Marxism Is Dead in Africa
I think I may safely claim to be one of the few people alive to have flown in a Malian air force DC-3 from Bamako to Timbuktu in the company of a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Nobel Laureate in question was Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and short-story writer. We were in Mali for a UNDP conference (I paid my own ticket) on improving the image of Africa in the world’s press, which was presumably thought to be an easier task than improving Africa itself. In any case, I thought that the latter should and could only be left to the Africans themselves.
Nadine Gordimer exactly corresponded to the characterization of her by the South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys, as “Comrade Madam”: the lifetime habit of command combined with a theoretical and dogmatic egalitarianism. (In another of Uys’ brilliant sketches, he depicts a rich Johannesburg housewife laboriously making herself up—preparatory to going to bed.)
Nadine Gordimer had a voice whose timbre would have penetrated the best artillery-proof armor plating. On one occasion at the conference she condescendingly addressed a Ghanaian lady as “my sister Susan.” “Actually, my name’s Gloria,” said her sister Susan, but the great writer ignored this manifestation of pedantry and continued with what she was saying.
It was my second visit to Mali. The first time, a few years before, I had been crossing Africa by public transport—to see the continent from the bottom up, as it were. This was about thirty years ago, and I doubt it would be safe to make the journey now: There are too many civil wars and guerrilla insurrections on the route I took. On the other hand, Africa is much more democratic nowadays than it was then.
Mali had the distinction—if distinction it was—of being the most corrupt of the many countries through which I passed. It took three days to go a hundred yards on the bus on which I was traveling because of the exactions of the various branches of Malian officialdom on the passengers (exactions from which I, as a white man, was exempt). When I lost my temper and complained, a Malian soldier said to me mildly, “But, monsieur, we have not been paid for three months,” and I felt ashamed.
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