"Sozaboy", by Ken Saro-Wiwa

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By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

We know the Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa as an environmental activist who, it will be remembered, paid with his life for his commitment against the environmental ravages caused by the oil companies in the Niger Delta, his native region. On November 10, 1995, he was hanged high and short by the Sani Abacha regime, which felt targeted by its relentless fight against the corruption of the powerful in Nigeria and "the polluting Mafia of Shell". We know less well the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, exuberant verve storyteller, novelist, poet and screenwriter, who was the president of the Association of Nigerian Writers. He was especially the author of "Sozaboy", a great novel against the war, "one of the best that the XXth century produced", according to the English novelist William Boyd who prefaced the work.

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Published in 1985, Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa is one of the great classics of contemporary African fiction. This novel updates the tragic figure of the child soldier. "  The child soldier is the most famous character of this end of the twentieth century,  " wrote the Ivorian Ahmadou Kourouma in his novel Allah is not obligated , who also told of the kids' misfortunes and misfortunes. warriors often enlisted by force, in the countless wars on the African continent.

The child soldier

Since the 1970s, Africa has been plagued by conflict and deadly wars. The relay of horror passed from Biafra to Libya via Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Congo-Brazzaville, ex-Zaire, Ivory Coast, without forgetting Ethiopia, l 'Eritrea, Somalia, Libya ... Just like Stendhal or Tolstoy in their time, African novelists drew on these tragic wars that bloodied their continent, their new favorite subjects. These themes succeeded the themes of Negritude, the postcolonial identity quests or even the aftermath of disenchanting independence, subjects which in turn dominated the African literary field.

In war literature in Africa, the figure of the child soldier occupies a central place, as evidenced by the covers of novels of the years 1990-2000 showing young children armed with kalach or rifle. These novels tell the tragedy of these derisory and frightening warriors, some sometimes going so far as to make them naive narrators of their own destinies catapulted into the absurd universe of war. It is this story that we will read in the hallucinated pages of Sozaboy . Its title reveals the linguistic and ideological issues of this powerful and extraordinarily inventive novel, especially in terms of writing.

" Rotten English "

Admitted by critics in general, what made Sozaboy so successful was its use of spoken language, which the author described as "  rotten English  ". This language is close to Creole, spoken by young soldiers in the cantonments, mixing Nigerian Pidgin, bad English, mixed with idiomatic expressions. The title of the novel "  Sozaboy  " illustrates the inventiveness of this popular language: "soza", derived from "soldier" in spoken English, added with the suffix "  boy  ", is a neologism for "  child-soldier  ", with the evocative power in addition.

Ken Saro Wiwa tells of the war, but also of the lost innocence. There is something of an initiatory journey in this novel. Young people go to war with a flower in their arms, before discovering the horror, the bloodshed, the devastation. This is what happens to Méné, nicknamed "  the little petit   ", who is the hero of Sozaboy . Young apprentice driver of fourteen or fifteen, Méné lives with his mother in Doukana, an imaginary city in eastern Nigeria. He is madly in love with the beautiful Agnes, waitress at the local bar and girl with the prettiest breasts a hundred miles around, which earned her the nickname "  real girl with 100 watt bulbs  ". Méné hastens to marry him.

It is to please his lady who only likes brave men, capable of crushing the enemy and protecting him, that he will enlist in the secessionist army of Biafra against the federated soldiers. He proudly wears the uniform and poses in front of his car, rifle in hand, before discovering, on the way, the true face of war: raids, bombings, bloodshed, corpses of abandoned children, decimated, devastated villages. We are witnessing in the last part of the novel a veritable descent into hell, seen and told through the derelict words ("  rotten English   ") of Mené. This adequation of content and form is a real literary feat, which makes preface maker William Boyd say that this novel "  remains in his opinion the literary monument par excellence on war   ".

" Enemy, enemy "

More specifically, on the Biafra War. Sozaboy is part of the Nigerian civil war which broke out in 1967 and killed a million victims at a word, especially among the civilian population who died in the bombing, but also of famine and disease. This war which is not explicitly named in the text, is told in all its horror, from the point of view of Méné who is the narrator of this novel. Endearing and naive character, he describes in a particularly poignant way the absurdity of the civil war of which he does not understand all the ins and outs. He understands them all the less since, not being from the Igbo community which wanted to free himself from Nigeria, he has the impression of having been trapped by a secession which was not entirely his own. . Who is this enemy against whom he took up arms? "  Enemy. Enemy. I don't know what this guy even looks like. Or is he like Hitla?  Asks the protagonist.

The question arises because Méné does not belong to the Igbo community which wanted to separate from Nigeria. This confusion contributes to the final tragedy, the content of which will not be revealed here so as not to discourage future readers. I do not resist however the temptation to quote the last sentences of the hero in his "  rotten English  ", but rich in maturity and experiences. Here is what he said: "And I was there thinking about the way I was doing my smart before leaving to do minitaire and take the name of Petit Minitaire. But now if anyone talks about anything about war or even combat, I'm only going to run, run, run, run and run… ”.  

After reading Sozaboy, you will never say, "  My God, how good a war is!"   "

Sozaboy , by Ken Saro Wiwa. Translated from the English by Samuel Milongo and Amadou Bissiri. Editions Actes Sud, 313 pages. Read in pocket edition.

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