Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the Savannah

'A cash madam,' offered someone.

'No, not a cash madam. A simple market woman… This is not a joke now. I am really serious. My prospective mother-in-law sells tie-die cloth in Gelegele market. She is not a cash madam as I have said; she can carry all her worldly wares in one head-load. So she qualifies along with peasants for a seat among the proletariat. But she has not given me, her future son-in-law, any authority to be her proxy at this shareholders' meeting… So let's move on and deal with those we are competent to speak for, namely ourselves. Workers and students. Let's take workers first. Who are they? The same workers who go on strike when outdated and outrageous colonial privileges like motor vehicle advances and allowances are threatened; whose leaders cannot give satisfactory account of millions they collect every month from the compulsory workers' check-off scheme; who never in their congresses attack absenteeism, ghost workers, scandalously low national productivity. Above all, workers whose national president at last year's All-Africa Congress refused to leave his hotel room until an official Peugeot 504 assigned to him was replaced with a Mercedes. His reason you remember: that workers' leaders are not, in his very words, ordinary riff-raffs . You find that funny? Well I don't. I find it tragic and true. Workers' leaders are indeed extraordinary riff-raffs . There has been, for a few years now, a running battle between me and the Civil Service Union. You know that, don't you?' Yes , roared the audience, laughing. 'The reason for our little disagreement is because I have not attempted to hide my opinion of them as plain parasites.' More laughter. 'Those of you who follow our battles may remember that it all came to a head last year when I wrote a stinging editorial on the eve of their Annual Congress.' There was smiling recognition on some faces, some nodding of the head and scattered remnants of laughter. 'In their communiqué at the end of the Congress they referred to certain bourgeois, élitist hack writers who are no more and no less than running dogs of imperialism!' Loud laughter. 'You probably didn't know who they were alluding to but it was their way of replying to my editorial. Their way is indeed peculiar. Our proverb says that the earthworm is not dancing, it is only its manner of walking.' Laughter.

'The charge of élitism never fails to amaze me because the same people who make it will also criticize you for not prescribing their brand of revolution to the masses. A writer wants to ask questions. These damn fellows want him to give answers. Now tell me, can anything be more élitist, more offensively élitist, than someone presuming to answer questions that have not even been raised, for Christ's sake? Give us the answer! Give us the answer! You know it was the same old cry heard by Jesus Christ from his lazy-minded, soft-brained, bread-hungry hangers-on in Galilee or Gadarene or wherever it was.' Tremendous outburst of cheers. 'Give us a miracle! Give us a miracle and we will believe in you. Cut out the parables and get to the point. Time is short! We want results! Now, now!' Renewed laughter and more cheers greeted this unexpected and quixotic exploitation of the Holy Writ. 'No I cannot give you the answer you are clamouring for. Go home and think! I cannot decree your pet, text-book revolution. I want instead to excite general enlightenment by forcing all the people to examine the condition of their lives because, as the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth living… As a writer I aspire only to widen the scope of that self-examination. I don't want to foreclose it with a catchy, half-baked orthodoxy. My critics say: There is no time for your beautiful educational programme; the masses are ready and will be enlightened in the course of the struggle. And they quote Fanon on the sin of betraying the revolution. They do not realize that revolutions are betrayed just as much by stupidity, incompetence, impatience and precipitate action as by doing nothing at all.' Mixed, cautious applause. He paused as if to consider his next move.

'I think I should take the advantage of this forum to propound the new radicalism which I believe we should embrace.' Applause of expectation. 'First and foremost, this radicalism must be clear-eyed enough to see beyond the present claptrap that will heap all our problems on the doorstep of capitalism and imperialism… Please don't get me wrong. I do not deny that external factors are still at the root of many of our problems. But I maintain that even if external factors were to be at the root of all our problems we still must be ready to distinguish for practical purposes between remote and immediate causes, as our history teachers used to say.' Smiles of recognition. 'May I remind you that our ancestors — by the way you must never underrate those guys; some of you seem too ready to do so, I'm afraid. Well, our ancestors made a fantastic proverb on remote and immediate causes. If you want to get at the root of murder, they said, you have to look for the blacksmith who made the matchet.' Loud laughter. 'Wonderful proverb, isn't it? But it was only intended to enlarge the scope of our thinking not to guide policemen investigating an actual crime.' Laughter.

'When your fat civil servants and urban employees of public corporations march on May Day wearing ridiculously undersize T-shirts and school-boy caps' — Laughter — 'Yes, and spouting cliches from other people's histories and struggles, hardly do they realize that in the real context of Africa today they are not the party of the oppressed but of the oppressor.' Applause. 'For they are the very comrades who preside over the sabotage of the nation by their unproductivity and fraud, and that way ensure that the benefits of modern life will ever remain outside the dreams of the real victims of exploitation in rural villages.' Mixed noises.

'I hear some of you cry Opposed! I like that! Let me substantiate. I never make charges without substantiating.' A few cries of Fire!

'Indeed I will fire! Let's take the Electricity Corporation of Kangan as one example out of many. What do we see? Chaotic billing procedures deliberately done to cover their massive fraud; illegal connections carried out or condoned by their own staff; theft of meters and a host of other petty and serious crimes including, if you please, the readiness at the end of the day to burn down the entire Accounts and Audit Departments if an inquiry should ever be mooted…' Loud laughter. 'This is not funny you know…' Don't mind them! said a loud-voiced young man on the front row, frowning severely at his ticklish neighbours. 'To blame all these things on imperialism and international capitalism as our modish radicals want us to do is, in my view, sheer cant and humbug… It is like going out to arrest the village blacksmith every time a man hacks his fellow to death.' Loud laughter and applause, catching even the severe young man off his guard. 'Shall I go on? No! I will say simply that these people are not workers by any stretch of the imagination. They are parasites, I tell you. And I will not agree to hand over my affairs to a democratic dictatorship of parasites. Never!… Now what about students? I should really be very careful here as I am quite anxious to get home safely tonight.' Explosion of laughter. 'However, truth will out! I regret to say that students are in my humble opinion the cream of parasites.' Redoubled laughter. 'The other day, did not students on National Service raze to the ground a new maternity block built by peasants? Why? They were protesting against their posting to a remote rural station without electricity and running water. Did you not read about it?' The laughter had died all of a sudden. 'Perhaps someone can show me one single issue in this country in which students as a class have risen above the low, very low, national level. Tribalism? Religious extremism? Even electoral merchandising. Do you not buy and sell votes, intimidate and kidnap your opponents just as the politicians used to do?' The applause was beginning to revive now, albeit far less robustly. 'Are you, as you should be, more competent than those of our countrymen and women not nearly as lucky as yourselves on whom we have squandered our meagre educational resources? It took an hour to start this lecture because a microphone could not be found… I walked up to this dais exploding groundnut shells under my feet all the way. So what are we talking about? Do you not form tribal pressure groups to secure lower admission requirements instead of striving to equal or excel any student from anywhere? Yes, you prefer academic tariff walls behind which you can potter around in mediocrity. And you are asking me to agree to hand over my life to a democratic dictatorship of mediocrity? No way!… Now, don't misunderstand me. I have no desire to belittle your role in putting this nation finally on the road to self-redemption. But you cannot do that unless you first set about to purge yourselves, to clean up your act. You must learn for a start to hold your own student leaders to responsible performance; only after you have done that can you have the moral authority to lecture the national leadership. You must develop the habit of scepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch doctors and professors. I see too much parroting, too much regurgitating of half-digested radical rhetoric… When you have rid yourselves of these things your potentiality for assisting and directing this nation will be quadrupled.' Tremendous applause. Surprisingly?