Saro-Wiwa, Penguin £6.99 Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria on November 10 1995, eight days after the ending of a show trial in which he and eight others were sentenced to be hanged - and in the face of massive international protests. Saro-Wiwa, in his earlier years a successful novelist and TV writer, was from 1990 the moving force behind the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP).
This movement, fighting for
This book is the account of Saro-Wiwa's experiences in prison in 1993 - a confinement which this time was successfully ended by international campaigning.
One of the most striking things about the book is how integral the question of the environment is to the politics of MOSOP and its President.
He writes:
"Today the Ogoni people are involved in two grim wars. The first is the 35-year-old ecological war waged by the multi-national oil companies, Shell and Chevron. In this most sophisticated and greed designed to dispossess the Ogoni people of their rights and their wealth and subject them to abject poverty, slavery, dehumanisation and extinction.
Taken together, both wars, waged against a defenceless and small people, amount to genocide and are a grave crime against humanity." (p148).
A little later he explains:
"MOSOP has an underlying social philosophy: ERCETISM, an acronym for Ethnic Autonomy, Resource and Environmental Control." (p149).
Destruction and theft of environmental resources is central to the problem that he come onto the street in too great numbers, he appeals for calm. He sometimes seems happier lobbying in Europe than mobilising his own people.
But in the end neither the oil companies nor the state were prepared to compromise with his ideas, particularly his understanding of the destructive power of oil and the need for genuine democratic control over the environment.
Eco-socialists in Britain and elsewhere can learn much from the struggles of indigenous people like the Ogoni and from unlikely comrades without arms like Saro-Wiwa.
page 23 of the scan
end of May 12-13, and distributed at the end of that week. reviews and local news are also welcome. The next issue of Socialist Resistance will be produced on the weekThe deadline for feature articles and for letters (which are welcome on any topic, up to 400 words) will be Monday May 7. Diary items, email us at [email protected], or phone 020 8800 7460