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INTRODUCTION
Military politics is one of the unfortunate offshoots of colonialism in Africa and consequently a recurrent theme in the African novel. In African culture, there are people traditionally trained to fight wars in case of external aggression. These trained men are often seen in the time of need. They obey those occupying political or traditional executive positions that they vowed to protect. They do not imagine themselves occupying the political positions as heads of government or heads of their communities. However, when the colonialists came into Africa, they trained Africans in their art of wars. They exposed Africans to wars by recruiting them into fighting the first and the second world wars. These African military men encountered European soldiers in battle field. They learnt new logistics of military intelligence.
Some of them were later trained in military tactics abroad and in some of such trainings they were taught on how to govern their countries as corrective governments. This led to the emergence of military governors and presidents in Africa some of who later turned into brutal monarchs in their countries. We have had such tyrannical leaders as Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, General Charles Taylor of Liberia and General Sani Abacha of Nigeria. We still have Muarmar Ghadaffi of Libya amongst others still governing with military might in their countries.
More so, the political scenes in Africa are occupied by retired military men who still hunger for power in their countries. Most of these military leaders still govern the people like the military they are: imposing decrees, violating human rights, imposing sanctions on the people and introducing stringent governmental protocols.
African writers in these countries have been recording these experiences for the world to read and react. In this unit, we shall use two African novels to explore how African novelists have treated the theme of militarism in their novels.
General Overview
The military rulers who tasted power never wanted to relinquish power. For instance, since Nigeria’s independence 48 years ago, the military have served in the political arena for over 30 years. The military rulers held on to power with endless promises of democracy. Many African writers who wrote about militarism have presented them as being corrupt more than the people they are supposed to correct. Most of them developed into being dictators like Muarma Ghadaffi of Libya and the late Sani Abacha of Nigeria. Many African countries are still under the grip of militarism because it is either their leaders are military rulers or ex-military in civilian rulership. One still sees the same military politics even as the people are hopeful of a democratic government in place.
Many Africans believe that military politics was a reaction to the corrupt practices of the political class. For instance, Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People was described as a prophetic work because it was launched almost at the brink of the first military coup d’etat in Nigeria. Chinua Achebe believed then that the corruption going on among the First Republic politicians in Nigeria might trigger off a possible coup as a corrective measure. However, this dream of correction turned into pure anarchy as the military leaders projected their militarism as tactics in governance. These military rulers siphon the people’s economic base and save huge sums of money in foreign accounts. They turn the country’s treasury into their personal accounts. The situation seems very pathetic.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
What factors led to the rise of military politics in Africa?
The Politics of Militarism in Achebe’s A Man of the People
In A Man of the People, two contrasting groups of people, one from a political base and the other from a social aspect base in West Africa are presented. The groups are the old and the new generations of politicians and two characters represent them. Odili, the narrator, represents the new intellectual generation, while Chief Nanga, Odili’s former teacher, represents the old style of politicians. The conflict between the old and new ways is portrayed through the two characters as they not only disagree and quarrel over political views but also women. The story ends with a military coup that foreshadows the Nigerian Revolution of 1966. Chinua Achebe proved to be a better prophet than any of the political scientists, in his writing of the novel. Achebe captures the inside reality of the lives of the contrasting characters as he demonstrates energy and brightness as well as violence and corruption.
In the novel, Chief Nanga is referred to by the narrator, Odili, as a man of the people, and the most approachable politician in the country. He is the minister of culture and his speeches to the public represent everything that apolitician should do and be. But as Odili tells the story, it becomes clear that Chief Nanga does not practice what he preaches. The money that is supposed to go towards helping his community he uses instead to build four-storey buildings, which he rents out for profit.
Chief Nanga is supposed to be standing up for the tradition and beliefs of the pre-colonial African culture by defending the common man and opposing the European-oriented post-colonial intellectuals. The politicians in this novel stand as an intermediary between the government and the common people but are portrayed by Achebe as the evil side. Chief Nanga learns to be greedy and learns how to win elections through the corrupt system of politics he was against in the first place. The important thing for Chief Nanga is that the people trust him. He relates to them more, because he considers himself closer to the common man and far away from the intellectual, who represents a more European style of living and thinking. By representing his country after colonialism he has the incentive to stay as far away from the European style of life and politics as possible. As Odili explains the story, however, Chief Nanga only tells the people what they want to hear about defending their culture and way of thinking, and Nanga acts in a voracious way to obtain what he wants in his personal life; money, power, and women.
Chief Nanga's corrupt way of leading the people by telling them one thing and doing another is what eventually brings his reign to an end. Nanga taught Odili when he was young and Odili respected and liked him as a teacher. He learned many things from him and was happy when he heard he was first elected. But as Nanga grew more powerful within his office and country, Odili began to grow smarter and he became more aware of the corrupt reality. It was not finally realized though, until he actually had the chance to live with Chief Nanga and witness how Nanga abused his money and power by over-spending his money and having his way with the women he desired. Odili gives his insight on this situation when he narrates:
We ignore man's basic nature if we say, as some critics do, that because a man like Nanga has risen overnight from poverty and insignificance to his present opulence he could be persuaded without much trouble to give it up again and return to his original state. A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been indoors the whole time. The trouble with our new nation as I saw it then lying on that bed was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say, to hell with it. We had all been in the rain together until yesterday.
He goes on to talk about his group of people as the smart and the lucky and how they had scrambled to the one shelter their former rulers left and taken it over. The metaphor here is very powerful and it really clarifies the point Achebe is trying to explain. The point is that a person who goes from having nothing (Nanga) to having everything is going to be more reluctant to go back to having nothing compared to someone that has had everything the whole time, thus making him more greedy to gain power and more defensive against giving up this power. Odili emphasizes that the new rulers were never indoors, but together in the rain, and they desperately needed to experience a little shelter. The arrival of the military seemed like an aborted dream to the politicians. The question now is: were the military able to bring about the desired change or correct the corrupt politicians? Chinua Achebe gave answer to this question in his last novel entitled Anthills of the Savannah.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Explain clearly the reasons for the rivalry between Chief Nanga and Odili?
The Politics of Militarism in Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah
The novel starts out by describing a Cabinet meeting. After the session is closed it turns out that outside the palace there is crowd of people from the province of Abazon who try to get to meet the President. The people are dissatisfied because, as it later turns out, Sam has caused them to suffer by shutting down water-holes in the province, which is suffering from drought. He refuses to meet the delegation. After this event, Ikem goes to meet the delegation. It turns out that he is in a way one of them, born and raised in Abazon, and has come to be greatly respected by the Abazonians as the famous editor of the National Gazette. When he leaves the Abazonian delegation that day, he is stopped by the traffic police because of some misdemenour. It is later revealed that he was followed by State Research Council agents who needed proof that Ikem had actually visited the delegation in order to be able to accuse him of treason for siding with the rebellious Abazonians.
Some time after this, Ikem is fired from the National Gazette by orders from the President, who thinks Ikem's writing in the Gazette is too critical of his "administration". The President actually wants Chris to do the firing, but he refuses. After being sacked, Ikem makes a radical speech at the University of Bassa (the capital of Kangan). The speech is purposefully misquoted in the Gazette the next day, giving the impression that Ikem wants the President dead. He's charged for treason and conspiracy, soldiers come to pick him up from his home and shoot him dead, claiming it was an accident.
After this episode, Chris feels he can no longer work under President Sam as Commissioner for Information. He is afraid he is going to end up like Ikem, and goes into hiding. A while later, he too is charged with treason and becomes a fugitive for real. After a couple of weeks hiding, he decides to travel away from the capital to the province of Abazon. When he reaches the province, it turns out that there has been some kind of a coup d'état and the President has fled the country. Upon hearing this he joins a celebration on the street and meets a drunken policeman. By accident, the man shoots him dead.
In Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe writes about the problems facing newly independent African states. The prevailing theme and the most visible one of these problems is the corrupt, dictatorial rule set up in Kangan (Nigeria) and most of the other "new" African states that let down the dreams and hopes that were associated with independence. Although the rulers were no longer European, and although they were a lot closer to the people than their European predecessors, they fairly soon distanced themselves from the people. The first instance of this alienation in the novel is the way Sam deals with the problem of the Abazonian delegation. Instead of going out to meet them by himself, he assigns someone else to do it. The fact that he's built himself a luxurious lakeside mansion is another representation of this.
There is also the theme of oppressive dictatorial rule. The way Sam deals with Ikem is reminiscent of traditional totalitarian states, especially the Latin American juntas. This is also the case with freedom of speech in Kangan. The paper, apparently the only one in the country, is censored and orders regarding its contents often seem to come straight from the President.
Another theme of the book is described in Ikem's peculiar dilemma. Despite his position as editor of the Gazette, he wants to appear like just another Kangan worker. Therefore he doesn't ride a company car to work, but drives by himself in an old beat-up car. The dilemma is pointed out to him by a taxi driver: by driving himself, he is taking away a job opportunity from some poor Kangan chauffeur. The larger problem here is the position of the black, African elite in the new African countries, where the elite has traditionally been of European origin. There was no elite class in the pre-colonial period in Africa.
The novel also deals with the theme of being a been-to, an African who has come back to his country after a longer stay in the West. The main characters are all been-tos and this is reflected in the ways in which they try to position themselves in relation to the "common" Kangans. An example of this is how Chris relates to Emmanuel, a university student leader; and Braimoh, a cab driver.
There is a direct reference to the West in the scene in which Beatrice goes to a party that Sam has organized to impress an American journalist. The journalist wraps the President and the whole Cabinet around her finger, lecturing them about how Kangan should take care of its foreign affairs and debt. She represents the attitudes of the West to the African countries in general and their unequal standing in world politics. Rodney also observes that the colonial machinery created a military elite that later became military dictators in the post- independence era. A good example is Sam, the military despot in Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
Critically explain how Sam, the military president, exhibited dictatorial governance in Kangan.
The Politics of Militarism in other novels
Many African countries have had and still have military leaders in power. The state of these countries is totally pathetic because these military leaders have been ruling in violation of democratic procedures because they were not elected by the people. Most of them went into the executive power through coups and counter coups to the detriment of the masses. A country like Liberia and Sierra Leone just got extricated from the military grip. They had series of wars. Many countries in Africa that suffered wars and that had history of wars were the countries under military leaderships.
Nigeria in 1966 under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon experienced the most traumatic war because another military man Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu decided to secede with his people the Igbos because of the marginalization and killings of the people. They declared Biafran Republic but this was resisted by the Nigerian army. The war lasted three years. Many African countries like Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Kenya, and Mozambique have been having wars and they are under military rulers. Literature like history records these experiences. The writers in these countries have been writing literatures of commitment where they expose these sad history periods in their countries. Most times they go into exile so that they will not be killed for exposing the state of human carnage in their country. There are numerous novels treating the issue of militarism and wars in Africa.
Some writers have also treated the issue of militarism by exposing the ills that go on in military barracks, military base, and military headquarters. A novel like Frank Mowah’s Eating by the Flesh is an incursion into a typical military camp and what they do wrong which ought to place them as people that lack the will power and the moral standing for governance. They kill each other. They lack human sympathy. They sleep with each other’s wives. They rape their colleague’s children amongst other atrocities. A close reading of Biyi Bandele’s Burma Boy will expose so much about the odds of militarism from a global perspective. We shall learn more about this in the unit treating war novels.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 4
Explain the traumatic experiences of African countries with military leaders.
CONCLUSION
The role of the military in Africa has been more of the negative. As seen in the two novels under study, they come to correct but end up destroying what they ought to correct. A 'post-colonial' view of African history is an entirely ugly record because of the ugly military imposition of power. This study enables us to understand what a people have become in the process of a particular form of political and cultural contact. It tells of an important, even crucial, moment in a process of becoming a stable political nation. It acknowledges that colonialism was a fact of history that Africans cannot dismiss urgently. Post colonialism, in this sense, is an age after innocence. But though not irrelevant, this approach to history can be a limiting, and possibly a misleading, one. Post-colonial African history thus becomes the story of the end of old history, of old identities, and of moral standing.
The military created regimes of trauma. In such regimes, national identity is a mere fabrication, defined by passports and legal instruments merely, a form of identity. In such a situation, history is the account of the post-colonial encounter because there are no longer nations and peoples, and there is nothing to remember or recall. The military reminds us that the experience of colonialism dissolves all identities, erases nationalities, makes destiny irrelevant and even problematic. It is different from the condition created by national histories, even when that history is rife with exile and dispersal. That is why it helps to see that Anthills of the Savannah is not about nation-building in the post-colonial era, but about the destiny of particular peoples, a destiny conceived as having a life and purpose of its own. The anthills of the savannah are eternal reminders of the many wild fires of every national history. Their only theme is renewal, a renewal that crashes at the point of hope. The coup in A Man of the People which ought to bring respite to the people ended up bring up a regime more traumatic than the preceding government.
SUMMARY
Novels of militarism are common in Africa because of the endless military leadership resulting from colonial experiences. We see Sam, Chris and Ikem as the residues of western colonial might entrenching western values in various ways in African polity. Clearly, of course, both Chris and Ikem, two of the principal thinkers in the novel, think they are intellectuals engaged in the building of a new and just post- colonial, or more exactly, a post-independence, society. Clearly, also, as the narrative suggests in its time-line, the old-style colonial era - the Age of European Empire - has passed, and has been replaced by the neo- colonial but they are wrong since they think act more like their colonial
predecessors. With all this present, it would not be totally absurd to see the action of the novel as post-history. Even so, the climax of experiences of the novel returns us, not to the country, but to the national trauma. The final issue is not about the future of the state, but the future of the people.
The struggle which the elder speaks about is the struggle of the Abazon people; and the path which will be kept open is not only the path to the redeeming ideas associated with Ikem, but the path to the future survival of Ikem's people in a world whose delimitation now includes the state of Kangan. There is no lament for Kangan at the end; only a re-grouping for another start in Abazon. The endless strife continues especially as the western world fuels it for their advantage. Chief Nanga, Odili and Max represent the same post colonial odds that prevailed much in the military era. There is often an endless run of anarchy in the African polity and the African novelists have been recording these experiences while suggesting a regeneration of ideas and ideals to make the African states anarchy free.
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