Of Animal Farm and the new ‘democratic’ dictators
A CONVERSATION with Hicks Sikazwe
LAST week marked 80 years since British author Eric Blair, commonly known as George Orwell, published a global satirical fable called Animal Farm.
Almost 50 years ago when it was given to our Form 4 class in 1975 as one of the books to be studied for Literature in English it resonates as an ally for any one in the literary field. By the time I was doing my Form 4 I had not read the book. But when I and others did the first reaction was that the book was meant for children; where on earth could animals talk and run a farm?
That satire is what makes it a powerful statement eight decades after publication. It opens with a dream by one of the oldest pigs at Manor Farm owned by Mr Jones. The boar called Old Major reveals to the animals a dream to remove man from the farm and end the tyranny.
“Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream I had last night. But I will come to that later. Now comrades what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it our lives are miserable, labourious, and short. We are born, we are given so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instance that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty.”
Old Major sums up, “There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word – Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished.”
He continues, “Is it not crystal clear then, comrades that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of man, and the produce of our labour would be our own. What then must we do? Why not work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades; Rebellion.
“I do not know when this rebellion will come; it might be in a week or in a hundred years, as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet that sooner or later justice will be done.”
The initial story was meant to focus on the Russian Revolution heralded by dictator Josef Stalin that for years the book was frowned upon in the entire then Soviet Union. But as years passed it has dawned to many leaders that the target was actually dictators in where in the world.
One of the regions affected by the portrayal in this highly acclaimed piece of work is Africa a continent that suffered under colonialism for years.
But after colonialism most leaders who came after independence began very well but along the way they veered off and became even worse dictators themselves.
Orwell depicts this behaviour in the pigs. As soon as they emerge as the most intelligent animals they assume leadership fostering democracy. The animals adopt 10 commandments to guide governance and ensure equality. They insist that all animals are equal. Two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, emerge prominent as key leaders.
After Mr Jones and his workers are driven out of the Manor Farm, the entity is renamed Animal Farm. But as the narrative develops Snowball and Napoleon differ to an extent that Snowball is driven out of the farm. Napoleon thus emerges as the sole leader and things begin to change.
Laws like all animals are equal get revised to some animals are more equal than others. The pigs who proscribed all human narrative move into the rooms where humans lived. They begin wearing their clothes drinking beer and begin to walk on hind legs.
The little fable is an expose of dictators who emerge in many countries to hang on to power through rigged elections. Leaders who promise citizens heaven only to unleash terror on them. In so called democracies politicians have resorted to using the law to suppress the citizens.
Police brutality is a strand from the animal farm leadership through Napoleon who secretly bred vicious dogs that always surrounded him and always guarded other pigs like Squealer but became the terror of the farm openly killing animals that opposed the great leader Napoleon.
Orwell seemed to have been gifted with the use of animals to illustrate human behaviour. For example, in Squealer it is easy to relate him to political sycophants of today, including praise singers, who are ready to lie and twist the truth just to side with those in power.
In the midst of the suppression the Church, in particular Christianity, has been accused of abetting the behaviour of dictators while counselling the suffering masses that they should ignore the hard fare on earth as their place is in heaven.
In the book the author picks Moses, a tame Raven who always assured animals that no matter the human problems on the farm there was a place called Sugar Candy up in heaven, always pointing the beak to the sky.
There were also cynics in animals like Benjamin who neither criticised nor celebrated whatever the pigs did insisting that since Mr Jones was kicked out of the farm nothing had changed.
In recent history parrarels are drawn to the collapse of Communism after the Berlin Wall that divided East and West Germany collapsed in 1989 and gave birth to a surge demanding for democracy. That saw the proportional collapse of the Soviet Union and the countries which were under the iron curtain broke away to demand independence and Democracy.
As the crave spread there was the rise of the Arab Spring beginning in Tunisia. By the mid-’90s new leaders had emerged. But true to form some of these leaders are not different from those that emerged at independence. They are not different even from those that during apparent colonialism.
Even democracy is increasingly coming under question as the new leaders turn more despotic every day. High handedness, surpressing of the media, police brutality, harassment of political opponents, including throwing them in dungeons called jails have become the order of the day.
The new leaders preach democratic values but never follow a single line of them as what is implemented is completely different now. Almost 50 years after I studied the book Animal Farm, I keep re-reading it. Eighty years later Animal Farm is a timeless gem that must still be read and read. It will continue to provide great lessons for many years to come.
Hicks Sikazwe is the author of Zambia’s Fall Back Presidents, Wasted Years, and Voters in Shadows. A former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Times of Zambia, now Communications and Media Affairs Adovocate based in Ndola. Comments 0955/0966929611 or hpsikazwe @gmail.com
