Politics: January 2008 Archives
Were he alive, you could bet your life that Ryszard Kapuściński would be in the thick of the current unrest in Kenya after Mwai Kibaki was officially re-elected last week amidst claims of fraud from opposition leader Raila Odinga. News surfaced yesterday of 30 people burned to death in a church they hoped might provide them with shelter. Some 300 or so are confirmed dead in total, and that number continues to rise. This is the bad side of Africa, the volatility, the clan mentality, the violence; and all this in one of the continent’s most stable countries. As Desmond Tutu said today, “”This is a country that has been held up as a model of stability.” No longer.
Kapuściński thrived in such situations. A Polish war correspondent responsible for some 50 countries during the 60s and 70s, a period during which, one by one, African countries gained their independence, he covered wars and political and social situations in Africa (and other parts of the world, too), but he did it in such a way that, far from keeping us away, in fact pulled readers closer and closer to Africa. He understood its nuances, its differences, its cultures, its tribes, its climate, its people. And he loved them all.
So what? Well, I mention Kapuściński for three reasons. Firstly, because we’re approaching the first anniversary of his death this month. Secondly, because of what’s happening in Kenya as I write. And thirdly, because I returned from Kenya only four days ago, and while out there I read The Shadow of the Sun, Kapuściński’s 2001 chronicle of his experiences across the continent since the end of colonialism. It’s one of the most moving and heartfelt books I’ve read in a long, long time and remarkable in many ways, not least in the risks he took to be at the heart of some pretty dangerous situations. Getting into Zanzibar a day after the revolution of 1964 kicked off was one thing (he was the first journalist to get into the country - no one else was allowed in and anyone who tried had their transportation shot at), but getting out a week later to cover the sudden revolts in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika was quite another. Nobody was allowed to leave the island at the time. He and a handful of journalists who’d eventually found a way onto the island now needed a way out. An old man offered to sell them a small motorboat. They would leave at night, so as to avoid the sight of gunmen littered around the coast, and they’d head for the African mainland - 70 kilometres or so. Together they set off, creeping down to the mooring and aiming due West for Tanganyika. By morning, after a failed engine, impossibly high seas, rain, and desperate prayers aimed skywards, they somehow arrived back on the coast of Zanzibar just a little further along from where they’d originally set off - although relieved to be alive. Determination, it seems, was something Kapuściński did not lack.
But nor do most war journalists. It’s part and parcel of the game. What makes Kapuściński more remarkable than the majority, though, is his ability to package his experiences so eruditely and beautifully, in such a way that war becomes strangely incidental in the face of the real Africa: the brilliant fauvist landscape of colour, people and culture. From the very first line of the book, you know you’re in the grip of a writer who knows how to put into words a place that many have found too difficult to define:
“More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere. Everywhere, the sun. Just yesterday, an autumnal London was drenched in rain. The airplane drenched in rain. A cold wind, darkness. But here, from the morning’s earliest moments, the airport is ablaze with sunlight, all of us in sunlight.”
Step off a plane anywhere in Africa and you know precisely what he means.
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