Achebe: That’s the heart of the matter. When America became powerful and found itself in the position of the leader of the free world, its main concern became “Where are the Soviets? What are they doing? And if they’re here, then we will be here.” And so it became possible for a regime like that in South Africa— which is in all practical ways very close to the Nazi regime—to get up and say, “We are anti-Communist.” Once you say that, you know, you are all right. Moyers: All other sins are forgiven. Achebe: Yes, yes, yes. Moyers: What has this meant to the American image in Nigeria? Do we appear to be a racist country, even though we have made such strides at home in coping with our own racism? Achebe: Yes. In fact, virtually everything that works against the freedom or the liberation of Africa is blamed on America first of all—even before the Europeans, even before Britain or Germany or France or Portugal— Moyers: —the old colonial masters. Achebe: It seems extraordinary, you know, that America would want to take on that kind of burden. But, as you said, I think it is this obsession with the Soviets, with communism.. Moyers: How would you like for us to see Africa? Achebe: To see Africa as a continent of people—just people, not some strange beings that demand a special kind of treatment. If you accept Africans as people, then you listen to them. They have their preferences. If you took Africa seriously as a continent of people, you would listen. You would not be able to sit back here and suggest that you know, for instance, what should be done in South Africa. When the majority of the people in South Africa are saying, “This is what we think will bring apartheid to an end,” somebody sits here and says, “No, no, that will not do it. We know what will work.” Margaret Thatcher sits in Britain and says, “AI-. though the whole of Africa may think that this works, I know that what will work is something else.” That’s what I want to see changed. The traditional attitude of Europe or the West is that Africa is a continent of children. A man as powerful and enlightened as Albert Schweitzer was still able to say, “The black people are my brothers—but my junior brothers.” We’re not anybody’s junior brothers. Moyers: There is still a lot of Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe could never accept Friday as anything but a child living in a primitive simplicity. Achebe: That’s right. But that’s not really true, it’s self-serving. What I'm suggesting is we must look at Africans as full-grown people. They may not be as wealthy or advanced in the same ways as you are here, but they’re people who, in their history, also have had moments of great success—in social organization, for instance. If you grant that Africans are grown-up, a lot of other things will follow. Moyers: You once said that if you’re an African, the world is turned upside down. Explain that. Achebe: What I mean is, I look at the world, at the way it is organized, and it is inadequate. Whichever direction I look, I don’t see a space I want to stay in. On our own continent, there are all kinds of mistreatment. The most recent, for instance, is the dumping of the toxic wastes from the industrialized world in Africa. Moyers: Many American companies and Western countries are dumping their toxic wastes in African countries, and they’re often bribing governments to do Lt. Achebe: Yes. The world is not well arranged, and therefore there’s no way we can be happy with it, even as writers. Sometimes our writer colleagues in the West suggest that perhaps we are too activist, we are too earnest. “Why don’t you relax?” they say. “This is not really the business of poetry.” About a month ago I was at an international conference of writers to celebrate the one thousandth year of Dublin. During the discussion everybody was saying that poetry has I don’t believe anybody can work for the people and for the salvation of society without being in some ways a good person. poetry is only something personal, you are saying something outrageously wrong. So I took the opportunity to state the other case. I said that poetry can be as activist as it wants, if it has the willingness and the energy. And I gave them two examples. Toward the end of the colonial period in Angola, there was a doctor practicing his medicine and writing very delicate, very sensitive poetry in his spare time. One day he saw one of the most brutal acts of the colonial regime, and he shut down his surgery, took to the bush, and wrote a poem which had the words “ Iwait no more. I am the awaited.” It is said that the guerrillas who fought with him chanted lines from his poetry. So I’m saying that these things are possible for poetry. Of course, a poet who becomes activist risks certain dangers, such as getting into trouble with those in power. Here’s another example: Some years ago, at a conference in Stockholm, a Swedish writer and journalist said to two or three African writers, “Say, you fellows are very lucky— your governments put you in jail. Here in Sweden nobody pays any attention to us, no matter what we write.” But, you see, the point is this: A poet who sees poetry in the light I’m suggesting is likely to fall out very seriously with the emperor. Whereas the poet in the West might say, “Oh no, we have no business with politics, we have no business with history, we have no business with anything—just what is in our own mind”—well, the emperor would be very, very happy. Moyers: So that’s what you meant when you said once that storytelling is a threat to anyonein control. Achebe: Yes, because a storyteller has a different agenda from the emperor. Moyers: And yet storytelling, poetry, literature didn’t stop the brutalities that werd visited on your own Ibo people in the Biafran War and didn’t stop Idi Amin in Uganda, or Bokassa in the Central African Republic. Achebe: Yes, well, there’s a limit to what storytelling can achieve. We’re not saying that a poet can stop a battalion with a couple of lines of his poetry. But there are other forms of power. The storyteller appea'ls to the mind, and appeals ultimately to generations and generations and generations. Moyers: I love this line in A Man of the People—“The great thing, as the old people have told us, is reminiscence, and only those who survive can have it. Besides, if you survive, who knows? It may be your turn to eat tomorrow. Your son may bring home your share.” The power of reminiscing is very important to you. Achebe: If you look at the world in terms of storytelling, you have, first of all, the man who agitates, the man who drums up the people—I call him the drummer. Then you have the warrior, who goes forward and fights. But you also have the storyteller who recounts the event—and this is one who survives, who outlives all the others. It is the storyteller, in fact, who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have —otherwise their surviving would have no meaning. Moyers: The knowledge that others have suffered. Achebe: —that others have suffered here, have battled here. That is very, very important, and that is the meaning of Anthills of the Savannah, you see. Memory is necessary if surviving is going to be more than just a technical thing. Moyers: The anthill survives so that — Achebe: — so that the new grass will have memory of the fire that devastated the savannah in the previous dry season. Moyers: So the anthill carries the memory to the new generation, weaving a collective memory. Achebe: Yes. The storyteller, not the emperor, is aware of all this. The emperor may in fact be planning to re- writethehistory of the people. Emperors do this all the time. For instance, an emperor who is totally illegitimate, in terms of the dynasty, might decide to rewrite the history a bit to show that power was always in his family. There is an inevitable conflict between him and the genuine poet. Moyers: You’ve certainly done your share of offending the emperor. In fact, you’ve been unsparing of your own people in these novels you write. You draw a devastating picture of government in Africa—ministers living in princely mansions while the peasants and the workers live in shacks. You write about the corruption of democracy, the bribery, the vulgarity, the violence, the brutality, the rigged elections. Aren’t you concerned that in these novels, which are gaining a growing audience in the West, you are reinforcing the stereotypes many Westerners have toward your own people? Achebe: Well, I can see that danger, but that doesn't really bother me because I’m not concerned primarily with Westerners, I’m concerned with the people whose story I am telling. If I'm a bit harsh, that harshness comes from concern. It is not that I hate my people or even that I hate those who rule us. I don’t hate them. But when you look at the opportunities that we have squandered in a country like Nigeria, it is really so painful because so much could have been achieved. So much assistance could have been given, not just to the poor in Nigeria but even outside of it, because providence has been so prodigious in its gifts to Nigeria. When you look at the possibility and then at what has been achieved, you can feel very, very bitter indeed. Moyers: What happened? There was such great hope back around the early 1960s, such great expectations for Africa as it was moving into the era of independence. Achebe: It’s a very complex problem. A whole lot of things played a part. But perhaps the fundamental failure was always there and was built into the independence movements. Independence is not granted. The leader of Nigeria was able to say in 1960 that independence was given to us on a platter of gold. Well, nobody gives independence to anybody. If you don’t achieve it, if you don’t fight for it, if you don’t struggle for it, then perhaps you have not had your revolution. This is basically what is wrong with many countries in Africa. The withdrawal of the colonial powers was in many ways merely a tactical move to get out of the limelight, but to retain the control in all practical ways. In fact it turned out to have been even a better idea than running these colonies, because now you could get what you were getting before without the responsibility for administering it. You handed responsibility back to the natives, but con10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1989
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