Phillip Isakpa
One of the greatest `disfavours that George WBush and his band of neo-con cronies did to the international political lexicon was to take certain perfectly legitimate words and re-define them to make them totally unacceptable. Reagan had tried in the 1980s with liberal (which he referred to as the L-word, as if it were lavatorial), but W and co did their best to equate the word radical with their favourite horror buzz-word terrorist, which itself has become seriously devalued in its meaning.
Radicalism in fact has a long political tradition going back at least to the Christian reformation of the 16th century. It comes from the Latin radix meaning root, and views that are radical are in favour of root and branch reform, but falling short of revolution, although radical and revolutionary are sometimes misleadingly equated. If radicalism in British politics had a whiff of danger, the word was more widely used by the French to describe one of the central traditions of 19th century republican politics. In the Third Republic (1871-1940) the Radical Party was one of the most powerful groupings producing leaders such as the war leader Clemenceau. It was, however, not socialist, which increasingly came to mean without ideology, and the opportunism of its leaders self-immolated by the Vichy regime.
It is, notwithstanding, a word of great resonance and historical implications, that still makes political establishments uneasy, although not like militant which once simply meant activist, but became at a certain associated with Trotskyists and violence, and suffered a heavier corruption of meaning (see what it now means in Nigeria). It was only when W was talking about the post 9/11 world especially in the Arab nations, that the word radical became reprehensible.
Back in the colonial period a favourite horror-word was agitator. This is pin-pointed in a recently published book called Africa’s Agitators by Dr Jonathan Derrick. The sub-title Militant Anti-colonialism in Africa and the West 1918-1939 gives a more detailed idea of his subject matter, and it is a marvellous mine of information on the early resisters to colonial rule (of the British, French, Portuguese, Spanish an Belgian varieties), who were all branded as agitators and were certainly thought of as radicals and often militants, many of whom saw the insides of colonial or even European jails. Many of them are now forgotten names but others have passed into legend in their own countries, such as the indefatigable Sierra Leonean nationalist ITA Wallace Johnson, whose activities spanned the whole period and who clearly fascinates the author, and who now has his own statue in Freetown.
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One particular merit in Derrick’s book is the detailed attention he pays to the nationalist agitators; in both francophone Africa and the Arab world, such as the Malian Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté, the Dahomeyan Hounkanrin and the Algerian Messali Hadj. This is sometimes more complete than the information he provides on some well-known Africna nationalists of the period. He pays more attention to Frank Macaulay, son of Herbert Macaulay, than to the great moustachioed Nigerian nationalist himself, who surely falls into the agitator category. It is true that Macaulay’s conflicts with Lugard pre-date the period of the book, but he was active politically through the whole period. Nnamdi Azikiwe (that arch thorn in the side of the British) is given more space, but Nkrumah is mysteriously almost ignored, although heavily into African politics in London in the 1930s. This is strange given the amount of references devoted to Nkrumah’s mentor, the Trinidadian George Padmore, who has more footnotes than anyone else cited in the book.
He also gives very full background to the external backers of the agitators, especially European and Soviet Communists, whose support was often very essential to the early nationalist movements, an uncomfortable historical fact that is still well-appreciated by African historians. There is sometimes almost too much diversion into Soviet history: but then, Derrick is often distracted by titbits of information that make his narrative unnecessarily complicated and confusing. But the book as a whole is a wonderful sourcebook for the period.
The truism that yesterday’s agitators become today’s icons came to mind forcibly at a Nigerian political event at which I happened to find myself at London’s Metropolitan on May 29. This was called, not without irony Democracy Day, organised the Nigerian Liberty Forum, and the focus was particularly on Nigeria’s flawed electoral system, and the prevalence of corruption. Speakers included agitators’ galore, including Professor Wole Soyinka; Malam Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC boss (who received a standing ovation); human rights barrister Femi Falana; the US-based writer Okey Ndibe; and Omoyele Sowore, the begetter of that current internet gadfly of the federal government, Sahara Reporters. Soyinka, of course, is already a mega-icon, he was introduced as the conscience of the nation, but just as the heroes of guerrilla journalism of the 1990s are now present-day media icons, so here in the Holloway Road one was probably listening to icons of the future. Some may even get statues. But will this thought comfort those who worry that such activities detracting to Nigerias external image?
