Ken Wiwa: In The Shadow Of A Saint

Doubleday

$59.95

Review: Tom Brooking*

Few children of famous people seem to have much time for their famous father or mother as a parent. This seems to be especially the case if the famous parent is a civil rights and political activist.

Children crave normalcy above all else, so parents who seek controversy tend to be viewed as neglectful and selfish from the viewpoint of both child and family.

Ken Wiwa, eldest son of the activist and satirist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed by the Nigerian military junta during the Commonwealth Conference in Auckland in 1995, is no exception in this regard.

Ken junior changed his name by dropping the Saro to disassociate himself from his high-profile father.

Once in England at boarding school, young Ken decided to become apolitical and as English as possible. He developed a journalism career while largely neglecting his family in Nigeria.

His father's infidelities seemed only to justify the decision to keep away from the biggest country in Africa.

But his father's imprisonment changed all that. Suddenly the reluctant young journalist had to learn more about his father's causes and his country of birth. His efforts to save his father's life proved unavailing despite pleas made to Jim Bolger, Nelson Mandela and the British Government at the CHOGM conference in Auckland.

His father's martyrdom set him on a painful journey of discovery as he came to terms with the horror of his torture and hanging.

Wiwa travelled to South Africa where he spoke to a daughter of Mandela and the son of Steve Biko to learn more about the costs of parental political commitment.

Zindzi Mandela and Nkosinathi Biko so inspired Wiwa that he set off on the dangerous mission of visiting and filming the Burmese democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma's oppressive junta keeps Kyi under constant house arrest so Wiwa was lucky to keep out of prison.

Despite the horror at the centre of Wiwa's painful quest one is left feeling reassured that the human spirit will eventually triumph against overt oppression wherever it raises its ugly head around the globe.

* Tom Brooking teaches history at the University of Otago.