William Boyd - Bamboo - Essays and Criticism

The Third World is Kapuscinski’s personal “beat”; he has worked in Islamic Russia and the Far East as well as Iran and Latin America but there is something about the quality and feeling of his African reports that seems to set them apart. Or at least so it seems to me, and I don’t think this is simply a reader’s imputation or fond prejudice operating here. Kapuscinski, on his own evidence, appears to have lived more intensely, suffered more grievously, exposed himself to more danger in the African countries he has reported from than anywhere else on earth. No one writes more effectively of the sweaty cafard, the brutal contingencies, the hilarious and terrifying randomness of events, of the blithe, cruel anarchy of African countries in chaos. But at the same time no one conveys better that seductive allure of the continent, the captivating, tenacious fascination for the place that is always present despite the irritation and despair, and no one better testifies to the stoicism and the dignity that prevail despite the most shocking and casual atrocities.

Kapuscinski remarks in this book that foreign correspondents are not only witnesses to events on behalf of the rest of the world but that they also function as the world’s vicarious consciences. The foreign correspondent goes where we are not permitted or would not dare to venture. It is not simply a job or a vocation: the urge to bear witness, to record and report the world’s conflicts and conflagrations seems to be an urge, a need, that is impossible to resist. Kapuscinski refers to it as a “fever”—and the diagnosis appears accurate, for nothing else could explain the extraordinary risks the man takes with his own life other than a temporary dislocation of the senses, a dysfunctioning of normal rational procedures. And here lies a danger: there can be something ghoulish in the need to observe human suffering, to confront the worst excesses of depravity and self-destruction. In eighteenth-century London it was regarded as a fashionable afternoon’s diversion to spend an hour or two at Bedlam, the city’s asylum, and watch the poor naked lunatics rant and rave. There can be something of the Bedlam-watcher in the foreign correspondent too, particularly where wars are concerned. Here the lethal technology of the twentieth century can add a spurious glamour to the sordid business of people trying to kill each other and the correspondent in this arena can all too easily see himself as a heroic, semi-mythic figure, a pseudo-warrior, one who has been through hell and back, with his sweat-stained fatigues and grim countenance, trudging through the earth’s trouble spots with a world-weary, yet indisputably macho swagger. In 1979, James Fenton, a highly distinguished foreign correspondent himself, who had reported the Vietnam War and witnessed the fall of Saigon, rounded on this breed in the New Statesman, calling them “war-freaks,” describing them as journalists more interested in the unique and heady sensations of the war-zone — where war is seen and experienced as the “ultimate trip”—indifferent to its context or conclusion, exulting in its crude power and rabid energy, heedless of the awful human damage being wreaked. All this is by way of defining negatively what Kapuscinski resolutely is not. What makes his work remarkable, it seems to me, is its persistent humanity and concern, and his steadfast refusal to judge or condemn others even when he himself is the potential victim.

In November 1965 Kapuscinski drove from Ghana to Nigeria, passing through Togo and Dahomey. It was a 520-kilometre drive through a West Africa seemingly in a terminal stage of collapse. In each country there was a state of emergency, coups were being hatched, parliaments dissolved, governments falling, heads of state being deposed, all taking place in an atmosphere that was a bizarre amalgam of mad farce and terrible danger. The easy responses in such conditions are either those of disdain or despair but both are shunned by Kapuscinski: no judgement is passed, no facile observation is made. Perhaps this reserve, this effort to understand, exists because Kapuscinski is a Pole. As he reiterates throughout the book his own country’s history is as troubled as any African state’s: colonized, invaded, subjugated and partitioned. And from this angle, unusual in the West, nothing about Africa’s problems and difficulties seems exceptionally perverse or untoward. As a Pole observing Africa Kapuscinski’s first inclination is to empathize, not condemn or mock. The effect of this on his writing is to produce its entirely distinctive and beguiling tone, at once cool and detached, self-effacing and sagacious.

This is nowhere more evident than in one of the most extraordinary episodes he relates, in a piece entitled “The Burning Roadblocks,” that took place in Nigeria in 1966. The roadblocks in question were in western Nigeria, Yoruba land, constructed by the members of a political party called UPGA which had won recent elections but, through the trickery of the central government, had been denied power. In its place another party, the NNPD, ruled, courtesy of the central government. UPGA supporters went on the rampage. Roadblocks were set up throughout the country as supporters of the puppet NNPD were sought out and, invariably, killed.

In this terrifying atmosphere Kapuscinski took it upon himself to drive up a minor road to see what was going on. Some would say it was foolhardy; some would say Kapuscinski had a death wish. Kapuscinski explains it thus, quite simply: “I had to experience everything for myself … I had to do it myself because I knew no one could describe it to me.”

I was a teenager living in Nigeria during those years and I still remember the atmosphere of alarm and fear that any long journey by road engendered. As I recall, the way to indicate you were an UPGA supporter was to stick a palm frond or other type of greenery in the radiator grille of your car. This way, it was hoped, you would be waved through any roadblock. You never drove after dark. Then, so terrified rumour had it, political pressure gave way to general banditry and extortion. Burning logs would be placed across the road, when your car stopped the tyres would be slashed by machetes to prevent you escaping, then the gang would gather round…

On this particular drive Kapuscinski was halted at three road blocks. At the first he was clubbed with a rifle butt and paid five pounds to join the UPGA. At the second he was hauled from his car, beaten up, robbed of his remaining money and soaked in benzene preparatory to being burned alive. Benzene guarantees complete incineration. But for some reason the mood changed abruptly from manic aggression to wild hilarity. Unbelievably he was allowed back into his car and waved on his way. At the third roadblock he knew he had no option: he put his foot flat down on the accelerator and blasted his way through the flaming barrier.

I smashed into the fire, the car jumped, there was a hammering against the belly pan, sparks showered against the windshield. And suddenly — the roadblock, the fire and the shouting were behind me … Hounded by terror, I drove another kilometre and then I stopped to make sure the car wasn’t on fire … I was all wet. All my strength had left me; I was incapable of fighting; I was wide open, defenceless. I sat down on the sand and felt sick to my stomach.

As indeed does the reader. Kapuscinski’s simple, direct style is admirably gripping and powerful and the authenticity of the eye-witness account is stomach-churningly effective. You are in total awe at the astonishing lengths Kapuscinski will go to simply to get a story and at the same time impressed at the modest refusal to capitalize on his temerity. And this particular piece encapsulates the essence of the Kapuscinski approach. It is not about historical analysis, it is about feelings, sensations, the vividity of the singular moment. No one will read “The Burning Roadblocks” in search of enlightenment regarding political in-fighting amongst Nigerian regional parties in the mid 1960s, but if you want to know what the country was actually like at that time, what the mood was, what particular tensions and anxieties, animosities and fears were in the air, then Kapuscinski is unparalleled.