Former
President of Ghana, John Kufour was in Lagos last week to chair the Wole
Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, where he spoke glowingly about the
excellent character of Africa’s first black Nobel Laureate in Literature and
the need to replicate such men of ideas, character and culture on the continent
as a way of repositioning Africa from the margins of history to mainstream
globalisation. He also had excellent words for The Lumina Foundation for
instituting the prize named after Soyinka to throw up Africa’s best writers and
reward them for the excellence of their writing. ANOTE AJELUOROU recaps the
interview. Excerpts:
YOU
spoke glowingly about The Lumina Foundation and what it is doing to promote
writing and writers. And, it seems it is something you’d like to see replicated
all over the continent, isn’t it?
I
meant that the subject matter, Wole Soyinka, that Africa should have quite a
few of them dotting all over the place for culture, literacy and all that.
Now,
in spite of ICT penetration in the last few years, African art and culture has
been its strongest points. Yet it is the least promoted by African leaders. Why
is this so?
But the rest of the world said we didn’t have culture!
But
is Africa promoting its culture enough to engage the interest of the rest of
the world?
I believe now the world is looking,
especially when we have the likes of Wole Soyinka. If the rest of the world is
not interested, they wouldn’t have given him the Nobel Laureate for Literature.
This means the rest of the world is looking. Then Nollywood is working, isn’t it? Now,
the whole continent is watching Nollywood films; so, too, is the rest of the world –
Europe, America. So, it’s good.
When
you were president, how much of culture would you say you promoted in your
country, Ghana?
Uhm,
quite a lot! I would say culture and education should come hand in hand; I
believe the people are defined by their culture. As often observed, we Africans
are known for our culture right from time. It’s just that we didn’t read and we
didn’t write it down. So, it was like handed down folklore and a lot of it
became like legend. So, with the introduction of Western education, somehow,
they were made to look down on our own stories. Now, this is why Soyinka again
comes in; when we began having our own writers, they captured some of the
cultures in their writings. So now others know that Africa, too, is part of the
international, global culture.
So, I, as president, appreciated culture. Some of our ministries covered
culture. We have something called FESTAC in Ghana, where various tribes display
our traditional cultures and festivals.
Ghana
has some of Africa’s best writers like Koffi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Amah, Ama Ata
Aidoo, etc. Which of them would you say is your favourite?
I respect all of them (laughs). I respect all of them!
It’s
often said that leaders are readers…
Perhaps,
you’re talking about political leaders…
But
how much do the leaders read when most of them uphold the culture of impunity,
corruption and sundry atrocities against their own people?
That
is no culture. Impunity is no culture. Impunity is contempt, disrespect.
Corruption is taking what is not yours. So, those are no culture. Impunity
means bullying.
If
you were to advise leaders on how to promote African culture, what would you be
telling them?
That
they should encourage their educational institutions to research into our
traditional practices. I’m sure universities here in Nigeria are focusing on
culture. In Ghana, too, we have the same thing. I believe our governments
should support and sponsor research work into culture.
Between
African leaders and writers/culture workers, there is always a conflict of
interest. How can a better working relationship be forged between the two to
work towards the same goal of developing the continent?
Dictators
tend to suspect people who do not tow their lines. Anybody who is open-minded
and observes or criticises objectively is suspect to a dictator who wants to
monopolise power. The dictator abhors anything that would challenge his hold on
power. Wole Soyinka criticised what was going on because what was going on
didn’t sit well with him. They couldn’t accommodate him and they dragged him
into prison. Later on when there was a tyrant here, who was killing people and
imprisoning people, he spoke out and they wanted to kill him. And if he didn’t
run into exile, anything could have happened to him.
You
mentioned in your speech the plundering of Africa by colonisers. How they took
away valuable artefacts such as the Ashante Golden Stool in Ghana and Idia mask
in Nigeria and others. What would you advise African governments to do to
repatriate these objects?
Those
artefacts, as you call them, that could be traced, we should lay claim to them.
And they shouldn’t be where they shouldn’t be, but here on the continent.
Reparation is a big and complex issue, and I wouldn’t want Africa to beat about
the bush. We should focus on our development now where we are, where we found
ourselves. Fortunately, nature has endowed us with abundant natural resources;
we should harness them for our development. Let us focus on educating our
people. I believe that is where real empowerment comes from, education through
which we can develop our people. That is the only way we can take command of
our natural resources to make our lives better and make our way forward into
the mainstream of globalisation, which is on; we have to keep up with it.
If we
want to fight battles, we may be left on the margins of globalisation. We don’t
want that; we want to go into the centre and we can’t go into the centre
without empowering the people that comes with education. We have to entice our
entrepreneurs to use best practices; the market forces are so powerful.
You
also lamented Soyinka’s use of the English language and not his native Yoruba…
No!
I wasn’t lamenting. I was rather praising him for being smart not to have used
Yoruba. If he had written in Yoruba the other people in the world wouldn’t have
read him because Yoruba is not an international language. But this man uses
other people’s language and proves to be a super master in it. At the end, they
acknowledged him; they are forced to give him the topmost literary award. So, I
was rather saying that a Yoruba man who hadn’t written in Yoruba got
acknowledged, but has used other people’s language to let see that, even though
he isn’t a native of that language, he has command of that language, and
language is a very powerful tool. In Ghana, we have a proverb that says, ‘The
dumb dreams, but how does he communicate? Suppose he can communicate it, he
could change society with the strength of his dreams!’
So, Soyinka has used other people’s language to communicate ideas, people who
came and said we didn’t have culture, we didn’t have religion. That was what I
was trying to say; not that he hadn’t written in Yoruba. Perhaps, he has
written in Yoruba, I don’t know. But he wrote in other people’s language,
Shakespeare’s language and caught the attention of the whole world. Suppose he
wrote only in Yoruba, I don’t know the kind of attention he would have got.
What
kind of books did you read when you were in office, and now that you’re out,
what do you read?
I’m still a politician, and I read!
You’re
aware that the cultural heritage materials in Timbuktu, Mali are being
destroyed by fundamentalists. How do you react to such news?
Such
a thing shouldn’t be happening in Africa! It is a continent that is in the
process of recovering itself. Africa is so big, with diverse parts; the whole
of it has been so abused and exploited by outsiders. Thankfully over the past
few years, all parts of the continent are coming together; now, we have more
things uniting us together and we’re forging unity. So, we’ve come together as
African Union. Now, we have people behaving like this, making it seem as if we
shouldn’t appreciate our past. Whether it is religion or tribe or whatever, we
don’t destroy things that have been there for centuries. Those give materials
evidence that, even centuries back, how our forebears, our ancestors used to
think, as the monuments give evidence to. Now, they go and destroy them. For
what? It’s very sad to carry on like that.
Isn’t this why other people say we do not have culture? Now, they may seem
justified with such acts. Those people doing those things, I don’t think they
are thinking right.