"Between Obscurantism and Oblivion"

My impression on Courtenay’s “Between Untruth and Apology” on Soyinka’s “Between Truth and Indulgences”

Permit me to wade into this matter as a historical idealist , although I do not hope to rewrite the past but indeed intend to make a sound judgement or settle an apology for what I have always deemed the ‘enforced connivance’ of the slavers and slaves. Many are full of difficult expression yet with little knowledge to dissect the truth from the past for in truth, much have been said by historians that do not depict actual happenings of the Atlantic slave trade; but have successfully as commercial entrepreneur feasted on the oblivion of a primitive nature. Besides, subjective rejuvenation of a story that was not historical had been a licensed tool to haunt the minds of the likes of Wole Soyinka, hence I find it hard to throw a schmaltz at the ‘obsessed’ professor
To a large extent Courtenay, I have stumbled upon books that tell different versions (tales) of the Atlantic slave trade. From Johannes Postma, Philip D Curtin, Timothy Wells, they have all told it from different stand points, perhaps relevant to what they had witnessed yet all accounts differ.
The “enforced connivance” leaves a primary and secondary perpetrator. The west were the primary and the African leaders whose people and culture were being enslaved were the secondary. Although the west and the African leaders share a common border, what is common as human wants, hence one cannot totally absolve the African leaders of not committing crimes against their people.
In the past I had been a staunch critic of the Trans Atlantic slave trade. Perhaps then, I would have been a more abrasive candidate antagonizing Soyinka on this matter. Not that I have lost my vigour, instead I find almost all stories chronological to the time of slave trade sensitive to the state of minds and not in actual sense. Some indeed like Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” sounded too fictitious even as the erudite scholar managed to complement the opinionated beliefs of compounded historical tales.
Soyinka, you must understand is an iconoclast who always like a broken piece of mind would play a surreal character on the stage of comedy. I will always laugh at his disturbed genuineness. Like Okonkwo of “Things fall apart” he spits fire only to keep the world from feeling his waning embers.
Nevertheless I am quick to understand your dissatisfaction of Syinka’s polemics, logically because you see him as a traitor, I don’t know if that is good enough to suggest he is a traitor but I do know that even though he is a professor, he supports mediocrity, which is why you sometimes find toys in his hands (If you understand what I mean).
Enough of the jabbering on the ‘mindful’ Professor Courtenay let us fold our arms and hear how much we have failed from the mouth of the “GURU"

DAYO Phillips-arogbokun
©2010