Making Something out of Nothing

OK, role play time. Picture yourself in the following situation:

-You are the revolutionary leader of a sub-Saharan African state.

-Your revolution brought into power a fascist state based upon two ideas seemingly at odds, Marxism and Islam.

-Your third world country is mainly subsistence farmers, and those precious goods you do manage to export are cash crops dependent on floating world market prices

-Your people yearn for Western goods and ideas, but you quash their access in the name of the revolution that brought you to power.

-Oh, and finally there has been a drought in your country for the past five years, baking the ground hard as clay and forcing a famine onto your already struggling people.

If you were given the above scenario and considered it in your mind, you would see that it is a tight spot. However, if you are Colonel Ellelou in The Coup, this is not a hypothetical; this is real. Ellelou is a former French colonial soldier who has travelled the world, studied at a college in the United States and returned to his native land to lead a revolution and become President. This novel is set in 1973 and the Cold War is dividing the world. Under his reign the nation of Kush has signed an agreement with the Soviet Union and allowed Russian missiles to be planted in bunkers in the country.

He is a proud man how holds fast to both the ideals of Islam and Marxism. He has four wives but it is in doubt if any of their collective children came from him. He also prays morning noon and night and does not partake in drugs or alcohol. Further, Ellelou believes in a socialist system but does not have a social economy. The problem lies in the fact that socialism doesn’t work when there is nothing to socialize. Kush had no banking system to be nationalized and no manufacturing economy to be governed. This is a former European colony made of differing tribes who want no central government.

Critics called this Updike’s most political novel, and I have to largely agree. Not because it contains party politics or the thrills and drama of American political showmanship, but because The Coup is government at a basic level. This novel is a story of statecraft. Considering the above scenario, how could one person ever hold all of that together? Well, Ellelou tries. His policies try to make Kush a fair and honest land. Really, in building a nation from the ground up, it is a wonder that any one man could do it at all.