Kongi: A tree that makes a forest

The giant is made up of a single male Quaking Aspen with identical genetic markers and one massive underground root system. Pando is estimated to weigh 6,600 tons and is about 80,000 years old.Just as Pando is a gift of nature, humanity is gifted again and again with great men and women whose lives influence so many others and impact on the world at large that they can only be described as the human equivalent of Pando. Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka, better known to the world as Wole Soyinka is such a gem. He turned 80 yesterday; incredibly so because his life has been one long struggle on the side of his deeply held humanist convictions. Fifty years ago, many people could have sworn that he would not live to see his 40th birthday.
Indeed he did set forth at dawn but this Afro-haired literary crab was not destined to end up as a predator’s dinner for the simple reason that the crab’s bedtime is unknown to stalking predators.
Soyinka was my teacher. He served as beacon for several generations of stu-dents. We all called him Kongi – remember “Kongi’s Harvest”? My relationship with him was, however, more than the usual student/teacher interaction. He was an uncommon mentor and collaborator. As student president, I knocked on his door countless times with problems which had nothing to do with his teaching appointment. He would listen quietly and proffer a solution. He was one of the closest advisers to the student leadership because he was completely without guile or airs.
I recall when I decided to bring his cousin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, for a concert during our Students’ Union Week. I approached Soyinka to be our Special Guest and told him he would have to deliver an address at the occasion. Students paid two naira as gate fee! Soyinka showed up to a roaring welcome. He began his address by acknowledging the musical genius of his ‘younger’ cousin — which made Fela throw his own challenge about how anyone could presume himself older than an “abami eda” who had been in the spirit world before time was born! Those were the days!
I have had cause over the years to challenge some people who obviously did not know the man but depended on the prejudiced assessment of other people to form their own opinion of the literary titan. Indeed from afar you wouldn’t believe the down-to-earth simplicity of a man whose notoriety as one who would not keep quiet in the face of tyranny preceded him.
Yes, Soyinka is a complex artist and a sophisticated mind. But the man behind the mask is like any of your favourite uncles. When I was posted to the old Cross River State on national service, I wrote Prof Soyinka that I was rehearsing my students for a production of one of his plays, “The Trials of Brother Jero” and that I would want him to be my guest at the command performance (no gsm, but the postal services were still reliable).
He wrote to encourage me and added regretfully that he was billed to participate in a series of literary seminars in Europe and America on the dates I had suggested. I read his letter to my students. The play eventually aired on Cross River TV and I wrote my former teacher to share the joy of the successful production with him.
Soyinka was considered a masquerade in our University of Ife days, but what a benevolent one he was! There was always something mythical about this cat with nine lives who was at once a teacher, dramatist, poet, novelist, hunter, philosopher, rebel, musician, essayist, literary stylist, wordsmith, social engineer and sworn enemy of dictators of every hue. I count myself lucky to have had the good fortune of having such a man as a beacon, a compass. The English have their own WS (William Shakespeare) of whom they are justifiably proud as his art recommended itself from their land to the rest of the world. Our own WS whose art draws inspiration from his African roots has achieved no less a feat, making the Swedish Academy describe him when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, as one who, “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”
It is not given to many people to be of abiding relevance to the country of their birth as Soyinka has been for almost six decades. His antecedents and trajectory are known. Not for him the contemporary rudeness of just being catapulted to national consciousness from nowhere as has happened again and again in the case of the many political actors holding the nation to ransom since our flag independence.
About two months ago the Royal African Society, Britain’s foremost Africa organisation, announced that Soyinka would join editor and critic Margaret Busby to reflect on his forest of literary works and the relationship between culture and politics, exploring how literature and the arts spoke to the contemporary African experience. The event also marked the launch of “Crucible of the Ages: Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80”, edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah and Ogochukwu Promise with a foreword by the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku. The 350-page book features essays from three African leaders – President John Mahama of Ghana, former Presi-dent of South Africa Thabo Mbeki and King of Asante-Osei Tutu II. Other contributors include Nobel Laureates Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott and numerous novelists, playwrights and distinguished scholars.
To many people around the world, Soyinka is a literary version of legendary boxer Mohammed Ali. It is regretful that the colloquium report he and Bala Usman put together after Festac ’77 is locked up in the vaults of some government office instead of being used as a path-finding compass. Did I hear you ask what I have learnt from Soyinka? It is this: What matters in life is the nobility of your convictions and the courage with which you pursue your ideals using all your talents, no matter the odds.