In the play Julius Caesar, penned by what many experts think is a hoaxer who conveniently called himself William Shakespeare, the character Mark Antony says in his funeral oration: ‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar.”
It is impossible to travel through Africa without wondering about what evils have been interred with the bones of its many defunct despots — and what good they might possibly have left behind.
West Africa is once again in turmoil. Liberia and Sierra Leone, the bad boys of the region for so many years, seem to have been brought to heel at last. Charles Taylor (the baddest of those bad boys) has negotiated sanctuary in Nigeria, leaving his native Liberia to its uncertain fate, with no apologies.
Sankoh Foday, who was even badder, was finally captured while trying to flee disguised as a common market woman, shot in the leg and died of a stroke while awaiting his just deserts in a Sierra Leonean jail.
Stability seemed to be in the wings with both these events, and the newfangled African Union and various other regional organisations smugly gave themselves a collective pat on the back.
But other things are going on. As Liberia and Sierra Leone supposedly come to their senses, Côte d’Ivoire, for decades the supposed symbol of post-colonial stability, slides into increasing chaos. There’s war in the north and unexplained rebellions fuelled by uncertain factions all over the country. Colonial certainties are starting to unravel.
The late head of state, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who appeared to be holding it all together with the full support of the West, lies a-mouldering under his tombstone under the floor of the vast basilica he had built for himself in his home village of Yamoussoukrou in the centre of the country. The golden-domed, marbled edifice rivals the Vatican and St Paul’s, in spite of the encroaching jungle and its inevitable tentacles. And in spite of the ongoing African poverty that goes on all around it.
So you wonder how these icons of African liberation should best be remembered — for the good that they have done (Houphouet-Boigny sustained an economy based on cocoa plantations and big game hunting for rich foreigners, and not much else) or for the evil that lives after them, like an uncontrollable civil war.
Neighbouring Guinea is even more of an enigma. (I’m not talking about Equatorial Guinea here, by the way, where a potential coup was foiled by hotlines that were practically on fire between various AU leaders before a rag-tag army of British and Southern African mercenaries could do their damnedest.)
Guinea was led to independence from France by the late Ahmed Sekou Toure in 1958. He rejected France’s supposed hand of friendship and a partnership offer to include the country in a mutually supportive network of French-speaking countries, arguing forcefully that the umbilical cord should be finally and permanently abandoned. Independence should be full and unequivocal.
There is much good that can be gleaned from this stance. Guinea initially had a proud, independent posture on the African scene. It put what little money it had where its mouth was. It supported liberation movements throughout the continent — including far distant South Africa. Sekou Toure used his independence clout to hand out diplomatic passports to the likes of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, and many others besides, so that they, as refugeed South Africans, could ramble free around the world. No other country could come close to this example.
Sekou Toure also did an extraordinary African thing. He made his country the cultural capital of Africa by fervently supporting the arts. Les Ballets de Guinea became cultural ambassadors across the world — along with others such as Les Amazons de Guinea, an all-women music group composed of members of the police force — and gave dignity and strength to the image of Africa as an environment that has its own identity, and a very special kind of energy. Not to mention the origin of mankind and its sustenance through jazz, rock and the blues.
But of course there was a downside. Sekou Toure largely ruled his country through a reign of terror. Tens of thousands of supposed dissidents were jailed, killed or simply disappeared. The country remains scarred and divided by this legacy to this day.
But in the wars that tore through the region, Guinea frequently remained a sanctuary. No one knows how many refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone became long-term residents. But they were received with open arms. It also helps that so many ethnic groups and languages overlap between the various countries of the region. Guinea recognised and accepted this — although there were inevitable tensions, and there was a collective Guinean sigh of relief when some of the wars in neighbouring countries came to an end, and the refugees were finally able to go home.
Guinea today has itself become fair game. After long years of semi-Maoist isolation, it has begun to open the doors to precisely the exploitation Sekou Toure was hoping to avoid. Like everywhere else in Africa, it is rich in minerals and has plenty of stuff that the outside world is eager to exploit. You can only turn your back on the world for so long before the world catches up with you.
Guinea, in a way, is a metaphor for the shifting sands of the continent. New generations of leadership slowly emerge out of the dust, and the bones of the despots and dictators of the past are gradually covered over.
Perhaps the evils are gradually forgotten, or forgiven. And the good that could be the future slowly starts to rise to the surface.
But poverty and war, the legacies those leaders left behind as unfinished business, are still the dominating image.