16 October | This Day In African History

One Date. Two Nobels. One War

1984: TUTU

Norway announced: Tutu has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lie. South Africa was not at peace. South Africa was at war with its own children. Mandela on Robben Island. Biko dead. Black people carrying passes in their own land.

Tutu was not awarded because he was peaceful. He was awarded because he was DANGEROUS. A small man in a purple cassock who turned the pulpit into a parliament and told the world: SANCTION THESE KILLERS.

Second Black man after Luthuli. They gave us prizes while giving them bullets. White liberal hypocrisy.

Hard Truth:

The prize came 10 years BEFORE South Africa voted. The prize did not free us. It just made it impossible for the world to say "we did not know." Morality in the hands of the oppressed is a weapon. He used their Bible against them.

1986: SOYINKA

Exactly two years later. Same date.

Wole Soyinka. Yoruba. Nigerian. First African to win the Nobel Prize in LITERATURE. Not Peace. Literature.

For 400 years they said Africa had no literature. On this day that lie died.

He tried to stop the Biafran war with talk. Nigeria locked him in solitary for 22 months. Jailed at home, crowned abroad. That is Africa.

Hard Truth:

1960s gave us flags. 1986 gave us voice. He did not master English. He BROKE it. He forced English to carry Ogun and Egungun. He colonized their language.

Legacy

Tutu fought for the Black BODY.

Soyinka fought for the Black MIND.

One said: You cannot KILL us anymore.

One said: You cannot DEFINE us anymore.

A body without mind is a slave. A mind without a body is a ghost.

42 years later, the question remains: how far have we walked from those chains? The body seeks its full freedom. The mind seeks its full freedom.

F. Madondo (African Teacher) [email protected]