Professor Wole Soyinka
l feel obliged to bring the subject of these reflections forward at least, to launch a public consideration of a matter for unique but urgent concern. The substance of this specific intervention was in fact designated for a lecture commitment in March next year However, this outgoing year has been an open season of surprises, where the once unthinkable materializes almost routinely. The probable consolidation of such anomalies compels me to bring the subject forward, call attention to a cause for unease which, in numerous discussions, appear to dominate the thinking of others. A month, we know, is not a remarkably long period in the frenzied tempo of the political life of most nations on the continent, and I am not inclined towards - to deploy one of our favourite expressions of local wisdom - medicine after death. Thus, it is pointless to wait until a Doomsday Scenario has been actualized, after which, pundits can proceed to indulge in a post-mortem exercise over a once thriving nation that has been turned into, at best, yet another "failed state", at worst, an overcrowded necropolis where the hope of the future lies interred in unmarked graves.
Madness, with all its variants, is a familiar, though often imprecise affliction. It is a favourite weapon of the gods - as in the myths of Pentheus and Dionysos, Nebukadnessar and others - whose lessons are couched in that ancient saying: whom the gods will destroy, they first make mad. The problem with such examples of course is that the gods have a tendency to wait until innocents are also destroyed before they home in on their real, deserving targets. Thanks to grey areas involved in the condition of madness, however, organized society tends to wait on the authoritative pronouncement of psychiatrists on the onset of clinical insanity. It is a subject that, as a writer, I have had cause to address over the years, given a rash of the irrational that has become the trademark of leaders across the continent, though it must be strongly stressed that the line between irrational or erratic conduct and certifiable insanity is sometimes blurred. Nonetheless, irrationality or conduct based on delusion, where it attains a pattern of consistency, can be taken as symptoms of a distinct loss of anchor in a real world, and a substitution - often unconscious - of oneís private but distorted perception of reality as the sole attestation of external reality.
It is not entirely a coincidence of timing that the last in the series of INTERVENTIONS to appear this year (Bookcraft), is dedicated to the issue of Power. Specifically, its contents include a lecture that I delivered at the annual convention of the International Association of Neuro-surgeons in Boston, a year ago. The elected president of that Association was a Dr. Oyesiku, a Nigerian. That detail is significant simply as a reflection of some of the many sub-themes of nation belonging that preoccupy thinking Nigerians at home and abroad - the remarkable achievement of so many talented Nigerians all over the world, and their recognition by their own colleagues of the very highest calibre. This, however, is not the motivating theme of this intervention address, albeit possessed of a significant connection.
That connection is this: in the course of that address, titled "Rupture and Rupture in the Liminal World", I made reference to the pronouncement of yet another internationally distinguished professional, Professor Thomas Lambo who, before his death, had served as Deputy Director of the World Health Organisation. I called attention to a recommendation that he once made to the world, one that was however most specifically addressed to the African continent. That recommendation went as follows: all political leaders should be subjected to an annual psychiatric examination while they remain in office.
My remarks continued with the following:
"My purpose is simply to exploit the fact that the human mind is a field of exploration for many of us, especially those who happen to have been born into, or strayed into the world of dictators and allied political monstrosities. We often ask ourselves the question: what is it exactly that makes them what they are? And we find ourselves relieved that it is not just we laymen and women, the political activists, teachers, artistes or technocrats, who are engrossed by such abnormalities. The just mentioned Professor Thomas Lambo, during his duty tours as Deputy Director of WHO, must have been exercised by direct contacts with a number of political leaders on the African and other continents. Indeed, I believe that many of you gathered here today must havc considered allied propositions from time to time within your constituencies, most especially those who have experienced totalitarian rule, even in its most benign manifestation."
Was Lambo's analytical mind too far out? It does not matter in the slightest to whom, or under what circumstances, the symptoms of mental instability may be attributable. In Yoruba, we have the expression, won ti sía si, meaning, in that tradition of blame passing, that the enemies of the afflicted individual have finally got through to him psychically and scrambled his brains. We are so deeply mired in "enemy action" that we hardly ever think of other causes whose beginnings will be found in the individual's choice of action. Take neurosis. A neurotic condition can be induced by, among others failure to anticipate and come to terms with the logical reactions to one's own choices, the refusal to recognize possible conflict between one's very choices and the legitimate entitlements of others a persistent misreading of one's human environment; a decision to dominate, rather than negotiate the dynamics of a non-inert environment, that is, an environment that pulsates with human vitality excessive indulgence of the acquisitive instinct, both materially and immaterially, such as the rights of others a willed deafness to the articulation of external opinion: a belief in one's invincibility and omniscience and so on, all within the provenance of personal volition but which then lead, summatively, to neurosis and paranoia, to which a contributory factor is the stress of office. Failure to recognize this makes us postpone our responsibilities towards signs of evident derangement in an individual, contenting ourselves with heaping the blame on external psychic forces - Won ti sa si. Since we cannot identify the source of such enemy action, and perhaps negotiate with the perpetrators, we respond with a shrug of the shoulders, and go about our business. This may provide its own consolation, but it is not one that guarantees our survival. Again and again, we are confronted with a deeply troubled individual, capable of inflicting permanent damage on us, and our community, but stop short of identifying and pursuing a remedial course of action.
And what of the affected mind itself? All acts of dissent, all setbacks and failures are read as conspiracy, personal hatred, envy and even inferior intellect in others. Megalomania sits squat on the head and wards off all impulses to self-examination.
I find this failure in modern society especially strange, since even the average schoolchild knows of the histories of Caligula or Nero, even if, admittedly they might not be so deeply immersed in the vagaries of rulership insanity as to know of the "mad king" Ludwig of Bavaria, who exhausted his personal - not the state's - resources in a love affair with castle architecture and fairy world idiosyncracies. Yet he is also considered to have set Bavaria on the path to modern industrialization. Ludwig's legacies have been preserved as tourist attractions for millions of visitors from all over the world. He was eventually disposed of in what amounted to a palace coup, supposedly an accident, but other theorists claim that he was drowned by his own cabinet as he took a walk along one of his swimming pool fantasies.
Ludwig's "lunacy" was debatable, and a warning to us to be careful even of the certitudes of "specialists", especially those with proven political linkages. We are on firmer, and more contemporary grounds with the case of Nicolae Caecescu of Romania, who introduced nothing less than slave labour to construct his mimic Versailles, a hotch-potch nightmare of ponderous communist architecture and baroque enhancements, with draughty corridors and halls, and a heating and cleaning bill that amounted to nearly half of his nation's gross national product. No one dared voice the possibility this was the product of a deranged mind - well, he was building, and building on a grandiose scale wasn't he? Madmen are not supposed to be capable of grand designs. By the time the Romanian revolution took place and he was ousted, his squandermania, gross abuse of office, torture chambers and murderous spree were regarded strictly as criminal acts. En route to safety - as he imagined - he was delivered into captivity by his personal pilot and executed, together with his wife, after a summary trial. If only the pilot had considered the alternative, he would have landed him instead in a mental institution.
Such dismal endings need not have happened; they were however inevitable under absolute dictatorships. The social grace of law and constitutionalism - those pillars of democracy - is that, when faithfully and courageously followed, the abnormal ruler need not end in such a chilling finality. Those dictators, if only they knew it, lived under a false sense of security that is often no more than a camouflage for treachery. They were betrayed by those whom they thought were faithful, obedient servants. Now I do not mean that they were betrayed by, for example, the helicopter pilot who landed the couple right in the courtyard of an army barracks that had joined forces with the people, no! Their betrayal began a long time before. They were betrayed by the agencies of power, those who failed to refuse obedience to illegal orders, who continued to encourage the delusions of omniscience and omnipotence of a mentally unhinged couple - these were the real traitors. They betrayed, not only their assigned bosses, but the very people over whom such rulers exercised illicit control.
Our theme, let us not forget, is the theme of madness, mental instability. Any ruler can issue illegal orders - most rulers test the waters anyway, just to see how far they can go. The rational ones know when to retreat, those who do not are, at the very least, mentally suspect. So, what protection have the agents of state - those to whom irrational orders are given - under such circumstances? The answer varies, depending on the nature of governance. Under an absolute, totalitarian order - such as Pol Pot's Khymer Rouge or Idi Amin's empire - manipulative space of the state agency is somewhat circumscribed. Yet even here, there do exist moral and tactical choices, but that field is so wide, we must postpone its exploration for another occasion. Let us return instead to the general ability of the state agent to distinguish between rational and irrational orders and thus address the question: how does an officer, serving a democratic order, but untrained in the science of the human mind, distinguish between the rational and irrational? The answer is implicit in the phrasing of that question - he is not obliged to make such a distinction. There is the law, and there is the constitution. Ranged against both is a contradicting will. If a ruler orders his underling to set fire to a public institution, or do nothing while public buildings are torched by his followers, that underling cannot comply under the claim that he was merely obeying orders. If a ruler orders a police officer to fire on an unarmed crowd, the public servant has no choice but to refuse, and even resign his commission on the spot if needed. If a ruler orders a state agency to facilitate the manipulation of election results, that agency need not consult a psychiatrist to determine whether it is a rational or irrational order.
A constitution identifies and separates zones of attribution in the exercise of power and authority. A persistent pattern of conduct that violates these zones of separation raises the possibility of either deficient understanding or irrational proceeding - either of which can be recognised as a troubled state of mind. How does a nation, in turn, protect itself against irrational conduct, especially of such a dimension that nation existence is itself threatened? Again, simply by a strict adherence to, and a resolve to defend the provisions of the constitution. Professor Lambo was both analytical and prescient. He had encountered and diagnosed the source of abnormal conduct in leadership. What he could not provide was how on earth such leadership can be compelled to undergo annual psychiatric examination, a situation of impotence that bedevils the world of governance, even till today.
Yet such a world is compelled to accommodate the damage inflicted on innocent humanity through the undiagnosed lunacies of a Caligula, a Caecescu, a Pol Pot or a Bokasa. Can society determine the critical moment when human failings such as pettiness, egocentricity, vengefulness and sadism - those by-products of unrestricted power - degenerate into a certifiable condition such as paranoia, megalomania or even homicidal mania? When Samson pulled down the vainglorious edifice of the Philistines over his head and his tormentors, he least knew what he was doing. Samson was one of the earliest known ësuicide bombersí, albeit without the delusion of an after-life in the arms of a thousand virgins. His ecstasy was contained within a terminal act of vengeance that vindicated his own demise, no more. Far more dangerous than the "suicide bombers" of today's Iraq are the self-righteous, the messianic, yet fearful of their portion, not even in the after-life, but in this very one, those who, rather than be thwarted in their cravings, pull down the pillars saying - if I cannot have it, no one else will.
Against all such, this very special breed of empowered social menace, we have no protection except in the protocols that empowered them - and defined us - in the first place, protocols that derive from the very actualities of our history and development, and make our existence tolerable and worthy of dignity under freedom. Those who understand the murky workings of a troubled mind will testify, on their professional oath, that a would-be arsonist or serial killer conducts himself just like any other local or neighbour, could be a loving spouse and parent, a "regular guy" among his colleagues, a conscientious church-goer and alms-giver, predictable as clockwork in appointments, even sparkling with compliments and jokes. Such an individual, catapulted to positions of responsibility, may actually prove second to none in the initiation and execution of laudable social schemes and projects. A madman, such experienced psychiatrists will assure you, develops a cunning of great subtlety that succeeds in disguising the dark, troubled interior, the seat of a festering dementia until, of course, it is too late.
Professor Lambo did not offer his advice in a constitutional vacuum. Most nations recognize the sad fragility of the human mind, and understand that even the mind of political geniuses can break under strain, that the latent seeds of insanity in all of us may actually come tro bloom under the strain of existence, how much more when burdened with the enormity of power. We are no psychiatrists. So what do we possess that enables us to diagnose and counter the signs of incipient or advanced derangement?
Well, there are numerous signs. When, for instance, an individual substitutes himself for the totality - this is evidence of delusion, backed by the most precise of sciences, mathematics. One cannot substitute for more than one. Fortunately we can precisely identify and isolate the entity of one, and just as easily identify the rest. Next, through what structure is the totality formally represented in a functional association? Obviously in the protocols that bind such an association together, protocols that are commonly summed up as. the constitution. When that errant entity substitutes his will for the constitution, we are already within the zone of questionable balance of mind and, as it happens, the same constitution has anticipated and offers the course of action that a people might pursue when confronted with such a highly advanced stage of solipsism. Taken with other acts that build up a discernable pattern of irrationality and delusion, a case may be made for assembling the mandatory panel of experts to examine if the incumbent has indeed attained that stage of ìinfirmity of body or mindî where continuance in office poses grave dangers to the well-being of the totality..
A great many individuals in a position of power are naturally concerned - in varying degrees of course - with what happens to them when they leave office. The degree of concern will be found on a scale that ranges from simple anxiety to an obsession. This fear may be founded on criminally liable acts as much as for laudable and humane policies that have however garnered them implacable enemies. The latter possibility is why such rulers are guaranteed physical protection even after they leave office. In the former case however, there exists a real problem, as this fear might then become a self-generating symptom that leads them into even more desperate and reprehensible conduct, allied to a bunker mentality that fouls up the seat of governance even after they have been eased out of office. How dow society protect itself from such a vicious spiral?
Well, let us take a look at the United States, whose recently deceased President Gerald Ford carved a controversial path for his tenure by granting an indicted president, Richard Nixon, total immunity for any act he might have committed in office. The question that many Americans simply side-tracked was this: what was the state of mind of the disgraced president, at the time of his resignation? Was his conduct, that stubborn maintenance of an untenable, crumbling cover-up, the action of a sane man? The United States Senate and lower House could have avoided the nation divisive dilemma that President Ford personally confronted and resolved - I am convinced - according to his conscience, by envisaging the possibility that Richard Nixon, in his final days, was not quite compos mentis. That indeed, his totally unnecessary, irrational act of engineering the break-in at Watergate was so confounding that it could only have emanated from an unbalanced mind. Removing him from office on the ground of mental incompetence, after a duly constituted panel of psychiatrists, would have been far cheaper for the nation, far less traumatic, sound in principle and justifiable on probabilities. When one lists the catalogue of avoidable but nefarious, indeed treasonable acts committed by other leaders on this continent, there can only be one conclusion: those acts were committed by unbalanced minds. The issue of culpability is thus side-tracked since, simultaneously, the plea of diminished responsibility implicitly takes over. All rancour is subsumed under an outpouring of pity as the people generously weigh achievements in office against the mental stress and neurological disorders that such achievements, tragically, generate.
Professor Lambo did not live to see his preventive prescription for the continent actualized. It is left to others to build on its unheeded lesson and pursue the path of protective responsibility wherever the very survival of the total community is at stake, if not in the immediate, at least in the very transparent future. It is not ideal but, in any circumstance, it is still more efficacious than - medicine after death!