these stories, to impart these lessons through fiction as opposed to nonfiction, particularly given the kind of life that you've lived?
wa Thiong'o: Oh, fiction, because actually they say in so many ways, fiction is often truer than history, because you can go into this period of a phenomenon, of a situation, and so on. And again through imagination it can draw the various pieces together. (Unintelligible) very interested in, as a writer myself, is to see connections between peoples, between processes, and between politics and economics. Between matters of material realities and matters of the spirit. I like to see the connections.
So from that perspective of connections and so on, I cannot simply do it just from one perspective. An imagination allows one to bring various elements together, to be able to - for example, in the case of "Wizard of the Crow," I have one scene which is set in New York, (unintelligible) in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue, where the ruler comes to address the United Nations general assembly about this wonderful economic miracle of marching to Heaven.
But when he's stating in a Fifth Avenue hotel, he finds himself expanding mysteriously, so much so that no clothes will fit him because they become tatters in seconds, and so on. And in the end, the assembly have to get up to cover him with sheets and so on. So this was my way of connecting New York, United Nations, Africa, and so on, to show those kind of connections.
Tavis: What is it - and certainly as you well know, and to your earlier point, Africa does not have a monopoly on this. As a continent, Africa has no monopoly on this, I repeat. But what is it about your continent that makes it so ripe for dictatorships?
wa Thiong'o: I know, but again, as you say correctly, Africa has no monopoly over these things. It's a condition (unintelligible) Africa but of the Third World. Because as I mentioned, you look at the 20th century, you look at Latin America, you look at Africa, in Chile you had Pinochet, Marcos of the Philippines, and it's the equivalent to of course the Mobutus and (unintelligible) in our Africa.
But again, dictatorship is a phenomenon all over the world. Of course when you think of dictators also, in terms of history, (unintelligible) dictators like Hitler and so on. So this is really a phenomenon of the world, but what is peculiar about dictatorship in the Third World, as I said earlier, because they came to being in an era of the Cold War. So often, they were what I call sponsored dictatorships, because they came and presented themselves as fighting on the side of those forces which are fighting against Communism, and so on. And from that position, they could literally do anything.
Tavis: To your point of do anything, is it your sense that there is a peculiar irony, a particular irony in the U.S. saying that it wants to export democracy around the world, and yet we are criminal number one when it comes to propping up dictators the world over when it's convenient for us to do so?
wa Thiong'o: First of all, you cannot export democracy; nobody can export democracy. But you can help nurture conditions that enable people of that country to develop their own democracy. But the democracy can never be externally imposed.
Secondly, there is a choosing what dictator is more acceptable to our side. So your dictator is more of a dictator than my dictator, and someone becomes a dictator only when they take a position which is contradictory or which is opposing my position. My position of democracy must come from the people, and power must come from the people.
And that when you have a dictatorship anywhere in the world, it also affects other places. We live in the same world, we are connected. So when (unintelligible) something going wrong (unintelligible) part of the world it's bound sooner or later to affect other parts of the world. We are connected.
Tavis: My time is just about up. You spent a year in prison for your courage for standing for principle. What was that experience like?
wa Thiong'o: Actually, prison is not a good place to be in, but I was put in there because of my work with (unintelligible) on theater and culture and production of theater. You can't believe a theater can send you prison, but theater sent me to prison in the early seventies of the last century. But being in prison, I did not want to mourn about - I wanted to learn from conditions in prison, and so I wrote another novel when I was there called "Devil On The Cross," which I wrote on toilet paper.
Tavis: Like I said - I'm glad you said that. You didn't just write a novel, you wrote the novel on toilet paper.
wa Thiong'o: Yes, I wrote the novel on toilet paper because it was the only material available to me in prison, yeah.
Tavis: What do you learn from going back to your home country in 2004 - that's just three years ago - and still being brutally attacked because of your courage?
wa Thiong'o: You balance. You balance between the attack, which is politically motivated and engineered by those who oppose my position, but at the same time you're so in contact with ordinary people, and you see the support you're getting from ordinary people. The spirit of resistance and the spirit of clinging, of saying we shall, in a way, overcome.
When my wife and I returned to Kenya, we were welcomed by thousands of ordinary folk in the streets. So we had to balance between the attack which we had by those forces who were against my writing, and this other side where people were so glad and happy to see us come back.
Tavis: It is - I'm sitting here listening to Ngugi wa Thiong'o speak, and it just occurs to me how often we take for granted the liberties and the freedoms and the blessings that we have to live in the place like the United States, so much so that only on a program like this in America could I sit here and criticize the government for propping up dictators the world over while he ends up spending a year in prison and going back in 2004, three years ago, and still being viciously attacked, he and his wife, by the government the minute they step off the plane.
wa Thiong'o: Although this time, the (unintelligible) much better government. The dictatorship which we had in Kenya (unintelligible) has ended the 2002. I think those who attacked us were probably remnants of the old regime. But now we have a much, much better situation.
Tavis: Well for those of us who do TV and radio, and those of us who write books, we ought to never take for granted what it is that we have the chance to do here in the US of A. The book is "Wizard of the Crow." Nice to have you on the program.
wa Thiong'o: Okay, thank you.
Tavis: Glad to have you come here.
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