Wole Soyinka, in an interview in The (London) Times” on the “theatricality of politics”:
Some leaders “exceed what the playwright can invent”. He gives the example of the Sudanese leader, Omar Bashir, who “guilty of sending his soldiers out raping, massacring, poisoning wells in Darfur, then goes on television with a spear and a robe that probably doesn’t even belong to his tribal culture, and prances around saying, ‘They’re trying to recolonise us’. After that, what do you want to put on stage? It cripples you. How can you match that level of theatricality? How can you match Mugabe’s moustache?
Soyinka also has something to say about Barack Obama (“I know you think he’s Kenyan, but I know he’s half Yoruba, like me. I’m waiting for the DNA tests.”) and his friend, Derek Walcott, who recently was the subject of a smear campaign at Oxford University (“There but for the grace of God go I. It can happen to any of us, especially in countries like Amercia, where you can be sued for admiring a student’s skirt.”)
Via Naijablog.
Filed under: Books, politics , Barack Obama, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Nobel Prize for Literature, poetry, Wole Soyinka, Omar Bashir, Derek Walcott
