Weather Morning: 7°c Mostly cloudy Afternoon: 8°c Sunny spells

Showbiz

On the road to Africa

Jeremy Harding
Updated 00:00am on 12 Jun 2001


Buy this book online from Amazon.co.uk

The fall of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie in 1975 was a good time for journalists in the Horn of Africa. The Polish Press Agency sent its only African hand to cover the story. Ryszard Kapuscinski was not a glamourpuss with the resources of a large western network at his disposal. He was a low-level wheelerdealer with the forbearance of a village mongrel and the genius of a great raconteur.

Three years after Haile Selassie's death, Kapuscinski published The Emperor, a masterpiece about the last days of the monarchy told in the voices of the courtiers and servants in Addis whose confidence he had won. The English version appeared in the 1980s. The Emperor was a work of economy, irony and deep political intuition which made the Jonathan Dimblebys look like noodles by comparison.

His seductive demeanour, which works in Latin America and the Middle East, as well as Africa, has allowed Kapuscinski to report with remarkable intimacy on 27 revolutions and coups since 1964, when he took to the road in earnest. The Shadow of the Sun is his retrospective of the years in Africa - a "veritable ocean", as he calls the continent - and again, in the last moments of the book, "a thousand situations, varied, distinct".

Many are recorded in this carnet de voyage by a man who, for 40 years or more, has seen what he needed to see, and got where he needed to be, by looking puzzled and importunate, propping his spectacles up on his forehead in lowly, clerical frustration, and proclaiming his insignificance to a spectacular cast of leaders-in-waiting, roadblock bullies, gunmen, witches, peasants, villains and heroes of almost every persuasion, in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the rubble deserts of northern Mali.

Kapuscinski's strategy of immersion pays more dividends than descending on Africa with a tight schedule, a couple of well-paid local minders and a film crew in tow. Waiting, failing, taking sick - with malaria and tuberculosis - are all object lessons, and rapidly he graduates with honours in the ways of the "separate planet" he has chosen to study.

Beside the accounting of scrapes, dangers and general delirium - all vintage Kapuscinski - this collection contains extraordinary disquisitions on the nature of politics in Africa. The 18-page Lecture on Rwanda, unadorned by laughs or derringdo, is required reading for anyone who wants to under-stand the "deep provincial-ism" that lurks in the imagination of the genocidal killer. It is also a shocking tale, scrupulously told, about the complicity of outsiders - of the French, in particular, whose infatuation with "la Francophonie" led them to support the Hutu rulers of a former Belgian colony against the (Tutsi) Rwanda Patriotic Front, which had won its spurs in Anglophone Uganda.

For Kapuscinski, the colonial episode is still crucial. This makes him an unfashionable figure in the eyes of some who believe that the moment you invoke the history of colonialism, you extenuate corrupt African elites on grounds of diminished responsibility.

To his credit, Kapuscinksi makes no judgment either way. He is a canny moralist who prefers description and tragi-comic detail to the pontifical mode. But he won't jettison what he knows for a fact. Or what he has thought over for the better part of half a century.

Europeans, he believes, got off to a ruinous start in Africa. The problem lay in the calibre of the white men - missionaries, by and large, excepted - who "discov-ered" the continent: "the worst sort of people - robbers, soldiers of fortune, adventurers, criminals, slave-traders". "The tone, the standard, the atmosphere were for centuries maintained by a motley and rapacious international riff-raff."

Many figures spring to mind: Cecil Rhodes, Lord Lugard, the young Winston Churchill, and more recently, Mad Mike Hoare or Colonel Tim Spicer, head of the mercenary outfit, Sandline. Perhaps it takes one to know one, but Kapuscinksi is not another illustrious vandal on the make. His is the first wide-ranging, elegant, aristocratic intelligence since Conrad's to bear on Africa in all its perplexity.

Kapuscinski, as it happens, is the son of a village schoolteacher, but both writers, being Polish, have much to say about imperial domination. And, like Conrad on the Congo, Kapuscinski is a master of the charismatic shorthand that leaves the reader knowing all there is to know, yet wanting to know more.

Reader views (0)

 Add your view

No comments have so far been submitted.


Add your comment

 

Terms and conditions Make text area bigger You have  characters left.

We welcome your opinions. This is a public forum. Libellous and abusive comments are not allowed. Please read our House Rules.

For information about privacy and cookies please read our Privacy Policy.


 

 

  • Rosie Huntington-Whiteley named top style icon at Elle Awards Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has been named the year's top style icon at the Elle Style Awards
  • Al Pacino honoured at White House ceremony Al Pacino Al Pacino was among a host of honourees awarded the 2011 National Medal of Arts at a ceremony in Washington
  • Dermot O'Leary is top TV choice for Valentine's Day Dermot O'Leary Dermot O'Leary proved he has the X factor after he topped a poll of the nation's women asking them to name their top TV Valentine
  • Whitney Houston was dead before she went under the water Whitney o2 Singer Whitney Houston died from a mix of drugs and alcohol - and did not drown in her hotel bath, according to reports
  • Rhys Ifans accused of assault Rhys Ifans Rhys Ifans alleged to have slapped a guest in a late-night argument in a suite at London's five-star St Pancras Renaissance hotel
  • Triumph for Adele as she finds her voice on tragic night at the Grammys adele Adele made a triumphant return after vocal cord surgery to win a record six Grammy Awards
  • The Artist dominates the Baftas as Meryl Streep wins best actress The Artist Silent film The Artist made a big noise at the Bafta film awards winning seven, including Best Film, Leading Actor and Best Director
  • Lady Gaga reveals battle with bulimia Lady Gaga Lady Gaga used to make herself sick after eating family meals because she wanted to lose her "voluptuous" curves
  • Amy Childs tipped for return to TOWIE Amy Childs Amy Childs is set to make a shock return to The Only Way Is Essex
  • Holly Willoughby to host Surprise, Surprise Holly Willoughby Holly Willoughby is st to host a new series of Surprise, Surprise
  •