“If the Whole of Africa” is a collection of my essays and articles written for the “Special Bulletin” in the years 1962–66. In those days a news agency correspondent had to write about everything; selection took place at headquarters. Some material went to the official press, radio, and television, and some to the “Special Bulletin.” There you could write the whole truth. I was sometimes asked what my relations with the censor were at that time. I answered that I was my own censor. During the years of the “Cold War” the international situation was tense, and the slightest pretext — some criticism of local authorities or local conditions — often meant being expelled from the given country. That is why I had to be very careful about what I wrote. The dispatches that went into the “Special Bulletin” could, after some time, be collected and published as a book. “If the Whole of Africa” was published by Czytelnik during my absence from Poland. It was very well received. It was, in fact, the first book in our literature that attempted to look at Africa not as adventure, not as exoticism, but as a society, a culture, a religion, a system of customs and political systems. It was an attempt at a deeper analysis and reflection on African reality.

In the years when I was making those notes, a number of the views they contain belonged to the highly controversial — not to say heretical. But I cared about one thing: to write how it really was — for that is, after all, our ambition, the ambition of the reportorial brotherhood.

Ryszard Kapuściński

source: kapuscinski.info