FIGHTING FOR THE BLACK GOLD OF THE SUN

It’s been just over a month since I performed at a gig to raise awareness of the injustice done to Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni activists, by Shell Oil. I had already written a poem for a Tribute anthology called “Dance the Guns to Silence” with the poem, “Baba Wiwa’s Trees”, in 2006. When I was commissioned to write this poem, I learned so much about this brave, smiling man Ken Saro-Wiwa and what he was fighting for. Writer, activist and Eco-warrior, he and 8 of his fellow Ogoni’s, stood up against the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil) to speak out against numerous abuses of human right down to the laying of pipelines through the homelands of peoples from the Niger Delta. For that, they were hung.

To write a poem this time round had more resonance for me because those who were fighting for justice were at the brink of a winning a significant part of the war. I wanted this to be a poem for going into battle. I would not deign myself a great war poet or anything but what I felt when I wrote this piece inspired me to want to learn more . The desire to pay homage to Ken and the Ogoni 9 brought to my attention the issue of the power of human rights law, or its lack of, should I say. It might sound slightly incredulous that human right law is non-existant in the area of economics when you live with the cushtiness of four solid walls, a full fridge and a flat screen TV but organisations like Amnesty are fighting every day for the rights of us, “human beings”, to live decent lives – to have a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT OF EXISTENCE. Sometimes we just have to sit with that concept for a while and give thanks.. “There, but for the grace of God…” as my Mum would say.

As corporate, criminal and governmental law is constantly changing to protect the money of a few wealthy individuals, the goal posts for human rights keep shifting too. Human beings actually are in dire need for laws of protection and it seems human rights law is a few steps behind. This imbalance is obviously… putting it flatly…..outta order.

The Ken vs Shell case raises the awareness to the fact that there is no law for human rights abuses by corporate businesses. So it has been fine for decades, for Shell oil to pay the myopic Nigerian government and  military to “protect” their interests, even if it means ordinary civilians are losing their lives due to gas flaring, crude oil poisoning of the wells and sickness due to breathing in methane gas. Peoples livelihoods are under ruined as crops are failing and fresh water fish are dying in the rivers. Shell called on the Nigerian military to suppress any peaceful protest against the ravaging of the environment.

Also, civilians are injured every day as they siphon off oil from fractured pipelines because there is no electricity or other source of energy to power their homes. The situation is dire. Unemployment is as high as 86%, and the moral of the Delta people is so low.

But Victory has a sweet, sweet taste.

“After 13 years, the Ogoni plaintiffs whose loved ones were killed and injured in the military crackdowns that Shell facilitated in the 1990s, won an out of court settlement of $15.5 million. In every way, this sets a precedent for corporate accountability, and the universal application of human rights.” - a quote from Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa email newsletter.

Click to read an article from Ken’s son, Ken Saro-Wiwa Jnr in The Guardian.
And to find out more click to go to thewww.remembersarowiwa.com to find out more.
For Images that inspired the poem click – Curse of the Blackgold

Untitled

by Zena Edwards

Ken, there is a photo of a girl
12,13 slim wrists long neck
she walks wearing peach, blue flip flops
stepping with familiarity
over the slippery backs of 8 pipelines
she is at 5
holding an umbrella with a bright yellow shell on it
she seeks protection from a gentle rain falling from an African sky
behind her, between giant palm leaves
dragons roar, bellowing black billows, seething
belligerent belches of acridity in the sky
when I put my ear close to the glossy paper I can hear
her asthmatic breath

each clap of her plastic flip flop against her heel
makes a poem, applaud the poem in her step
it is the sound of everyday people who live between the pipelines, tapeworms
vampiring the placenta, excreting toxic
into the bloodstream of a nation
the rivers are graveyards, the wetlands thirsty for clean breath
the land is haemorraghing
miscarrying cocoyam and vegetable seed

Boys who have given up waiting for jobs to come
Idly eye her as she walks by
A generation numbed by the futility of existence
It is ironic that their most valuable asset is their Achilles heel
As the stagnancy of fervent youth
Dumps them in the hands of AK47 robber gangs
who howl in the night to the tune
Of their masters – myopic madmen in business
Grappling for a fist of flaccid dollars
Greed at the price of a village

But then again, everything has it’s price in this world
Like this girls poetry in her step, her lungs
A fair currency, fat with poisonous air
Her mothers sludge garden, her fathers chest
Face and shoulder, burned in the last accident

The truth is a jealous but patient thing
It brook no hazes of the facts or credibility gaps
There is only one fragrance it will lie with
Time, the scent of time moves from fresh to death, rot to humus fertilisation of new days

It is between the pages of a day in court
That a mystery will be solved
Why it takes twelve long years to walk the twisted violent gauntlet to justice
Why nine lives were thrown into a wound cut with knives of lies

How the spirits of the tortured and the murdered
Can be redeemed from the dispassionate mouth of brutal
greed
And how with the wondrous alchemy of Nature, instead of bitter bile
Rising into the mouths of fishermen and farmers

work songs will rise over the trees
Will dance with the fish along the creeks
Will paint across a sky uninterrupted by fire and towers of black smoke
And how the poem of the girl with the blue flip flops can be fetched
From under the fattened rump of human disregard

And raised to re-imagine the world
Why she close the umbrella with the yellow shell
And walk in the unpolluted gentle rain falling from an African sky

Written by Zena Edwards (copyright)