Read Online You Must Set Forth at Dawn by Wole Soyinka - Free Book Online
Authors: Wole Soyinka
Tags: Fiction
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mode, the Boersâ move was a masterstroke.
We knew our history, however. The Spanish Civil War had given birth to a volunteer international force, of which the writers and artists units, such as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, played courageous but mostly tragic roles. As we argued and constructed possible scenarios at the student clubs, buoyed by tea and biscuits, lager-and-lime and cider, sandwiches and sausage rolls, warmed by the glow of the fireplace after a hard dayâs work delivering Christmas parcels or lugging railway baggage, our conclusions pointed us in a similar directionâ to prepare ourselves for the liberation war in South Africa. We saw that ill-used tip of the continent being restored to the black race by a Continental Brigade of volunteers converging on the South from every corner of the black landmass. It was the most obvious solution. That future was so clear to usâour generation could not escape the destiny of marching down to terminate the racial insult that rebuked our very being as black peoples. Whenever I had cause to think of that prospect, I confess that I felt nothing but a warm glow of anticipation. It made personal encounters with racial prejudice easy to ignoreâ I
knew
something that my local tormentors did not!
We knew, beyond all doubt, our place within the evolving organism of new nations. We, the young generation of that independence phase, were a renaissance people who would transform the strange bequest into a world marvel. The only way to grasp this confidence, this self-assurance, was to treat it as
pure knowledge.
Not intuition, not revelation, not blind faith, not ambition, not deductive reasoning or a conscious sense of missionâno, simply as
knowledge
in its purest, unassailable form! We
were
the renaissance people! And we were working in our various fieldsâquite indifferent to any special designationâ to bring about this renaissance.
If there was a âplan of action,â it took place within continental leadership, and took its substance and bearing from the merging of nationalist forces at the leadership apex. Beginning with two mutually antagonistic blocs, the âCasablancaâ and the âMonroviaâ groups, a collective effort was progressing toward the formation of an Organization of African Unity. But even more significant for us was the struggle at the grass roots, the wars of liberation from settler colonialism in Kenya and from the Portuguese âassimilationistâ deception in Angola and Cape Verde. Defined by these efforts, we would be the transforming auxiliaries of an inchoate entity, of spaces that just happened to be called Nigeria, Gold Coast, the Rhodesias, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, and so on. The future spread itself before us: the reassemblage of a much-abused, much-violated people on whose heads the ultimate insult had been heapedâ broken into pieces and then glued back together like the shell of the tortoise in folk mythology. We were unstoppable.
But first, we had to liberate our kinsfolk to the south!
I ENROLLED I N the Officer Training Corps of my university in 1955, opting for infantry. Alas, my membership in that unit was brief. In 1956 the Suez War broke out and I received my call-up letter. I learned that, as a colonial, I was liable to be called up anytime to serve Her Royal Majesty. I had imagined that I was conveniently exploiting Her Majestyâs training facilities to prepare myself for a liberation war, but it appeared that Her Majestyâs government had other plans for me. Although I was required only to present myself for training with other reserves, all I saw was my overclever self being loaded onto a landing craft, heading away from South Africa, fighting on the side of the French and British against Gamal Abdel Nasser over a canal situated on his own soil! This ill-disguised attempt to recolonize Egypt and compromise her sovereignty did not appear to be a logical
We knew our history, however. The Spanish Civil War had given birth to a volunteer international force, of which the writers and artists units, such as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, played courageous but mostly tragic roles. As we argued and constructed possible scenarios at the student clubs, buoyed by tea and biscuits, lager-and-lime and cider, sandwiches and sausage rolls, warmed by the glow of the fireplace after a hard dayâs work delivering Christmas parcels or lugging railway baggage, our conclusions pointed us in a similar directionâ to prepare ourselves for the liberation war in South Africa. We saw that ill-used tip of the continent being restored to the black race by a Continental Brigade of volunteers converging on the South from every corner of the black landmass. It was the most obvious solution. That future was so clear to usâour generation could not escape the destiny of marching down to terminate the racial insult that rebuked our very being as black peoples. Whenever I had cause to think of that prospect, I confess that I felt nothing but a warm glow of anticipation. It made personal encounters with racial prejudice easy to ignoreâ I
knew
something that my local tormentors did not!
We knew, beyond all doubt, our place within the evolving organism of new nations. We, the young generation of that independence phase, were a renaissance people who would transform the strange bequest into a world marvel. The only way to grasp this confidence, this self-assurance, was to treat it as
pure knowledge.
Not intuition, not revelation, not blind faith, not ambition, not deductive reasoning or a conscious sense of missionâno, simply as
knowledge
in its purest, unassailable form! We
were
the renaissance people! And we were working in our various fieldsâquite indifferent to any special designationâ to bring about this renaissance.
If there was a âplan of action,â it took place within continental leadership, and took its substance and bearing from the merging of nationalist forces at the leadership apex. Beginning with two mutually antagonistic blocs, the âCasablancaâ and the âMonroviaâ groups, a collective effort was progressing toward the formation of an Organization of African Unity. But even more significant for us was the struggle at the grass roots, the wars of liberation from settler colonialism in Kenya and from the Portuguese âassimilationistâ deception in Angola and Cape Verde. Defined by these efforts, we would be the transforming auxiliaries of an inchoate entity, of spaces that just happened to be called Nigeria, Gold Coast, the Rhodesias, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, and so on. The future spread itself before us: the reassemblage of a much-abused, much-violated people on whose heads the ultimate insult had been heapedâ broken into pieces and then glued back together like the shell of the tortoise in folk mythology. We were unstoppable.
But first, we had to liberate our kinsfolk to the south!
I ENROLLED I N the Officer Training Corps of my university in 1955, opting for infantry. Alas, my membership in that unit was brief. In 1956 the Suez War broke out and I received my call-up letter. I learned that, as a colonial, I was liable to be called up anytime to serve Her Royal Majesty. I had imagined that I was conveniently exploiting Her Majestyâs training facilities to prepare myself for a liberation war, but it appeared that Her Majestyâs government had other plans for me. Although I was required only to present myself for training with other reserves, all I saw was my overclever self being loaded onto a landing craft, heading away from South Africa, fighting on the side of the French and British against Gamal Abdel Nasser over a canal situated on his own soil! This ill-disguised attempt to recolonize Egypt and compromise her sovereignty did not appear to be a logical