More on the KSW living memorial

OK - I've found some pictures of the sculpture here as it was being unveiled. One has to ask why Ken Saro Wiwa is such a big deal in the UK, whereas he doesn't even register on the scale in Nigeria (there's been nothing I've seen in the Nigerian papers or on television about the anniversary of his murder). It is, I believe, quite a complex event to unpack. There is first of all, anti-corporate activism involved - KSW stands as a hero-figure for struggles (journalistic or otherwise) against big-business exploitation the world over. Secondly, is the need to find African resistance heroes, and the desire in the Western symbolic undertow to construct a strong African masculinity figure. KSW stands next to Fela Kuti in this respect. There isn't space and time to go into how this symbolic mechanism works, but it tends to say more about the Western imaginary than it does about realities. The West obscures Africa, and continues to react to the terms of its own obfuscation as a form of symbolic guilt. Hence Live-Aid, Geldof and all the rest of it.

An interesting post-colonial type PhD thesis could be written on Ken Saro-Wiwa as symbolic figure, and how his reputation is constructed differently in different places. I am still suspicious of the common Nigerian dismissal - that he was in cahoots with Abacha, that he had others killed, that he was no angel. Whether there is noise and dirt in amidst all the heroism, sometimes we would do well to continue to focus on the heroism. Even heroes have their human, all too human side. This was a man that stood up and wrote and fought and died for his people. How many in this land would go that far? And under what terms could Ken Saro Wiwa be a celebrated resistance figure in Nigeria? What aspects of the configuration would have to change?