Content provided in partnership with

Waughior

National Interest, The, Winter, 2003 by Keith B. Richburg

<< Page 1 Continued from page 1. Previous | Next

Now, consider that Waugh envisioned his fictitious Emperor Seth long before Zaire endured its late dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, who similarly defied the laws of monetary policy--and the advice of World Bank experts--by printing his own currency bearing his likeness in his leopard-skin cap. Or before Ivory Coast's late strongman Felix Houphouet-Boigny wasted $200 million of his country's wealth building a massive Basilica, larger than St. Peter's in Rome, in the middle of the African bush at Yamousoukro. When I visited the costly monstrosity, I was startled to see that Houphouet-Boigny even managed to commission a painting of the Last Supper, with himself, the African Big Man, painted into the scene. Waugh himself couldn't have devised a more comical, or pathetic, scene.

Most Popular Articles in Business: Research and Markets : Tesco Plc - SWOT Framework Analysis; Do Us a Flavor - Ben & Jerry's Issues a Call for Euphoric New Flavors; eBay made easy: ready to start an eBay business? These 5 simple steps will ...; Katrina's lawsuit surge: a legal battle to force insurers to pay for flood ...; Wal-Mart's newest distribution center opened last month near the southwest ...; More »

Waugh's fictional Emperor Seth is kept in power by an army of barefoot cannibals, who are so primitive that, when a shipment of boots arrive, they have no idea what to do with them, so they eat them.

As a correspondent in real-life Liberia, I followed the exploits of General Butt Naked, commander of the Butt Naked Brigade, whose troops went into combat with just their AK-47 rifles and their birthday suits, believing they could ward off enemy bullets with their flesh. (I have been lately told that the General has since found his calling with the Lord, has become a minister and is now referred to as "Reverend Butt Naked", although this I have not been able to independently confirm.)

In Africa, truth is often stranger than fiction--life imitating art. In depicting the lunacy of the place, Waugh got it just about right. If anything, he toned it down.

OF COURSE, in today's politically-correct world, Waugh might easily be dismissed as a racist, as a colonial-era imperialist who believed in European, that is, "white" superiority. And some of his descriptions and passages no doubt betray his less attractive instincts. For instance, he names the African wife of the European general "Black Bitch", and typically describes Africans in unflattering terms--like possessing a "soot black face" with "coal button eyes." In one jarring passage from Black Mischief, Waugh describes a scene of "a thousand darkies crooning and swaying on their haunches, white teeth flashing in the firelight." And the ending to Black Mischief has his hero Basil Seal at a tribal feast and mistakenly eating his one-time paramour, Prudence--the white man's worst fear of African cannibalism realized.

But dismissing Waugh simply as a racist would be, first, misguided. As Deedes, a Waugh fan and protege, points out, the author did in fact have sympathies with the Italians as they prepared to invade Abyssinia, and perhaps this was due to Waugh's inherent belief that the white, Christian, European nation was on a "civilizing mission" in Africa. But as Deedes so succinctly puts it in his memoir, "A lifetime in journalism has taught me that people have to be judged in the context of their times, and that is what newspapers and television so often overlook."

Waughior

National Interest, The, Winter, 2003 by Keith B. Richburg

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Sports

Most Popular Articles in Business

Most Popular Publications in Business