The Shadow of the Sun and Africa today

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński is the record of several decades of a reporter’s experience on the African continent, from the turn of the 1950s and 1960s to the end of the century. It is a book about decolonisation, the birth of new states, coups and civil wars, but also about everyday life: the heat, illness, hospitality, poverty, community and solitude. Today, as interest in Africa grows again, it is worth asking what in the picture the book gives still holds, and what needs supplementing and correcting. The book remains an important testimony, but it is not — and should not be treated as — a complete portrait of Africa today.

The first thing that joins The Shadow of the Sun to the present day is the subject of decolonisation and its long consequences. Kapuściński described the moment when former colonies were becoming independent states: the euphoria, the hope, but also the chaos, the struggle for power, and the borders inherited from the colonial administration, which did not match ethnic divisions. Many of today’s conflicts on the continent have their roots in precisely that period. Reading the book, one can better understand why some African states still contend with fragile institutions, ethnic tensions and the legacy of arbitrarily drawn borders.

The second strand that remains alive is the mechanics of power in the postcolonial state. Kapuściński shows how the hope of freedom was often taken over by new elites, how authoritarianism was born, how military coups became a way of changing governments. These observations still help to make sense of some of today’s political crises, though the context has changed: new forces have appeared, along with outside investors, technologies, and young, urban societies. The Shadow of the Sun provides the background, but it will not replace an analysis of the current politics of any particular country.

The third enduring element is everyday life. The strongest passages in the book are not the high politics but the ordinary scenes: waiting for a bus, a night in a room like a furnace, a conversation by the fire, illness, drought, the hospitality of people who have very little themselves. This layer of the book ages most slowly, because it concerns human experience rather than the balance of forces alone. A reader today can still find in it the truth of an encounter between cultures, of patience, of a different rhythm of life, and of how much depends on the observer’s vantage point.

It has to be said plainly, though, where the limits of that vantage point lie. The Shadow of the Sun is the view of a twentieth-century Polish reporter, a European arriving from outside. Kapuściński was aware of this and more than once stressed the limitations of his own point of view, but a contemporary reading calls for extra vigilance. Africa today speaks in its own voice: it has its own writers, historians, reporters, economists and artists describing the continent from within. Reading The Shadow of the Sun, it is worth supplementing it with those voices, so as not to entrench an image of Africa as a uniform, exotic whole seen through a visitor’s eyes.

Africa today is also simply different from the Africa of the book. It is the continent with the fastest-growing population, with enormous cities, mobile phones and mobile payments, young societies, a dynamic culture and economies developing alongside continuing crises. The picture of poverty, disease and war, though still present in some regions, does not exhaust the reality. For that reason The Shadow of the Sun should not be read as a current guide to Africa, but as the historical testimony of a particular era and a particular way of understanding it.

The most honest reading of the book today is therefore a double one. On the one hand we value it for what endures in it: the sensitivity to everyday life, the grasp of the mechanics of decolonisation, the literary force of its images. On the other we read it critically, aware that it is the testimony of a specific time and a specific perspective. Understood that way, The Shadow of the Sun loses none of its significance. On the contrary: it becomes a starting point for a conversation about how Africa has changed, and how our way of looking at it has changed too.

See also

• The Shadow of the Sun
• The Shadow of the Sun — summary and analysis
• Kapuściński’s books about Africa — a complete guide
• Quotes on Africa
• Is Kapuściński’s reportage still relevant?