Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma

Annie Gagiano

This text, an English translation of the original French, appeared in 2004 as a paperback Vintage publication. It is a hefty, 445 page castigation and celebration of the bloody horrors and enduring vitality characteristic of postcolonial African societies (with a focus on the formerly French-colonised areas). A brief, late aside - "Africa is by far the continent richest in poverty and in dictators" (440) - will give an indication of the unremittingly sardonic style of the narrative. The whole text is, indeed, a narrative of a particular kind: the ritual recounting of the life of one of these abundant African dictators, possibly alluding to the author's own native land (Ivory Coast), but drawing an explicitly composite picture of such a tyrant. The novel is also bitingly mocking in its constantly-reiterated insistence on the continent-wide fraternity of dictators, without whose mutual advice and assistance (and competitive greed) individual tyrants would lose their places.

What is set up in the most dense section of the text (the fifty or so opening pages, before the narrative settles down into a clear and fairly conventional, patterned sequence) is that the whole text is the recitation/performance by the chief griot (that is: court historian cum poet cum musician) of the mythical République du Golfe, recounting the life history of the dictatorial ruler, Koyaga, of this country. Right at the end of the lengthy and highly eventful narration, when one learns that the last of a number of crises appears to have brought Koyaga's rule to an end, it is revealed that the griot Bingo's performance of Koyaga's enormously detailed biography (including many divergences!) is in fact an exorcism ritual that - if it has presented the warts-and-all truth - will yet again return him to power, this time to a position validated by a plebiscite! This will happen because the full, ventriloquised "confession" of all the crimes, strategies and experiences of the dictator's life (by the griot) will return to him the two talismans guaranteeing his hold on power - an ancient copy of the Qur'an and a magically potent piece of aerolite (stone from a meteorite). As the griot declares:

For you [Koyaga] know, you are certain, that if by chance men refuse to vote for you, the beasts will come from the jungle, will lay their hands on ballot papers and will elect you by a landslide. (445)

And if the ritual narrative does not succeed in returning those two talismanic objects? Then the enormous narration will simply recommence and be repeated in full until it succeeds, we are told! On that threat of even greater exhaustion, and of never-ending, self-perpetuating autocratic rule, the novel concludes.

Koyaga the tyrant's own enigmatic nature and the paradoxes of his conduct - he is said to be simultaneously "as tyrannous as a savage beast … as corrupt as a louse, as libidinous as a pair of ducks" and yet "generous", "filial" and "faithful" (368) - are accounted for by reference to his membership of and leading role in the "Brotherhood of Hunters" and in his unshakeable commitment to his "beloved mother, Nadjouna" (369), who as a sorceress devotes all her skills to his protection. A great Muslim marabout (holy man), Bokano, in alliance with the tyrant's mother, is his other protector. Because of this, Koyaga miraculously survives no fewer than four assassination attempts and is (in his apparent invincibility) the envy of all other African dictators.

Despite its generally rambunctious mode, torrents of blood and poker-faced references to "freedom-butchering Africa" (283), Kourouma's novel (like any powerful satire of public life) does have a serious core of historical reference and social concern. The enormous, purificatory incantation that the whole text supposedly is, is not only a biography of Koyaga, but a brief overview of (particularly western and central) African history, somewhat disguised and greatly telescoped.

Koyaga is supposedly a paleo, of "paleonegritic" stock - the latter expression a reference to what is said to be the continent's most ancient and highest civilisation (found in western and central Africa), characterised by the fact that its people wore no clothing: "this civilisation was destroyed [writes a secondary narrator in a dissertation] by the warrior hordes of Berbers, Mandinga, Bantu, Hamites, Nilotes and Zulus" (184). The role of French colonialism in the subjugation of this culture, and in his father's (and Koyaga's own) fate, is fully outlined, whilst retaining the author's persistently mocking perspective. Having been seduced into fighting in French wars, Koyaga's father returns and wants to display his military medals - hence he brings clothing into his culture and inadvertently demonstrates to the French that his - supposedly irredeemably "savage" - people can be "civilised"; ie exploited. The griot remarks sarcastically:

One can find the French wanting in many things, but never in their vast experience as conscientious, humane colonisers. When, after rigorous investigation, an offensive proves financially viable, they do not hesitate, they summon up their mission to educate, to heal, to evangelise. They shout it from the rooftops and spring into action. (10)

Koyaga is of the next generation of African colonials, educated in French schools and then also (like his father) fighting in French wars. During this period, we are told, "De Gaulle succeeded in granting independence without decolonising" (87); it was an era during which the typical African "President would return home … to the colonial governor's palace and proclaim a one-party state" (89).

In Koyaga's own country, a Patrice Lumumba-type, principled ruler nevertheless comes to power. Koyaga and three others proceed to exterminate him, after which the four usurpers are whittled down - by further assassinations - to leave Koyaga as the sole ruler. Kourouma gives us a sort of survey of the viciousness and chaos that has characterised so many parts of postcolonial Africa by providing an account of the tour of numerous tyrants' courts, undertaken by Koyaga as essential political education for any young ruler in "measureless Africa, a land as rich in violators of human rights as it is in hyenas" (320)! As must be abundantly clear, Kourouma may denounce colonialism, but he is the very opposite of a "politically correct" Africanist in his cutting comments on attitudes prevalent in certain quarters of the continent. He refers, for instance, to typical ideological cleavages - "liberals against socialists, northerners against southerners, Catholics against Muslims" (127) - and to pernicious attitudes - "the most terrible insult which an Arab can extend to another Arab is to … call him 'Negro'" (303), whereas "to a black man, someone of mixed race is a compatriot, a stranger and a traitor all at once" (285).

Among the common denominators that Kourouma identifies as characterising African dictators are that they remain "vehemently animist" (197) whether they claim to be "staunch supporters of the West" or accept "the guidance of the eastern powers" (122), and their unashamedly "kleptomaniac" (355) style of rule, unconstrained by laws (277) and resting on the unquestioning support of their people (225). One very experienced fellow-dictator instructs Koyaga that the prison is far and away the most important instrument of rule in Africa (249). Once firmly and bloodily ensconced as tyrant, Koyaga is, of course, identified by the West as one of the continent's bulwarks against communism and offered honorary doctorates by two American universities (335)! Not much hope is held out, in other words (in this text), for either African resistance or outside intervention bringing an end to instances of tyrannical rule on the continent.

Kourouma himself fought for the French in Indochina and the model for liberation that he holds up is the Vietnamese people who, he says,

(in) the war of words, told great truths to colonised peoples everywhere, words which did not go unheard. A vast country can only subjugate a small people who do not know how to unite and face the aggressor head on. A rich people can dominate a poor country only if its people do not know how to sacrifice themselves. (30)

Whether that "recipe" will also rid African populations of their tyrants the text does not say, but perhaps things have changed somewhat for the better in some places since that time.

The novel, be it said in conclusion, is not a masterpiece in the class of Kourouma's famous - and much more succinct - earlier text, The Suns of Independence (in French, Les soleils des independances - 1981), nor is it as manically entertaining as Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence (in French, Le devoir de violence), which it somewhat resembles in style and perspective. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote does suffer from lack of subtlety - "overkill" is an entirely appropriate epithet in this case. Its patterned design and its rather self-indulgent length will probably begin to bore some readers along the way; this is not a pithy text, despite its many pithy, memorable and incisive comments on African affairs of the past and present.



LitNet: 29 October 2004

Have your say! To comment on this piece write to webvoet@litnet.co.za, and become a part of our interactive opinion page.

to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.