Wole Soyinka on the wasting of time

Submitted by David on Fri, 2020-08-28 11:18

I've been thinking back to this quote from time to time recently. The person who uttered it is the first Sub-Saharan African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature:

We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda. - Wole Soyinka

I think that a lot of contemporary activists who claim to be "anti-racist" would have to significantly improve in order for me to upgrade my view of them from mostly-a-disaster to a-waste-of-time-and-money.

Soyinka seems to regularly get described as concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it." Not exactly the most popular perspective in a lot of circles these days.