Cameron Duodu: FIRST PERSON
Just before President Bill Clinton set off on his March/April tour of Africa that brought him to South Africa, Ghanaian writer Cameron Duodu sent Clinton an open letter, urging Clinton to avail himself of the opportunity offered by the tour to put the Monica Lewinsky affair in its correct perspective. Duodu offered it to the Mail & Guardian, believing it was even more relevant this week.
Dear President Clinton,
It is unlikely, but if you are allowed by your handlers and hosts to interact properly with the ordinary people you meet on your Africa tour you will find it an invigorating experience. It would amaze you to find, for instance, that your alleged sexual indiscretions are admired, rather than condemned, in Africa.
You see, in most parts of Africa, life has always been extremely difficult. Communities have always had to band together, under a strong leader, to tame the land, fight wild animals and hostile neighbours.
So we have always needed strong, virile men, to reproduce other strong, virile men.
Furthermore, there has never been much wealth to share, so our chiefs and warriors who get a disproportionately greater part of the little that is available are expected to plough much of it back into their communities. That is why in some African communities, these guys are obligated to marry from more than one household.
The idea is that the more households a chief marries into, the more he spreads prosperity among the community generally. And the more his genes are perpetuated within the society. If he is man of the ilk of Shaka, the Zulu king, for instance, or Osei Tutu of Asante, you will appreciate why his people would want more of him around.
Other well-to-do members of the society follow in the footsteps of the leadership. This is the real reason why polygamy exists in many parts of Africa, not just “wanton promiscuity” or “lust”, as the Christian missionaries misrepresented it to be. Even “lust” is looked upon kindly in traditional Africa, for it signals a passion for life. And many Africans regard life without passion as equal to the death that comes to too many Africans before it should.
Indeed, many of the Africans you meet will secretly be wishing that you would share with them the secret source of your alleged sexual prowess. Do not be offended if they ask you whether you are privy to the existence of drugs that enhance a man’s sexual prowess – Africans tend to be pretty direct about such matters!
Well, Mr President, you will not believe the lengths to which some of our people will go to try and acquire sexual “virility”. I believe there is a drug in Zimbabwe called vuga-vuga which is pretty popular. In most West African markets, you will always find men clustered around a man with loads of herbs on a table. In Ghana, the drug will be called kote denden aduro (literally, the medicine that makes the penis hard).
Perhaps the following story will enable you to understand how seriously Africans take this whole thing. As editor of the Ghana edition of the famous Drum magazine, I once covered a court case in a town called Asamankese, in which an old man of nearly 80 had accused a juju or fetish priest of fraud. The old man told the court that the priest had taken a small fortune from him on the pretext of invoking the services of some spiritual beings, known as “dwarfs”, to enable the old man to improve his sexual performance.
The priest had put the old man through a series of esoteric rites lasting two weeks. He had then requested that two of the old man’s sons be taken into the forest and left there for three days, sheltering in a hole dug under a silk cotton tree and covered with banana leaves. They should only come out at midday to eat food that would have been placed for them in another part of the forest. On one of those three nights (the priest promised) the boys would be spirited away by the dwarfs and taught by them: (1) how to make the poor rich; (2) barren women fertile; and – most importantly – (3) impotent men virile.
But although the instructions of the priest had been followed to the letter, no dwarfs had visited the boys in the bush. Fearing that the juju priest had made a fool of him, the old man asked for his money back. But the jujuman told him that the dwarfs had not visited the boys in the bush because they had “defiled” themselves before they left to the bush, by eating pig’s trotters cooked by a woman who was menstruating at the time! This was a “double anathema” as far as the dwarfs were concerned. And that was why they had not shown up to spirit the boys away and teach them what, in South Africa, would be called “super muti”.
Well, the magistrate who heard the case, Charles Coussey, was a very witty man, and after the old man had told his story, Coussey asked him: “Now tell me, chief: why did you have to go through all this trouble and pay all this money? I mean, you are not young any longer. What exactly made you do it?”
“Hmmm,” the old man sighed, “You see, I had just married a young new wife, and …”
Mr President, you ought to have been present in that court house. The laughter could be heard kilometres away. But the old man didn’t care. To him, how could any man call himself a man if he could not satisfy a young wife?
The magistrate sent the jujuman to prison, but I don’t think the old man’s quest ended there. So, you see, Mr President, your troubles at home will look to many Africans like the product of a jealous, feminist- oppressed, media corps, in alliance with a prissy, emasculated legal coterie. I mean, that Kenneth Starr guy, doesn’t he sound like someone who would pay to watch others having sex?
Well, good luck Mr President. Remember this: Africa loves a He-Man President, even if the Republicans and their lynch-mob lawyers don’t. In return for their support, I hope you find it within your capabilities to get your administration to proffer a more practical approach to debt relief for Africa than it has done so far; that America’s opposition to liberalisation of imports of goods manufactured in Africa will be ended; and that, generally, you will work towards giving Africa fair trade.
One good turn-on deserves another, no?