The con that knows no borders
2013Barry Weisleder 2013-03Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2013 9 Will Ferguson, “419” (Penguin Canada, Toronto, 2012, 399 pages).
How are the sins of imperialism visited upon the common people of the “rich” countries? One way is “419.” That is the law against fraud in the criminal code of Nigeria. It is also the title of the Giller Prize-winning book by travel writer Will Ferguson, which won best Englishlanguage novel published in Canada in 2012.
A retired Calgary teacher, Henry Cur tis, is persuaded by an internet con man in Lagos to liquidate and transfer all his assets, supposedly to aid the escape of a death-threatened petroleum heiress, and to gain a mega reward for his efforts. Curtis dies in a suspicious car crash, leaving his wife destitute, and launching his reclusive freelance-editor daughter ... Legacy of Malcolm (continued from page 8: “The legacy of Malcolm X”)
liberation that has essentially prevailed to this day.
But now, the steadily rising interest in Malcolm X, combined with the develop ing economic crisis, augurs a new and higher stage in this struggle.
Most importantly, this new stage, which promises to bring the working class into the struggle for fundamental change, will begin where the two previ ous upsurges left off. The labor radical ization of the 1930s and ’40s, and the Black radicalization of the late 1950s and ’60s will tend to merge in a new syn thesis. A new alliance between the com ing generations of labor militants and Black nationalists is objectively neces sary and, therefore, is guaranteed to be given an impulse by the force of histori cal experience.
It cannot now be determined which Laura onto a quest for the truth, and pur suit of the purloined funds.
This is no morality play about Third World gangsters ripping off innocent, middle-class North Americans. “419” transcends such parochial resentments to provide a critical intercontinental strategic road to freedom Blacks will ultimately take: Whether it will be one that begins on the road to a separate nation or on the road to a united, com bined struggle for Black liberation and a socialist America.
Revolutionary Marxists remain neu tral on this question—until Blacks have made clear which road is their choice. In our view both roads lead to socialist rev olution. But Socialist Action’s strategic orientation is toward the goal of a united revolutionary party of Black and white workers organized for the purpose of the overthrow of capitalism and for the establishment of a world socialist order.
And in the final analysis—whether or not the common struggle of Black and white workers must first pass through a stage of formal separation, Socialist Action is committed to a united revolu tionary struggle of the Black liberation movement and the working class for their mutual needs and aspirations. n perspective on exploitation and the desperation it breeds. The author shows what the system is doing to Nigeria and to Africa through an intimate portrayal of his characters’ lives. Quite dis parate beings, they are linked in a web of dispossession, intrigue, and revenge.
Laura is moved by vengeance to risk her own safety, but suc cumbs to pity.
Nnamdi is a Niger Delta fisher man’s son who tries to survive as a “mechanic” on the fringes of the oil black market. He exem plifies the destruction of Igbo culture in the whirlwind of rapacious “development,” and armed resistance, as Nigeria teeters on the brink of civil war. Amina, “the girl in indigo,” is a pregnant refugee on a lonely journey, from the arid Sahel to a southern metropolis teeming with poverty, crime, and despair.
Winston is an educated hustler who fabricates identities, and pitch es windfall schemes to foreigners by appealing to sympathy and greed.
He sees himself as “Entrepreneur, Nollywood director ... but not as a criminal.”
Michael “Ironsi-Egobia” is a heavyset, sweaty man who coughs blood into a handkerchief. From behind his large polished wood desk in the bowels of a warren of courtyards and dingy offices, he runs a protec tion racket, ruthlessly exercising powers of life and death over all who fall into his wretched domain.
From this least appealing of char acters comes a frank account of the 419 enterprise, refracted through his worm’s-eye view of political economy. “It is not a game. It is a business, and do you know what that business is? Retribution,” in tones Ironsi-Egobia.
“Where would England be with out Africa? England without Af rica is England without Empire. The crowns of British royalty glitter with blood, with rubies and emeralds wrenched out of Africa.”
“If we Nigerians are good at thieving, we learned it from the British. We may plunder bank accounts; they plundered entire continents ... we will take back our share of what was stolen. ... Where does the money from Delta oil fields flow? Into off-shore accounts, into foreign banks, back to the descendents of slave traders.”
Nnamdi’s people, whose fishery has been despoiled, whose children cough blood from the gas flares and the oil pol lution in their midst, point to those re sponsible. “They were all Shell Men; it didn’t matter whether they were oyibos (whites) or Igbos, and it didn’t matter what the colour of their coveralls was or which particular tribal markings were sewn onto their chest pockets: Chev ron, Texaco, Mobil, Agip, BP, Exxon. Total from France, Eni and Saipem from Italy. Even the NNPC, Nigeria’s own National Petroleum Corporation. It was all Shell.”
The main characters of “419” converge in a tragedy in which no one triumphs.
While the author usefully dissects the familiar e-mail scam, he doesn’t offer much sympathy to North Americans who naively believe that they could win the jackpot promised by 419 scammers and evade prosecution by domestic authori ties for money laundering. Perhaps it’s the Irish rebel in him that tilts his con cern towards the neo-colonial masses trying to survive conditions of growing danger and barbarity, under the thumb of Big Oil.
Will Ferguson does not indict the capi talist system, the biggest con that knows no borders. But he does artfully connect the e-fraud to the legacy of imperialist domination of Africa, and to its ongoing exploits, replete with the prevailing en vironment-be-damned corporate ethos.
As today’s murderous scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources intensifies, this novel makes the region al context more accessible to a broad Northern readership. The fast pace, at least in the second half, makes this a compelling entertainment, as well as an informative read. n
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website: http://socialistaction.ca (Left) Premier Kathleen Wynne.
The new premier has promised to re