In late November of 1967 the Stockholm-based Hunger Institute issued its annual World Food Picture, a report that correlated food supply to life expectancy. The report listed thirteen countries as “disasters in progress”; Madia was sixth on the list. The Institute found that food production in the country had declined by 30 percent; the birth rate was increasing exponentially, and life expectancy had shrunk from 57, five years earlier, to 52. In an even bleaker prognosis, the report projected that within a decade two-thirds of the children born in Madia would live in “excruciating poverty” and that people would “literally drop dead in the streets from acute malnutrition.”
Alarmed by the report, the House of Representatives and the Senate summoned Dr. Titus Bato, the Honorable Minister of National Planning and Economic Development, to appear before their joint session on 6 December. Dr. Bato had a well-earned reputation as the most arrogant minister in the cabinet. He was awkward in appearance, his stringy body tipped to the left. But he managed a superciliousness that many saw as too obvious a compensation for his unfetching physique. His calling card listed all his degrees and the names of the institutions that awarded them: B.Sc., London School of Economics; M.Sc., Chicago; Ph.D., Columbia.
I arrived at the National Assembly at 11 a.m., an hour before Dr. Bato was scheduled to appear. The press gallery was packed. The minister strode into the chamber at 11:56 a.m., his face composed and confident. The Speaker of the House struck the gavel three times on his desk. When the requisite silence had fallen he announced that the session had formally begun.
He began by asking Dr. Bato what he thought of the Hunger Institute report.
“It’s either useless and untrue or, if true, it’s good news,” replied the minister. “On the whole, I think it is the most incoherent and meaningless economic report I have ever read. And I have read quite a few.” He spoke with the ease of one who, expecting that very question, had rehearsed a seamless response.
“Let’s take the first part of your answer, Honorable Minister. You said the report may be useless and untrue. Why?”
“Because I have yet to hear of any person in this country scavenging for food in refuse dumps. Therefore, the claim that Madians are starving sounds far-fetched.”
The response provoked suppressed agitation in the chamber, and when the Speaker asked a second question the calm in his voice seemed strained.
“Why would the Institute lie about this country’s food situation?”
“Only the Institute can answer that question. I’m here as a representative of the government of Madia.”
“I know who you represent!” the Speaker retorted in a raised voice. “You have asserted that these people lied in their report. I thought you might share with us the grounds for your conclusion.”
“Correction, Mr. Speaker. I have not reached any conclusions. Perhaps you should speak less and listen more closely.”
The Speaker fixed the minister with an icy stare. “A remark like that constitutes contempt. Be mindful, Honorable Minister, of the rules of conduct in this chamber!”
Dr. Bato returned his gaze with an expression nothing short of insolent, and the Speaker, unable to go on questioning calmly, turned to the President of the Senate and, with a slight nod, indicated that he was yielding the floor.
Chief Willy Wakka, the Senate President, was a stout man with a thug’s temper but a lawyer’s tongue. He cleared his throat.
“Honorable Minister, you have averred that in the event that the report under consideration is an accurate reflection of the facts you would regard it as good news. May I invite you to explain this rather startling view?”
“It is not hard to understand. The Hunger Institute claims that the food crisis will lead to a dramatic rise in the death rate in Madia. It also claims that there has been an explosion in the birth rate in recent years. The total picture is therefore that the death rate will cancel out the birth rate, thus preserving the standard of living. Even children who understand simple arithmetic can follow that logic. It is simple Malthusian economics.”
“Your considered submission, then, is that death is good?”
“I am putting forward the view that death is nature’s way of preserving a stable quality of life in any given society.”
“You’re not appalled at the prospect of poor Madians dying in large numbers?”
“Why would I be? No, I’m not.”
The unrest that had been building up in the chamber now threatened to overflow. Many law-makers spoke at once, calling for the minister’s immediate apology and resignation. Dr. Bato sat unmoved, his chin tucked in the palm of his hand, like a professor whose class had turned unaccountably rowdy. The voice of the Speaker shouting “Order! Order!” rose above the din, but did nothing to quell the pandemonium. Eventually he mounted his desk, stamping his feet and waving his hand. By this desperate measure he finally obtained silence. He spoke in a raised quavering voice.
“The good people of Madia have been insulted. I ask—in exercise of the power vested in me as Speaker of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the Joint Conference—I demand that the Honorable Minister of National Planning and Economic Development tender an immediate apology to Parliament and to the good people of this country.”
An eerie silence fell on the chamber. Everybody waited, parliamentarians and spectators alike. Photographers clicked away in a frenzy, anxious to capture the minister’s moment of capitulation.
“I’m not apologizing for anything I’ve said here today. I reaffirm my comments. Nor do I intend to resign. I was not appointed by Parliament and I don’t believe I hold my office at your behest.”
One legislator jumped up and moved menacingly towards Dr. Bato. Two parliamentary security guards rushed in and stood between him and his target. Four other security guards then escorted the minister out of the chamber amid curses and threats and salvoes of spit.
The next day university students and labor unions called for nation-wide strikes and daily demonstrations until the minister was fired. Instead, Prime Minister Askia Amin went on national television and described Dr. Bato as a national asset, “a man respected by the centers of world finance from New York to Paris.” The prime minister then warned that further demonstrations and disturbances of the peace would be severely dealt with.
One week later students of the National University massed in the football field carrying anti-Bato placards. Three lorryloads of anti-riot police arrived and ordered the students to disperse. A few students walked away, but most of them stayed behind, defiant. The police put on their gear and advanced. They threw a few tear-gas canisters at the students. The students gathered the smoking cans and lobbed them back at the police. The police launched an overwhelming arsenal of tear gas which sent the students scattering, eyes streaming. Then the police released a rattle of machine-gun fire.
Eyewitness accounts estimated that between twenty and thirty corpses were taken away in two police trucks. But in a short statement, the government insisted that “only four hooligans posing as students were killed.”
People began to speak of the “Bato Massacre.” Why, Madians asked, did so many young lives have to be sacrificed so that Dr. Bato could remain in office and fart in people’s faces? As the protests grew, Amin gathered his ministers and top aides and withdrew with them to the Presidential Lodge, a secluded fortress built on a small island, to consider his next move.
The goverment-owned Radio Madia began to broadcast a barrage of propaganda. Listening to the radio’s 7 p.m. newscast became a national obsession, as with each passing day the claims made by Madia’s leaders became more fantastic. They spoke of polls in which 99.9 percent of Madians expressed their loyalty to Askia Amin’s administration; of rallies in cities all over the country attended by hundreds of thousands of pro-Amin supporters. They asserted that the detained labor and student leaders, moved to shame by their unpatriotic perfidy, had confessed to being paid lackeys of unnamed Western nations intent on thwarting Madia’s march to progress. They quoted from “authoritative studies” indicating a dramatic rise in the people’s standard of living. They assured Madians that their leaders were spending sleepless nights over an economic plan that would make the country and its people the envy of other nations on the continent, nay the world.
Such blatant untruths provoked a bizarre reaction: laughter. Women laughed suckling their babies on sapped breasts. The vanquished and famished who craved the comforts of the grave laughed. Madians laughed in groups gathered round their radio sets; they laughed when they met in the street; they laughed in their workplaces and in the markets; they laughed themselves to sleep. There was no gaiety in this laughter: it was compounded of their blood, their sweat, their tears.
On the morning of 1 January 1968—the ninth day since the prime minister and his cabinet retired to the Presidential Lodge—I turned on the radio, curious to hear what Amin would say in his customary New Year’s Day address to the nation. Instead of the national anthem that traditionally preceded the prime minister’s speech, the station blared a strange funereal music, its notes sharp and piercing, its syncopation too swift. The music reminded me of the scores that, in horror movies, foreshadowed the vampire’s bloody lurch.
A voice came on the radio, rough and shaky, like a nervous drunk’s.
Fellow countrymen and women,
This is Major James Rada of the 82nd Armored Division of the Madian Army. On behalf of the Armed Forces of Madia, I inform you that a change has been made in the leadership of our country. With immediate effect, Prime Minister Askia Amin has been removed as head of the government, the Parliament has been disbanded and all existing political institutions at the local and state levels have been dissolved. All political parties will henceforth cease to exist. All local government officials are hereby directed to report to the police station nearest to them. With immediate effect all national authority will reside with the Armed Forces Revolutionary and Redemptive Council.
The prime minister and most members of his cabinet have been placed under arrest pending possible prosecution on charges of contributing to the economic adversity and political turmoil of the Federal Republic of Madia.
Fellow citizens, we have all been witnesses to the escalating acts of irresponsibility and corruption exhibited by the political classes. The ordinary citizen has lost all confidence in the institutions of governance; the state and national treasuries have been bankrupted by politicians for their own profit; and the moral fabric of this nation has been torn apart.
The Armed Forces of Madia have watched with increasing sadness and anxiety as the situation developed to crisis point. It was with the greatest reluctance but out of a sense of patriotic duty that we decided to seize the reins of power in order to avert any further deterioration.
Anybody, or group of people, who in any way challenges the authority of the Armed Forces Revolutionary and Redemptive Council will be summarily dealt with. Fellow countrymen and women, you are advised to stay tuned and await further announcements and instructions. Long live the Federal Republic of Madia.
Thank you.
At the end of the broadcast I found that my palms were sweaty, a formless fear awhirl in my head. I took a long cold bath. Then I put on a black T-shirt over a pair of jeans and set out to my office.
The streets were jammed. Cars blasted their horns. People embraced one another and pumped hands. Jubilant crowds chanted, “Hang Amin!” “Askia is axed!” “Down with Amin’s corruption!” “Welcome AFRRC!” Those who had not heard the broadcast huddled around any available radio set and listened to the martial music while waiting for the announcement to be repeated. Every half-hour there was a pause in the music, then the station re-broadcast Major Rada’s speech. I loathed the people’s uncomplicated reaction, the crowd’s certitude that the current development portended good. Was I alone in detecting a presentiment of terror in the officer’s tone? Was I the only one who foresaw that the coup would entail much spilling of Madian blood?
The newsroom was in a frenzied state. The chatter of reporters rose and fell against the constant clatter of typewriters. At one point in the morning one of our photographers staggered in, dripping blood, the right side of his head swollen. Shakily he told us how a group of soldiers had beaten him at a checkpoint, upset that he had taken their picture.
“What was wrong with taking their picture?” asked the news editor.
“They said I had contravened national security.”
“How? What national security?” queried the editor.
The photographer spread his hands in an uncomprehending gesture.
“Didn’t you tell them you were from the press?”
“I did. I showed them my ID.”
“And then? “
“One of them snatched it from me. Then he took out a jackknife and cut my card to pieces. He said I was a spy. They started punching and kicking me and beating me with the butts of their guns.”
“Guns?”
“Yes, their guns and fists at the same time. They threatened to take me to their barracks and shoot me right away. But then an officer appeared on the scene and ordered them to release me. He asked them to return my camera, but they had already exposed the film.”
“Take a taxi to the clinic and get yourself seen to. Then take two days off. As soon as the situation stabilizes we’ll take the matter up with the appropriate authorities.”
The photographer thanked the editor and limped away. When he was out of sight the news editor turned to me.
“These people are not allowed to bully innocent citizens.”
“Yes they are,” I said bitterly. “They have guns. And they now run this country.”
That night the photographer died in his sleep. His death provided a focus for my disparate feelings about the coup. I thought again about the people celebrating out in the streets, like children welcoming a first rainfall after a long, hard dry season. It all reminded me of a story my grandmother once told me, about the ambivalent character of rain, sustainer of the earth’s plenitude but also the harbinger of malaise.
Once upon a time, a great famine struck a remote village that was located beyond seven seas and seven wilds. The famine was caused by several years of drought that made the earth too hard to till. Horrified by the rate at which their fellows died, the villagers consulted a dibia to find out the source of their affliction. The diviner said that a sacrifice must be carried to the boundary between earth and sky. The errand must be performed by a creature nimble of foot and ample-voiced, for the journey was far and the sky was hard of hearing.
The villagers decided to send Dog. They instructed him to hasten without distraction. But Dog strayed off many times. He sniffed the air for game, joined a group of hunters he met in the forest, tarried to watch a wrestling match, traded wits with Tortoise, sang with a travelling choir of birds, danced with a troupe of gazelles. By the time he eventually arrived at the boundary, the sky had drifted off, sullen. Dog barked and barked until the sky returned.
“Here,” said Dog in a contemptuous voice. “Here is your sacrifice. Now send rain to the poor villagers!” He flung the sacrifice on the ground and turned home, looking forward to all the stops he would make on his way back to the village.
Weeks later he reached the village to find it flooded. The villagers were all dead, their corpses afloat in pools of water. It had been raining relentlessly since the day Dog insulted the sky.
“Rain has two faces,” concluded my grandmother. “It can give life, but its arrows can also cause death.”
Arrows of rain: my grandmother’s phrase for rain’s malefic face.
Late in the afternoon of the day of the coup, a reporter known for his scoops walked in and announced that he had spoken to one of the soldiers who arrested Prime Minister Amin at 2:15 a.m. Everybody abandoned their tasks and crowded around him to hear his account.
When they stormed the Presidential Lodge, the soldiers had little trouble rounding up most of their targets. The ministers and political aides sat or lay in the expansive Congress Hall where cabinet meetings were held, some of them still awake, but all hopelessly drunk. Some were naked, drained by the exhaustion of love. Two or three members of the Power Platoon attended to each minister. The officials and their women were quickly arrested and marched outside and into a truck.
Another group of soldiers paced the corridors of the Lodge looking for the prime minister. They threw doors open, peered into closets, checked under beds, searched everywhere. They ransacked two floors but found no sign of Amin. The officer in charge then ordered his men to follow him to the underground level. Approaching the first door, they heard ardent voices coming from the room beyond. Pausing to listen, they heard a man breathlessly saying, “Tell me when to come.” Then there was a woman’s voice: “Now, Your Excellency. Come Tiger! Come Champion! Come Emperor! Now!”
The officer pushed open the door and walked into the room followed by eight soldiers. Their entrance attracted the prime minister’s notice. He looked up and halted his thrusts, but the girl under him still wriggled her hips, too far consumed by love’s heady thrill. The prime minister’s eyes narrowed in indignation at the sight of the intruders. The officer came to attention and executed a brisk salute that was at once deferential and contemptuous.
“Mr. Prime Minister, Sir, I have instructions to affect your arrest!”
For a moment the prime minister seemed to struggle with incomprehension. Then, hit by the fact of his nakedness, he pulled the bed covers over his buttocks. In a voice that carried all the authority he could muster in the circumstances, he asked, “Who in this country has issued such instructions?”
“The AFRRC.”
“The AF what?” he enquired with fierce impatience.
“Armed Forces Revolutionary and Redemptive Council, Sir.”
“Impossible! There’s no such council.”
“Yes, there has been a coup. Your government has been removed.”
“Impossible! The people elected me. Nobody can remove me. Go and tell your revolutionary council to stand election if they want power. And by the way, protocol demands that you should address me as Your Excellency.”
“Your Excellency, I would not try to resist arrest if I were you.”
The prime minister slowly lifted himself off the girl, who seemed for the first time to recognize the awkwardness of lying in bed with a man who was losing power. Amin sat down at the edge of the bed, looked sternly at the soldiers and sighed. Then he muttered, “Only bastards would interrupt an orgasm!”
The soldiers chuckled. Their derision seemed to bring home to the prime minister the reality of his fall. Amin asked the officer for permission to make a call to the Army Chief of Staff.
The officer’s tone was curt. “He’s dead.”
“What!” cried Askia Amin.
“He was court-martialed two hours ago for colluding with your government against the interests of the Madian people.”
“What!”
“He was found guilty and was executed along with other corrupt officers in the Navy and Air Force.”
“What!”
“And even if he were still alive you wouldn’t be able to speak to him. Telephone communication was shut off when this operation began five hours ago.”
Amin pulled on his trousers. He was about to put on a shirt when the officer stopped him. “A shirt is not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“These are my instructions,” said the officer.
In a voice now full of fear Amin asked, “What are you planning to do with me?”
“I don’t know,” answered the officer. “It’s in the hands of the AFRRC.”
“Gentlemen, I’ll give you one million dollars if you let me escape.”
The officer shook his head.
“I’ll make it two million. In cash.”
One of the soldiers stepped forward with handcuffs. The prime minister pleaded with desperation.
“Five million dollars, gentlemen. If you let me go. You can say you couldn’t find me. Please!”
The officer laughed. “For the last time I ask you to cooperate with us to avoid injury to yourself.”
Trembling, Amin allowed them to put on the manacles.
Another soldier produced handcuffs for his girlfriend.
“I did nothing,” she said, sobbing. “He forced me. Please, I’m too young to die.”
“Calm down,” the officer told her. “Nobody is going to shoot you. You’ll testify against him, that’s all.” Then, as an afterthought, he addressed Amin. “Sir, about what the AFRRC might do with you. I want you to know that castration is definitely an option.”
The soldiers sniggered. In a last defiant gesture, Askia Amin lifted his face and looked into the officer’s eyes. Then he spat at the officer’s feet. The soldier who had put the handcuffs on him marched forward and slapped him twice on the face.
In the days that followed, Askia Amin and his ministers were arraigned before a special military tribunal. The trial became a carnival. Crowds thronged outside the building, chanting alleluias to the military redeemers and demanding death for Amin and his gang.
In the event the tribunal was lenient. Amin was sentenced to two life terms in prison, the cabinet members to one life term each.