VOLUME XIX, NUMBER 2, SPRING 2019

A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship

Michael Anton: William Voegeli: Christopher Caldwell: In Praise of Tucker Carlson Socialism for Dummies Hungary vs. Liberalism Larry P.Arnn: Joseph Epstein: Martha Bayles: Andrew Roberts’s Churchill The P.C. Menace Cold War Movies John Fonte: Mark Helprin: David Gelernter: Reihan Salam’s Melting Pot Memo from Harvard Admissions Up from Darwinism

A Publication of the Claremont Institute PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $8.95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Book Review by Theodore Dalrymple Heart of Darkness Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole , by Paul Kenyon. Head of Zeus, 480 pages, $16.95

he only man i’ve ever known who ut nigeria wasn’t really funny. i enter politics because I thought his movement was executed by hanging was Ken Saro- remember when Saro-Wiwa told me would end in violence (though not in his ex- TWiwa. I used to visit him in Port Har- Bthat he was entering politics by start- ecution) and do little good. Nigeria, I said, court in south-eastern Nigeria, or whenever ing a movement to obtain compensation for needed writers more than it needed politi- he came to . Once when I was driving his people, a small ethnic group called the cians. But I was wrong about the danger he with him to his office on the Aggrey Road in Ogoni, for the devastation of their rural faced personally, for he had touched on the Port Harcourt we passed the naked corpse of a homeland caused by careless oil extraction two subjects of vital importance in Nigerian man, bloating with decomposition, by the side by the Shell Oil company in collusion with politics: ethnicity and control of the coun- of the road. An announcer over the car radio the Nigerian state. Though many billions of try’s oil revenues. With 300 different ethnic was making a plea at the time for the owner of dollars’ worth of oil had been extracted from groups in the country, anyone claiming spe- the body to come and collect it. “Only in Nige- Ogoniland, the Ogoni had not benefited in cial treatment for one of them was potentially ria,” said Saro-Wiwa. the slightest, not even to the extent of having igniting the blue touch-paper, as it were, to Saro-Wiwa was the author of a great anti- schools or clinics built for them. On the con- ethnic violence. And because whoever was war novel, Sozaboy (1985), and the creator of trary, their plantations and fishing grounds in political control of the oil became vastly a television series wildly popular in Nigeria had been comprehensively ruined by pollu- wealthy overnight, competition for it was cor- called Basi and Company (1986-90), whose tion and even their sleep at nights had been respondingly fierce, not to say vicious. Ken hero was an idler who dreamed of becoming disturbed for decades by the perpetual flares Saro-Wiwa was tried by a military tribunal a millionaire by petty chicanery and whose of the oil and gas fields. on trumped-up murder charges, and hanged dictum was “To be a millionaire, think like Saro-Wiwa said that he risked death— in November 1995. a millionaire.” Saro-Wiwa used to regard “the rascals’ll kill me,” he’d say—rascals being the foibles of his countrymen with a laugh so his rather forgiving word for the totally cor- aro-wiwa looms large in the deep that it seemed to shake his whole being. rupt soldiers and politicians who ran Nigeria. chapter devoted to Nigeria in Paul It was the only effective defence against Nige- I thought he was overestimating the personal SKenyon’s Dictatorland, a highly read- rian reality. danger but nevertheless I didn’t want him to able but not very analytical book about Afri-

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2019 Page 84 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm can dictators and dictatorship. A former cor- oil in the country’s territorial waters. Equa- enyon hints at, but does not de- respondent in Africa for the BBC, Kenyon torial Guinea’s president for 40 years, Teo- velop, an important theme, namely has travelled widely on the continent, includ- doro Obiang, was Macías’s nephew, accom- Kthe humiliation visited upon Africans ing to very remote places. He doesn’t, how- plice, and henchman, and was dictator well by colonialism. The reaction of many Africans ever, tell us how or why he chose to describe before the discovery of oil—indeed there to the colonial regime was a mixture of ha- the seven dictatorial regimes (out of the was hardly any economic activity at all other tred and admiration and hence a desire both lamentably many he could have chosen) he than the recycling of aid from governments to be rid of it and to reproduce it with them- includes in his book and, I think rather dis- and NGOs. The terror was palpable; the selves in charge. Perhaps the clearest example appointingly, he ventures no general theory electricity in the capital was turned off as of the ambivalence was Zaire’s Mobuto. He to explain Africa’s inability to install mini- soon as the president left it; and I was told demanded that the population Africanize its mally democratic regimes. He offers us not a in confidence by an expatriate that if the names and forbade neckties in the name of au- typology but merely a menagerie of dictators, government got wind of the fact that I was thenticity, but dressed himself up in Ruritani- albeit one whose inhabitants are never less a writer I would be disappeared and thrown an-Colonial uniforms and (like practically all than hypnotically fascinating. to the sharks. In a way I was flattered: I have African dictators) bought an extensive portfo- He does, it’s true, make brief reference never been so important, before or since. lio of property in Europe, seeking to impress to one of the frequent explanations for the But what was quite clear is that it required thereby those who had previously humiliated chaos that followed decolonization in Af- no oil, or any other commodity (other than him. The bribes he extracted from anyone rica: “The nations [the leaders] inherited aid, perhaps), for Equatorial Guinea to be a who wanted a contract in his country were not were coarsely mapped European constructs, dictatorship. only convenient financially but soothing psy- with borders that took little account of age- old tribal rivalries.” The arbitrariness of the frontiers meant that those living within N E W B O O K S F R O M N O T R E D A M E them felt no loyalty or devotion to the new countries, which therefore became the object of personal, familial, and tribal looting by whoever was in power. This sounds plausible enough, until you realise that no boundaries could have taken account of age-old tribal rivalries: the Af- rican mosaic makes Balkan divisions seem positively straightforward and unequivocal. Moreover, those countries in Africa whose boundaries were not purely arbitrary— Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Lesotho, for example—have hardly been models of politi- “A tough and insightful “. . . the reference “One of Europe’s wisest cal wisdom or restraint. portrayal of a point for just war theory in and wittiest Christian A further theory, implicit rather than ex- commanding personality.” relation to American wars.” intellectuals.” plicit in this book, is that, in conditions of —Malcolm Byrne —Harry Stout —Douglas Kries general poverty, the struggle for the control of predominant natural resources such as oil or minerals leads to, and maintains, dictatorship because such resources are the country’s only wealth—oil in Nigeria, Libya, and Equato- rial Guinea, and minerals in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) sustained dictatorships such as those of Ibrahim Baban- gida and Sani Abacha in Nigeria, Muammer Gaddhafi in Libya, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea, and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. But this theory, too, is far from the whole A fascinating account of a “Sings the unbearable The first book to bring the truth, even if there is an element of truth in largely overlooked figure and still makes a claim story of Brazil’s long night it. I visited Equatorial Guinea in the period in Irish history. for survival.” of dictatorship into between the overthrow in 1979 of the coun- —Ada Limón the present. try’s first (democratically-elected) president after independence from Spain, Francisco AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD Macías Nguema—who killed or drove into exile a third of the country’s population and so hated intellectuals that it was extremely dangerous for anyone to be seen with a pair of glasses—and the subsequent discovery of

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2019 Page 85 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm chologically: the former masters were now the sanctimonious , came to real- cialist—that they then impose on the whole supplicants, dishonest ones at that. Mobutu is ize that power lay in the shortage produced population. Only the attempted implemen- said once to have remarked that it takes two by centralization and incompetent planning, tation of such ideas and theories (other than to be corrupt; the universal practice of brib- for in conditions of universal shortage powers the insensate brutality of Idi Amin in Uganda, ery equalized the races by visiting humiliation of patronage increased dramatically. In the say) are capable of subduing a population’s ir- on the formerly dominant race. But Mobutu countryside, you could tell members of Nyer- repressible gaiety or joie de vivre, for such ideas was no fool: he knew that behind the façade of ere’s party, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (the require minute universal surveillance for their respect he was accorded by those who want- Party of the Revolution), by their girth. Thus implementation. Most standard kleptocrats ed something from him lay deep contempt, there were no better tools for aspiring Afri- need only eliminate potential competitors for which in turn led to ever-greater extravagance can dictators than the institutions and habits power; they can leave the rest of the popula- on his part to try to obtain real respect. This, of mind bequeathed to them by the departing tion to its own devices. of course, set up a vicious circle than could colonial regimes. But paranoia is an occupational hazard end only with overthrow and death. A similar or disease of dictators of whatever kind, and syndrome affected Milton Obote (Uganda), enyon makes no attempt to rank takes the strangest forms when the dictators Hastings Banda (Malawi), Robert Mugabe the dictatorships in order of vicious- emerge from a social world in which super- (), Daniel arap Moi (Kenya), the Kness or effect on the population, stition and belief in magic is endemic. I was Emperor Bokassa (Central African Repub- thereby implying that one dictatorship is once giving some Tanzanian soldiers a lift in lic), Omar Bongo (Gabon), Félix Houphouët- much the same as another, but it is neverthe- a Land Rover when I saw a chameleon cross- Boigny (Ivory Coast) and many others. less a fact that they were, and are, equally bad. ing the dirt road. Fascinated by this creature, Apart from this humiliation, often but not Sani Abacha was by far the worst of the Nige- I stopped to capture it. When I returned to always intentionally inflicted, the worst legacy rian military dictators, for example, but even the Land Rover, the soldiers, including their of colonialism, especially in its last phase, was though he committed the atrocious crime commanding officer, had fled into the bush the model of governance it left behind. The of having Saro-Wiwa and others hanged, he and could be coaxed back only with diffi- colonial governments were—or at any rate could not be compared to, say, Macías Ngue- culty. They believed that chameleons were presented themselves as being—composed ma of Equatorial Guinea or Sékou Touré of extremely dangerous, both physically and of all-wise, all-seeing, all-knowing philoso- Guinea. Perhaps he was spared from being as spiritually. pher-kings. They went in for economic plan- bad as they only by the sheer size, complexity, Paul Kenyon’s Dictatorland is entertain- ning on a large scale: in short, they pretended and anarchy of Nigeria, so unsuited to the im- ing, informative, and superficial. He attempts that they knew what was best for everyone. position of the extremer forms of dictatorship, no explanation as to why what started with Spectacular failure—such as that of the Tan- rather than by any personal moral scruples, of promise ended in disaster, but his book is ganyikan groundnut scheme, when the Brit- which he had none. nonetheless a useful introduction to modern ish government invested heavily in trying to There is a tendency—but only a tendency, Africa. produce peanuts in a soil and climate totally not an invariant law—for those dictatorships unsuited to them—gave planners no pause. to be worst whose dictators claim to have large Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor to A later ruler of Tanganyika, the ruthlessly and important ideas or theories—usually so- City Journal.

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