From now on I say: not in my name

Early in July I was in Banjul, the capital of the country that dubs itself ‘the smiling coast of Africa’, for the AU Summit. A year had elapsed since I last saw many of the political elite who make it a point to attend these gatherings. I am referring to the media professionals and the NGO types.

Many of my friends, especially those in the AU whom I had branded as ‘bureaucrats of our Union’ ‘AUcrats’, and ‘AUrats’ were already waiting to confirm if it was indeed true that I had recently joined the UN Millennium campaign.

I had to keep reminding myself that it was in fact the truth. I couldn’t help thinking that either there was something wrong with me or them. Of all possible employers, it had to be the UN! Crowds of people wanted to exchange business cards with me. They did not want my new business card to correspond with me. Believe it or not, they wanted to keep my card as a souvenir. For them, the card represented ‘Taju joining the system’ or ‘Tajudeen selling out’.

The AUcrats had a field day taunting me as a latter day ‘UNOcrat’ and ‘UNORat’. All my attempts to convince them that I am still within the CSO community, for the UN Millenium Campaign is meant to empower citizens of the world, went unheeded. One of them even boasted to me that I would be saying ALUTA STOPEE instead of ALUTA CONTINUA soon! Time will definitely tell.

I was barely two months in the Campaign but somehow people were looking for evidence that I have mellowed or been bought over. Those who have not received my weekly column now believe that it must be because the UN has put an end to my writing career. Many now look for evidence in my writing that I have had a paradigm shift in my political worldview.

I had arrived in Banjul with an even bigger change in my public persona. After two decades of serious Piping I had given up smoking. The obligatory pipe dangling from my mouth was no longer there.

It was the second day of the Summit when one of the sisters observed that ‘something has changed about you’. Those present chorused: ‘He has joined the UN’ but she disappointed them by saying that my detour into what many of them regarded as ‘behind enemy lines’ was not it. Someone also observed that I had lost a few pounds. Thanks to the craze for losing weight these days, it could have been misinterpreted as evidence that ‘the man is going’ as we euphemistically refer to people suspected of living with AIDS in Uganda. But my weight loss was not due to any dietary change but the result of a serious bout of Malaria.

The sister asked people to guess what could be amiss about my physical appearance. It was not like I was wearing a three-piece suit and a tie in tropical conditions. So what were they supposed to be looking for?

I was in my “Acting Big Man” full Nigerian National Regal Attire. That did not come as a surprise to many, for an enduring popular aspect of the AU razzmatazz is the orchestrated display of colourful African dresses with the West Africans, invariably leading the pack. However, there seems to be increasing competition for the lead role from other regions, especially Southern African women.

So if there was nothing amiss with clothes, what then was the problem? Finally, with the smugness of the only one who knows and the sense of discovery comparable to Newton discovering the Laws of Gravity, she shouted: “Look at him! The pipe is missing.”

Everybody started demanding to know where the pipe was. Instead of congratulating me, they wanted to know why I had stopped smoking.

I had stopped smoking over a year earlier. I must emphasise that I had not stopped because I had realised that smoking was dangerous and bad for my health. Every smoker knows that (and does not care about the legal warning) just as alcoholics know that liquor is not good for their health.

When it comes to alcohol there is still a half hearted debate about whether alcohol is good when drunk in moderation. There is no such debate about smoking. Those who smoke pipes delude themselves that they smoke less. But the truth is that it is the same nicotine.

So, the message should not be ‘smoke less’ but ‘do not smoke at all’. Even now that I have stopped the impact of my previous smoking will be with me till the grave. And what is frightening is that my second-hand smoke might have affected someone else’s health.

It is often said that smokers are the only true Socialists left because they share their smoke with you whether you like it or not. This is why smoking ceases to be a matter of personal choice.

Suppose I had designs to poison my family or circle of friends or whole community, wouldn’t the State be compelled to put me behind bars? Yet smokers are doing this every time they smoke.

I am no latter day convert to ‘no smoking evangelism’. I do not wish to preach to people. I still miss the buzz and elation of bonding with complete strangers, the cancer friendships, the emotional release and other feelings that go with smoking. I am still very tolerant towards my former comrades. But I hope for those still in the Club that the puff they are now blowing is their last one.

What prompted the change was a plea from my older daughter, Aida, 10.

On a wintry morning, I was taking her and her younger sister, Ayesha, 6, to their school in North London. I rolled down my window for my first puff of the day (which any smoker cherishes. I must add that at the time our house had become a Talibanesque no smoking, no drinking Sharia Zone!).

Out of the blue, Aida said: “Baba do you know that you will not see me graduate?” I was shocked and asked why she was talking death at 8.00am. She said: “Because you are smoking.” And proceeded to reel out all the medical, social and environmental reasons befitting kids brought up on ICTs. Gone were our days of ‘do as you are told’, ‘do not speak unless you are spoken to’ and grandfather of all indiscipline, to correct the Mzee!

I was happy and saddened at the same time. I was happy that my 10 year old daughter was confident that she was going to graduate, but sad that my lifestyle was making her feel that her father might not be there. The buzz, the urge and everything that goes with that puff drained out of me that morning and ever since I have not filled up the pipe again.

Africa is far away from the litigations nightmare of the US that makes long-term smokers go to court to prosecute tobacco makers for not warning them that smoking is bad for their health!

Be that as it may, it is a scandal that tobacco companies just like oil companies and other corporations get away with serial murders in Africa and other Third World countries. It is not just their exploitation of the environment and people, but that most of their adverts would not have been broadcast or published in the West.

Tobacco and alcohol advertising are still booming in the poorer countries, where both political corruption and weak regulatory capacities allow big corporations to do what they like. They also present themselves as “partners- in-development” because of the economic contributions they make to tobacco growing countries. They have loads of money to advertise, and the media is financially dependent on this.

Governments may be compromised, and media owners reluctant to act but as individuals there are little things we can do. For me the least of the actions I can take begins with the picture editors at New Vision newspapers in Uganda, the original publishers of this column.

With this article I am making a public break with the tolerated poison industry that the tobacco industry represents. I am no longer active in the fraternity. I may not be able to stop the British American Tobacco and other tobacco companies but at least I can demand that The New Vision no longer uses a picture of me with a pipe.

I hope my good friends Owori Charles, Kevin and Sue O’Connor in the East African branches of the anti-smoking lobby ‘Tobacco or Health’ and others who have written to me take this as a public atonement and a determination to affirm life instead of being an accessory to my own death and that of others. There should be nothing glamorous about smoking. The tobacco corporations have too much money to convince and confuse the public about their merchandise. So, it would be an act of making the rich even richer on my part were I to appear with a pipe every week in my newspaper column.

From now on I say: not in my name.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement,
Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org