Intellectuals And African Development: Pretension And Resistance in African Politics - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1842777653 ISBN 13: 9781842777657

Casa editrice: Zed Books, 2006

Riassunto

This book looks at the very different responses to the African predicament from prominent writers like Soyinka, Ngugi and Achebe, to the military men in power and the students who defy repression. It suggests that intervention by international agencies who claim to promote 'democracy' and 'empower the youth' may reinforce authoritarian attitudes and structures. The essays in the book give voice to the outrage, ridicule and revolutionary ardour, as well as to the reformist caution, of those directly affected. The shallow pretences of those in power and the hypocrisy and arrogance of the foreign helpers are also exposed. The book concludes that being an 'insider' or an 'outsider' is less important than being committed to listening to ordinary people.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Björn Beckman is a Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. He has published extensively on African political economy and organised interests. His current work compares African trade unions and their interventions in policy and politics.

Gbemisola Adeoti is a Lecturer in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. He has contributed to scholarly journals both within and outside Nigeria. His collection of poems Naked Soles, has just been published.
Björn Beckman is a Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. He has published extensively on African political economy and organised interests. His current work compares African trade unions and their interventions in policy and politics.

Gbemisola Adeoti is a Lecturer in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. He has contributed to scholarly journals both within and outside Nigeria. His collection of poems Naked Soles, has just been published.

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Intellectuals and African Development

Pretension and Resistance in African Politics

By Björn Beckman, Gbemisola Adeoti

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2006 CODESRIA
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84277-765-7

Contents

Predicament and response: an introduction BJÖRN BECKMAN AND GBEMISOLA ADEOTI, 1, 
one | Intellectuals, writers and soldiers, 
1 Psychopaths in power: the collapse of the African dream in A Play of Giants OLUSEGUN ADEKOYA, 11, 
2 Re-establishing the basis of social order in Africa: a reflection on Achebe's reformist agenda and Ngugi's Marxist aesthetics M. S. C. OKOLO, 31, 
3 Narrating the green gods: the (auto) biographies of Nigerian military rulers GBEMISOLA ADEOTI, 49, 
two | Students, youths and people, 
4 Ambiguous transitions: mediating citizenship among youth in Cameroon JUDE FOKWANG, 69, 
5 Student radicalism and the national project: the Nigerian student movement BJÖRN BECKMAN, 98, 
6 Transnational governance and the pacification of youth: civic education and disempowerment in Malawi HARRI ENGLUND, 124, 
7 Identity and knowledge production in the fourth generation NANA AKUA ANYIDOHO, 156, 
Contributors, 171, 
Index, 173, 

CHAPTER 1

Psychopaths in power: the collapse of the African dream in A Play of Giants

OLUSEGUN ADEKOYA

A critical investigation of Wole Soyinka's A Play of Giants (1984), this chapter discusses what the playwright himself calls the 'Aminian theme', that is, African leaders' obsession with power, a seductive drive that breeds moral corruption, dictatorship, delusions, economic distortions and ruination, megalomania, perversion and desecration of all that is good in African traditions. The problem leads to the evaporation of all dreams of greatness, nationalism, liberation from colonial thraldom, disease, ignorance and poverty, and of pan-Africanism nursed in the heady days of independence celebrations. The four despots caricatured in the play are Field-Marshal Kamini (late Idi Amin, deposed President of Uganda), Emperor Kasco (Jean-Bedel Bokassa, former Emperor of the Central African Republic), Benefacio Gunema (late President Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea) and General Barra Tuboum (late President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo).

Although in real life the four giants have been removed from office and divested of power, either forcibly and ignominiously by rebels or naturally by the inexorable force of senescence and death, the ravages of their misrule and profligacy are still felt by the beleaguered peoples of their respective countries. The economies remain in the doldrums and ethnic conflicts generated by suspicion of political marginalization and military coups continue to cause confusion and social upheaval and destabilize the polity. Thus, A Play of Giants is still of immediate sociopolitical relevance to African peoples. Besides, some of the countries are still struggling to throw off the yoke of military dictatorship and establish democratic rule, while others already on the road of democracy are yet to assimilate its principles and live the culture.

In discussing the topic, this chapter examines such elements of drama as setting, plot, action, character and language, which are used by the playwright to elicit the sordid dimensions of despotism in the African political landscape. Dramaturgic devices employed by the author to signify the horrors of despotism are highlighted and discussed.

The 'giants' are in New York to attend the General Assembly of the United Nations. In response to the request of the organization's Secretary-General for a representative work of art from each member nation, say, a miniaturized bust of the president, they sit for a life-size group sculpture, at Kamini's suggestion, in what appears to be a vivid demonstration of the old African spirit of communalism but which, as events later show, is its outright bastardization. In reality, the suggestion stems from Kamini's megalomania. While seated, they engage in grim banter on the nature and dynamics of power, its privileges and trappings, and its specific manifestations in the countries over which they rule with a rod of iron.

A Play of Giants is set in the Bugaran Embassy in New York City. Its balcony adorned with framed portraits, its gold-gilt railings and the heavy throne-like chairs on which the giants sit for the sculptor reek of grandeur, opulence and power, and simultaneously reveal Kamini's megalomania. A prodigal president, Kamini has wasted the material resources of his country on frivolities and inanities and crashed the economy, which explains why he has brought with him the Chairman of the Bugaran Central Bank, to negotiate a World Bank loan of two hundred million dollars. Like the giants, the embassy looks full and gorgeous from the outside but is hollow and rotten within. For instance, the telex has been cut off because the embassy lacks funds to settle its bills. The playwright uses irony to punch holes in the grandiose edifice, which is emblematic of the giants' self-aggrandizement. Kamini appropriates and disposes of Bugara as if it is his private property. He tells Professor Batey, one of his African American admirers: 'This embassy is your own home. You must use it as if it is your own home. Madame Ambassador, I hope you are taking good notice. I want Professor Batey to have everything he wants anytime day and night' (p. 42). Thus, the setting reveals African leaders' profligacy and mismanagement of resources, which ensures the continued economic retardation of the continent.

The opening scene portrays the giants as ceremonial fops and stupid megalomaniacs whose lust for power is repulsive. The characters are placed on three levels of power: the reigning giants occupy the highest level; Gudrum, the Scandinavian journalist, is located on the middle level; while Sculptor, who has been hired from Madame Tussaud's in London, operates at the lowest level. A perfect representation of three-tiered capitalist society, the gradation approximates the amount of freedom and political power enjoyed and exercised respectively by the characters in the play. Inverted, the order depicts their different degrees of intellectual perspicacity and moral probity. Sculptor in this respect is the most perceptive and sensitive of the lot, while the ruling giants, the wreckers of the work of the earth's toilers, are the most depraved. A representative of the perpetually wavering middle class, Gudrum veers between sheer ignorance of Africa and dubious knowledge oriented towards promotion of self. She, too, like the giants, cuts an obscene and repulsive figure. Soyinka's sympathies no doubt lie with the workers, represented by Sculptor, whose labour in fact builds the world. Kamini's huge military dress uniform is covered with medals. In contrast, Kasco is dwarfish but is equally adorned with showy medals and, to boot, he wears a cloak of imperial purple, though his size somewhat deflates his ballooned ego and status. Gunema is in tails of immaculate cut. His decorations consist of a red sash and blue rosette and a couple of medals. Their heavy throne-like chairs are awe-inducing and show them to be monomaniacs who ape God.

There is good use of colour symbolism in the tableau. Yellow (the gold-gilt balcony railing) symbolizes opulence, purple (Kasco's cloak) royalty, red (Gunema's sash) danger and mysticism, and blue (Gunema's rosette) nobility. The life-size group sculpture is a graphic and symbolic representation of the play and Sculptor's comment that the piece properly belongs in 'the Chamber of Horrors' (p. 28) sums up Soyinka's criticism. The play is a vision of horror and madness and, thus, has as its precursors Kongi's Harvest and Madmen and Specialists. The African dictators portrayed in the three plays are terrors who create horrors in their respective countries and contribute immensely to the invention of the image of black Africa as an underdeveloped land of modern-day cannibals and savages. An iconoclast, Soyinka exposes the despots' delusion of grandeur and represents their displays of power as obscene and vulgar.

Field-Marshal Kamini, the character around whom the dramatic action revolves, is represented as a despotic madman. In the Introduction to the play, Soyinka calls Idi Amin, the former Ugandan president, a 'certified psychopath'. His first statement and first gesture in the play – 'Only one thing to do to subversive – Khrr! (A meaningful gesture across his throat)' – are incontrovertible proof that he is a murderer. In the Introduction to The Burden of Memory: The Muse of Forgiveness, Soyinka (1999: 11) calls Amin 'our greatest butcher of his time' and 'a practising cannibal'. Kamini's bloodthirstiness has driven critics of his demonic style of administration into exile and the family of any known runaway subversive is wiped out. Sometimes, his guards take bribes and allow families of runaways to flee. His lust for women is as enormous as his passion for political power. He agrees with Gunema that 'a leader should have many wives' on whom to practise his sexual power and demonstrate his virility (p. 4). In some primitive cultures, a king who has lost his sexual potency is put to death (Frazer 1987: 265ff).

An insensitive ignoramus, Kamini cares not whether the World Bank mortgages Bugara body and soul. All the attempts made by the Chairman of the Bugaran Central Bank to make him understand why the conditions set by the lending institution are unacceptable and why any currency needs backing fail. Told by President Kamini to get back to Bugara and start printing more bank notes after his failure to obtain the loan, the Chairman remarks that Bugaran currency has so depreciated in value that 'it is not worth its size in toilet paper' (p. 7). Incensed by the harmless statement, Kamini calls the Chairman a traitor and orders that his head be permanently put in a toilet and flushed over with water every time the cistern is full. Although he does not actually eat the tyrant's shit, the Chairman is made to smell it and his pleas for understanding fall on deaf ears. Kamini does not know anything about economic and financial management and will not allow anybody to educate him on the matter or on any other, for example, on waxworks.

In the same vein, he cannot suffer Gunema's attempt either to intellectualize the idea of power or draw an analogy between voodoo and sexual power. As far as the savage ruler is concerned, to reason is to cause confusion and so he bans thought altogether. He is portrayed as a crude and devilish buffoon and sadist who derives a great deal of pleasure from inflicting pain on people who show the least sign of possessing a modicum of intellectual power, for their knowledge easily exposes his own stupidity. He thinks like a cretin or lunatic. Knowledge is welcome only if it is pressed into the service of inflating and massaging his ego, as Gudrum does shamelessly in the profusely illustrated book The Black Giant at Play and Professor Batey in The Black Giant at Work. In other words, he sees eye to eye with only fawners, praise-singers and sycophants who feed him with lies and laud him as an astute and heroic revolutionary and as a great and superb administrator. A liar himself, he claims that he is a descendant of Chaka the Zulu and brags that, like the Zulu emperor, he killed his first lion at the age of seven.

Sculptor's attempt to educate him on the several stages in the production of a waxwork is mistaken for an insult, and for making the highly illuminating Chamber of Horrors remark, he is beaten black and blue by the Task Force Specials on Kamini's orders and his body wrapped in bandages from head to toe. Lack of knowledge lies at the root of Africa's underdevelopment. Kamini's stubborn refusal to learn worsens the matter. It is no wonder, then, that members of his delegation run away for dear life, an act considered as treason by the tyrant. Their desertion robs him of his sang-froid and makes posing for Sculptor no longer possible. Consequently, he suspends work on the sculpture, giving as his reason the need to allow the sitters and Sculptor to eat.

Ambassador's report on the delegates' disappearance, however, brings Kamini to the sudden realization of his human limitation. He confesses: 'There is so much corruption. One man cannot supervise everything' (p. 26). Soyinka's subtle innuendo is that Kamini rules over a corrupt state and sets the pattern followed by his security personnel. Corruption has laid most African nations prostrate and bled them dry. Gunema claims that with the aid of voodoo it is possible for one man to police everywhere at all times, which implies that voodoo is superior to the physical or military power on which Kamini counts.

Kamini, like most African heads of state on whom the giants are patterned, loves grandiloquent titles. From the playwright's perspective, honorific titles that are neither earned nor merited are vacuous and render their bearers easy targets of satire. Kamini's expectation that Sculptor stand up as a mark of respect for him every time he enters the room is absurd and tantamount to an outright bastardization of the African tradition of giving respect to elders. A sybarite, he clings tenaciously to power even after the coup against him has been reported. He threatens that if the coup is not reversed by the world powers, nobody will leave the embassy alive. The preponderance of military coups in Africa is traceable to the life of comfort and ease guaranteed by political office. It is not patriotic zeal to serve or to correct mistakes of civilian government but the lust for the perquisites of office and privileges that makes the armed forces desire political power. As disclosed by Gunema, 'after a while, we cease to govern, to lead' (p. 2). In effect, he is saying that they cling to power for its own sake, for its allure. Kasco corroborates his view when he states: 'If you think first of responsibility and governing, you give up search for power' (p. 2). The failure of political leadership continues to be worrisome. Dealing with the problem is made difficult by the fact that bad governments present a false image of themselves to the outside world. For example, Kamini portrays himself to the Secretary-General of the United Nations as an altruistic and kind leader who takes good care of Sculptor when he falls from a ladder while spying – a patent lie.

As the drama draws to a close, Kamini's actions and outbursts become increasingly hyperbolic, incredible and lunatic and the mask of an affable and large-hearted leader drops. Conceited and deluded, he plans to attack South Africa and whines that the superpowers deny him the atomic bomb with which to defeat apartheid. He lives in a world of illusion till the very end. Two illusions suffice: he mistakes Bugaran protesters for his supporters, and he dreams of taking over the United States. As if to make good his threat, he launches an attack on the United Nations building in an attempt to raze it. He gives Batey, who is pleading that he should not blow up the Bugaran Embassy in which his brother giants, the Secretary-General of the UN, two Russian delegates and two American delegates are being held hostage, 'a backhanded swipe that knocks him flat on his back' (p. 68), a dastardly act that finally convinces the African American that Kamini is indeed a madman. Thus, A Play of Giants exposes the precariousness of a world with stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. All that is required to trigger a nuclear conflagration and destroy the world is a preposterous attack by a leader who has gone crazy. It is a serious warning about the urgent need to protect the world against the use of the nuclear arsenals by psychopaths, and there is no better way to do this than to destroy the weapons.

A contestant for the crown of tyranny, Benefacio Gunema is only one degree below Kamini in megalomania. His thinness is a symbolic expression of the smallness of the country over which he exercises power. He portrays himself as a good and healthy lover, but the playwright represents him as a pervert. A specialist on the various manifestations of power, he identifies terrorists as people who seek not government but vengeance and enjoy secret power. The four giants, in his opinion, have put politics behind them, being 'gifted naturally with leadership' and existing, as they do, 'in a rare space which is – power' (p. 2). Thus, absolute, untrammelled power transcends petty bickering and the schematic intrigues of the politicians and puts its possessor in a special realm that equals or surpasses God's heavenly abode in grandeur. Whereas Jehovah occasionally leaves his throne, comes down to earth and condescends to reason with people, the giants never converse with people or depart from the ambience of grandeur and power. Rather, they banish thought and proscribe debate, two human activities which often breed dissension and the party spirit and corrode power. For power to remain pure, all subjects under its wielder must be robbed of their individual will and reduced to obsequious toadies and unthinking zombies that can be freely manipulated, as puppets are.

Gunema throws light on the character of voodoo power, his unrivalled speciality: 'Voodoo power is tranquil, extendido, like you making love to woman you really love or possess. You dominate her but still you make the love prolong, not to body alone but to her soul' (p. 4). Since it affects both the physical and the spiritual, voodoo can be rated the most dreadful and most effective form of power. It has no spatial and temporal limits and can be deployed against even the dead. General Franco, the late Spanish dictator, in Gunema's view, exemplifies military power, while Papa Doc Duvalier, the late dictator of Haiti, typifies a dispenser of voodoo power. Gunema thinks that Franco, who kept Spain peaceful for forty years, would be a better Secretary-General of the UN than the incumbent. His confession that Papa Doc Duvalier is more knowledgeable than he (Gunema) is in the practice of voodoo at least shows that he is less boastful than Kamini, who claims that Papa Doc cannot bewitch him, a spurious claim that is best interpreted as braggadocio.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Intellectuals and African Development by Björn Beckman, Gbemisola Adeoti. Copyright © 2006 CODESRIA. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Zed Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1842777653
• ISBN 13: 9781842777657
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 178
• Redattore: Beckman Bjorn, Adeoti Gbemisola
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile