Wole Soyinka: the voice of African democracy.

• Author: Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
• Position: Opinion - Brief Article

If the spirit of African democracy has a voice and a face, they belong to Wole Soyinka, 70, the political, activist and Nobel laureate in literature who has earned a reputation as the conscience of Nigeria. He's been arrested at least 10 times, most recently in May at a rally demanding the resignation of Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, whose reelection is widely believed to have involved vote fraud. When Soyinka was 33, he was imprisoned without trial for trying to broker a peace with Biafran secessionists, and spent two years in solitary in a 4-by-8-foot cell. These days, he sees the greatest threat to peace and democracy in the spread of religious fundamentalism...