The Soccer War (14 page)

So Dahomey had two presidents, two heads of state.

Such a situation cannot go on for long. Fortunately, someone had the sense to call a meeting of political activists—something like a party convention—who were summoned to Cotonou on Sunday. This was the national leadership: party bosses, members of parliament, labour and youth movement officials, wholesalers from the bazaar (an important political force), priests, witch-doctors and army officers. The meeting took place in the palace of the former president of Dahomey, Hubert Maga, who was overthrown by the army in 1963.

The palace is famous.

The building of it used up all of the funds that had been set aside for the three-year national development plan. Its huge gates are carved of pure gold. Snakes, also gold, twine
around the marble columns in the main hall. The whole palace drips gold. Niches in the walls are inlaid with precious stones, and authentic Persian carpets cover the floors. During the confusion of 1963, when Colonel Christopher Soglo overthrew President Hubert Maga, the precious silver dishes that Maga had imported from Paris antique shops disappeared. Vice-President Ahomadegbe took it upon himself to investigate, and concluded publicly that Colonel Soglo’s wife had taken the silver. The government crisis that subsequently erupted was smoothed over somehow, but it was clear that if Soglo got involved now—decided to act—Ahomadegbe would have to lose.

In any case, we went to the meeting.

On the steps of the palace we met Soglo, now a general, who greeted us and stopped to talk. Soglo is a stocky, jovial, energetic man. He is fifty-six. He served in the French army from 1931 as a career NCO. He was dressed simply, in an army shirt without insignia. He wore a green beret. Soglo did not carry a weapon, and neither did other officers, nor the paratroopers surrounding the palace. During the course of the military takeover that I was about to witness, I did not see a single armed soldier. This distinguished the present
coup
from that of October 1963, when the army used weapons: namely, the one mortar in the possession of the Dahomeyan army. When Soglo arrested Hubert Maga, the members of the cabinet, unsure about what was happening, barricaded themselves in a small building near the main square. Soglo himself then set up the mortar in front of the building (he was the only one in the army who knew how to operate it) and announced through a megaphone that if the cabinet did not resign by four in the afternoon, he would begin firing on the building. The cabinet decided unanimously to resign, which it communicated to Soglo through the window, and thus
ended the political crisis of October 1963.

Now Soglo stood with us on the stairs of the palace, in a good humour, conversing. He told us that he was completely unable to reconcile them—‘them’ meaning the self-proclaimed president and the one elected by the people. Later he added that he would ‘have to do something.’

Just before the party convention opened, word went around that the witch-doctors had come out in support of Ahomadegbe. ‘Well, Apithy’s finished,’ opined the AFP correspondent, Jacques Lamoureux, who then sent a dispatch to Paris saying so. But we waited. The convention ended without an agreement later that afternoon, with the activists splitting into two camps, supporting different presidents. In the evening flyers were handed out, consisting of three sentences: ‘Down with Fascism! Down with Ahomadegbe! Long live the Army!’ That same evening, Ahomadegbe made a dramatic, single-handed attempt to arrest Apithy. He drove to Porto Novo, where Apithy resided. He then went to the
gendarmerie
barracks and demanded that the commander of the
gendarmes
, Major Jackson, arrest. Apithy. But the major told Ahomadegbe that he took orders from General Soglo; the two argued, then Ahomadegbe went back to Cotonou. The major must then have reported everything to General Soglo, because, by the time Ahomadegbe had returned, Soglo had decided to act at once.

That same night, at four in the morning, Soglo woke Apithy and ordered him to sign his letter of resignation. Apithy said that he would sign only if he saw with his own eyes that Ahomadegbe had also signed a letter of resignation. Soglo agreed, got into his car and drove to Cotonou. He woke Ahomadegbe and ordered him to sign his resignation. Ahomadegbe signed. Soglo took the paper and drove back to Porto Novo, to Apithy. The whole time,
Soglo was alone. He showed Ahomadegbe’s resignation to Apithy. Then Apithy signed his own resignation. By six in the morning, the crisis was over. Soglo named a new premier: Tairu Congacu, a colourless, second-rank figure. Soglo obviously kept the real power in his own hands.

From this revolt in Dahomey I drove straight into the fires of the civil war that had been going on in western Nigeria since October. On the road from the Dahomey-Nigeria border to Lagos: barriers, police, troops, searches, checkpoints. Burned cars in the ditches. Burned huts in the villages. Army patrols in trucks. This war was hopeless and absurd, with no end in sight. Hundreds of people had already died, hundreds of houses had been burned and great sums of money wasted.

In the course of one month I had driven through five countries. In four of them, there were states of emergency. In one, the president had just been overthrown; in a second, the president had saved himself only by chance; in a third, the head of government was afraid to leave his house, which was surrounded by troops. Two parliaments had been dissolved. Two governments had fallen. Scores of political activists had been arrested. Scores of people had been killed in political conflicts.

Over a distance of 520 kilometres, I had been checked twenty-one times and subjected to four body searches. Everywhere there was an atmosphere of tension, everywhere the smell of gunpowder.

January 1966. In Nigeria a civil war was going on. I was a correspondent covering the war. On a cloudy day I left Lagos. On the outskirts police were stopping all cars. They were searching the trunks, looking for weapons. They ripped open sacks of corn: could there be ammunition in that corn?

Authority ended at the city line.

The road leads through a green countryside of low hills covered with a close, thick bush. This is a laterite road, rust-coloured, with a treacherous uneven surface.

These hills, this road and the villages along it are the country of the Yorubas, who inhabit south-western Nigeria. They constitute a quarter of Nigeria’s population. The heaven of the Yorubas is full of gods and their earth full of kings. The greatest god is called Oduduwa and he lives at a height higher than the stars, higher even than the sun. The kings, on the other hand, live close to the people. In every city and every village there is a king.

In 1962 the Yorubas split into two camps. The overwhelming majority belongs to the UPGA (United Progressive Grand Alliance); an insignificant minority belongs to the NNDP (Nigerian National Democratic Party). Owing to the trickery of the Nigerian central government, the minority party rules the Yorubas’ province. The central government prefers a minority government in the province as a way of controlling the Yorubas and curbing their separatist ambitions: thus has the party of the overwhelming majority, the UPGA, found itself in opposition. In the autumn of 1965 there were elections in the Yorubas’ province. It was obvious that the majority party, UPGA, had won. Nevertheless, the central government, ignoring the results and the sentiments of the Yorubas, declared the
victory of the puppet NNDP, which went on to form a government. In protest, the majority party created its own government. For a time there were two governments. In the end, the members of the majority government were imprisoned, and the UPGA declared open war against the minority government.

And so we have misfortune, we have a war. It is an unjust, dirty, hooliganish war in which all methods are allowed—whatever it takes to knock out the opponent and gain control. This war uses a lot of fire: houses are burning, plantations are burning, and charred bodies lie in the streets.

The whole land of the Yorubas is in flames.

I was driving along a road where they say no white man can come back alive. I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to experience everything for myself. I know that a man shudders in the forest when he passes close to a lion. I got close to a lion so that I would know how it feels. I had to do it myself because I knew no one could describe it to me. And I cannot describe it myself. Nor can I describe a night in the Sahara. The stars over the Sahara are enormous. They sway above the sand like great chandeliers. The light of those stars is green. Night in the Sahara is as green as a Mazowsze meadow.

I might see the Sahara again and I might see the road that carried me through Yoruba country again. I drove up a hill and when I got to the crest I could see the first flaming roadblock down below.

It was too late to turn back.

Burning logs blocked the road. There was a big bonfire in the middle. I slowed down and then stopped; it would have been impossible to have carried on. I could see a dozen or so young people. Some had shotguns, some were holding knives and the rest were armed with machetes.
They were dressed alike in blue shirts with white sleeves, the colours of the opposition, of the UPGA. They wore black and white caps with the letters UPGA. They had pictures of Chief Awolowo pinned to their shirts. Chief Awolowo was the leader of the opposition, the idol of the party.

I was in the hands of UPGA activists. They must have been smoking hashish because their eyes were mad and they did not look fully conscious. They were soaked in sweat, seemed possessed, frenzied.

They descended on me and pulled me out of the car. I could hear them shouting ‘UPGA! UPGA!’ On this road, UPGA ruled. UPGA held me in its sway. I could feel three knife-points against my back and I saw several machetes (these are the Africans’ scythes) aimed at my head. Two activists stood a few steps away, pointing their guns at me in case I tried to get away. I was surrounded. Around me I could see sweaty faces with jumpy glances; I could see knives and gun barrels.

My African experience had taught me that the worst thing to do in such situations is to betray your despair; the worst thing is to make a gesture of self-defence, because that emboldens them, because that unleashes a new wave of aggression in them.

In the Congo when they poked machine-guns in our bellies, we could not flinch. The most important thing was keeping still. Keeping still takes practice and willpower, because everything inside screams that you should run for it or jump the other guy. But they are always in groups and that means certain death. This was a moment when he, the black, was testing me, looking for a weak spot. He would have been afraid of attacking my strong point—he had too much fear of the white in him—so he looked for my weakness. I had to cover all my weaknesses, hide them
somewhere very deep within myself. This was Africa, I was in Africa. They did not know that I was not their enemy. They knew that I was white, and the only white they had known was the colonizer, who abased them, and now they wanted to make him pay for it.

The irony of the situation was that I would die out of responsibility for colonialism; I would die in expiation of the slave merchants; I would die to atone for the white planter’s whip; I would die because Lady Lugard had ordered them to carry her in a litter.

The ones standing in the road wanted cash. They wanted me to join the party, to become a member of UPGA and to pay for it. I gave them five shillings. That was too little, because somebody hit me on the back of the head. I felt pain in my skull. In a moment there was another blow. After the third blow I felt an enormous tiredness. I was fatigued and sleepy; I asked how much they wanted.

They wanted five pounds.

Everything in Africa was getting more expensive. In the Congo soldiers were accepting people into the party for one pack of cigarettes and one blow with a rifle butt. But here I had already got it a couple of times and I was still supposed to pay five pounds. I must have hesitated because the boss shouted to the activists, ‘Burn the car!’ and that car, the Peugeot that had been carrying me around Africa, was not mine. It belonged to the Polish state. One of them splashed gasoline on to the Peugeot.

I understood that the discussion had ended and I had no way out. I gave them the five pounds. They started fighting over it.

But they allowed me to drive on. Two boys moved the burning logs aside. I looked around. On both sides of the road there was a village and the village crowd had been watching the action. The people were silent; somebody in
the crowd was holding up a UPGA banner. They all had photographs of Chief Awolowo pinned on their shirts. I liked the girls best. They were naked to the waist and had the name of the party written across their breasts: UP on the right breast, and GA on the left one.

I started off.

I could not turn back; they allowed me only to go forward. So I kept driving through a country at war, a cloud of dust behind me. The landscape was beautiful here, all vivid colours, Africa the way I like it. Quiet, empty—every now and then a bird taking flight in the path of the car. The roaring of a factory was only in my head. But an empty road and a car gradually restore calm.

Now I knew the price: UPGA had demanded five pounds of me. I had less than five pounds left, and fifty kilometres to go. I passed a burning village and then an emptying village, people fleeing into the bush. Two goats grazed by the roadside and smoke hung above the road.

Beyond the village there was another burning roadblock.

Activists in UPGA uniforms, knives in their hands, were kicking a driver who did not want to pay his membership fee. Nearby stood a bloody, beaten man—he hadn’t been able to come up with the dues, either. Everything looked like the first roadblock. At this one, though, I hadn’t even managed to announce my desire to join UPGA before I received a pair of hooks to the midsection and had my shirt torn. They turned my pockets inside out and took all my money.

I was waiting for them to set me on fire, because UPGA was burning many people alive. I had seen the burnt corpses. The boss at this roadblock popped me one in the face and I felt a warm sweetness in my mouth. Then he poured benzene on me, because here they burn people in benzene: it guarantees complete incineration.