Writing from the Shadows of Death
Son recalls the life and death of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa
On November 10, 1995, writer and political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was taken to the gallows in a prison yard in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. It took executioners five attempts to do the job properly, but eventually they got it right. For daring to oppose the military regime of General Sani Abacha, Saro-Wiwa – like countless others – paid with his life.
"One of the toughest things about death is finding a balance between forgetting and remembering." So writes Ken Wiwa in In the Shadow of a Saint, his account of his father’s life and death and their own troubled relationship. Ken Wiwa was just 27 at the time of his father’s death; Ken Saro Wiwa had been just 27 at the time of his son’s birth. It is this dreadful symmetry – almost Shakespearean – that drives Ken Wiwa’s confessional account. "Where does he end and where do I begin?" asks Wiwa. "Is his story repeating itself through me, or am I the author of my own fate?"
Ken Wiwa never answers these questions directly, but on meeting him recently there is little sense that he remains haunted by such doubts. "I still have to go some to get out of his shadow," he replies to my question on the subject, but he no longer feels dominated by the life and legacy of his father.
This is no small achievement. As a politician, writer and successful businessman, Ken Saro-Wiwa was already something of a legend in his native Nigeria. His fight against the Abacha regime compounded this reputation, while his high-profile and much-protested execution captured the attention of millions in the west. Yet in this process of public "sanctification," it became increasingly difficult for Ken Wiwa to view his father as just that, his father.
"The name Ken Saro-Wiwa has lost some of its personal meaning to me," he notes. "He was already a symbol in my mind."
The personal relationship between father and son had been volatile, even angry over the previous two decades. Determined not to be simply "his father’s son," Ken Wiwa had deliberately followed contrary paths in his own life. He rejected Ken Saro-Wiwa’s stubborn political activism, even questioning the latter’s decision to remain in Nigeria when he could easily have left. His father’s execution was doubly tragic, then, in that it also denied Ken Wiwa the chance of reconciliation.
Asked for his feelings today on the death of his father, Wiwa says simply that he wishes he "could spend more time with the only man who could ever understand me." This personal regret is far stronger than any desire for revenge. Ken Wiwa is cheerful and optimistic in person, as if writing In the Shadow of a Saint has successfully exorcised any remaining demons. He shrugs.
"It’s a done deal," he explains. "I’ve done my mourning, I did all that." Even when I suggest that influential figures like Nelson Mandela might have done more to intervene and so save his father from death, Wiwa refuses to be drawn.
"It’s all in the past, it won’t bring my father back."
These days, the Abacha regime is also history and Wiwa talks of a new zeitgeist in Nigeria, though he also notes that the things his father died for very much remain to be resolved. This prompts my rather tactless question, that perhaps Ken Saro-Wiwa died in vain. His son shrugs and smiles: "Can’t say — it’s only been five years."
Deep down, though, I suspect Wiwa knows better. When his own young son Felix asked him what happened to Jeje – the family name for Ken Saro-Wiwa – Wiwa was surprised and at first uncertain how to answer.
"Some very bad people killed him," he replied. "Why?" persisted Felix. Ken Wiwa thought for a second, and then said, "Because he wanted good things to happen to people." For a moment, three generations were united in understanding. |
