Soyinka's Smoking Shotgun - The Later Satires

8/3/2019 Soyinka's Smoking Shotgun - The Later Satires

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Soyinka's Smoking Shotgun: The Later SatiresAuthor(s): Derek WrightReviewed work(s):Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 27-34Published by: Board of Regents of the University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40147851 .Accessed: 25/01/2012 05:41

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Soyinka's Smoking Shotgun: The Later SatiresBy DEREKWRIGHT Wole Soyinkadid not cointhe term shotgunwriting"you dischargeand disap-pear" until the 1970s.1 He had, however, pro-duced occasional subversive satiric sketchesthroughout the previous decade, and his un-published one-act Royal Court entertainment TheInvention1959),a caustic tour de force on univer-salracismset in a futuristicSouthAfrica,had beenwrittenin the broad satiric traditionof the revue.During the deepening crisis of Nigeria's First Re-public,as politicalmurdersbecame more frequentand blatant intimidationby power-addictedlocalchiefs escalateddaily, Soyinka opted increasinglyfor the directthrustand immediate corrective m-pact of the revue sketch performed hot on theheels of the event. In The New Republican1964)and BeforeheBlackout1965,publishedin selectionin 1971) the targets were various acts of publiccowardiceand sycophancyperformedbeforeboththe new time-serving, opportunistic politiciansand Nigeria's traditionalrulers, portrayedin thesketches either as lecherous rogues or as corruptfeudal chieftains who had betrayed their peoplethroughout history.Soyinka,however, acknowledgedin his prefaceto Before he Blackouthe familiarparadox of thesatirist: he acute topicalityof the materialmade itlibelousin printand dangerouslyopen to politicalreprisal, but once its targets were dead or de-thronedand it ceased to be a threat,it also ceasedto be topical.Thus those sketcheshave worn leastwell in which Soyinka, working on the assump-tion that wrongs are only correctable f identifia-ble, attacked he individualvillain ratherthan thevillainy and took little trouble to camouflage hisidentity. Possibleafterthoughtson the short life ofclose-rangesatirepromptedhim, in his prefatorycomments, to leave loopholes for updating andcontemporaryadaptation,and it is significantthatthe most enduringand most frequentlyrevived ofthese sketchesmake no specificcontemporaryref-erences (notably, the perennially popular ChildeInternationalein which a traditionalYorubafathertakes in hand his affected been-to wife and hisobnoxious daughter, outrageously Americanizedby one of the new international schools).2 Theissues raised by this form of satire served as anexample,and also as awarning, forSoyinka's aterwork in the "shotgun" mold, to which he re-turned in the midseventies.The year 1975, which brought Death and theKings Horseman nd Soyinka's return to Nigeriaafter five years in exile, was something of a water-

shed in his dramatic career. About this time,whether in response to the exigencies of the wors-ening political situation or to the pressures ofcriticism eveled at his work by the Nigerian Left,the dramatist chose to strip from his drama itscomplex ritual and mythological idiom andinformingYorubaworld view in favor of the sub-versive, agitprop satiric revue, written for per-formance rather than for publication. This morepopular form was adopted for the purpose ofurgent politicalcommunicationwith a mass audi-ence, and the works written in it, usually pub-lished some years after production and in somecase not at all, are theatricalamphibianswith onefoot in the textualworld of Western dramaand theother in the improvisationalcomic folk theater,oralawada,of the Yoruba world. Whereas the 1960srevue sketches left occasionalloopholes for topicaladaptation, this later work was much looser instructure and more openly experimental in ap-proach. "The text of the play was never com-pletely written as it was ever being rewritten andreshaped during rehearsals,"Yemi Ogunbiyi hassaid of Soyinka's production of OperaWonyosi(1977). "Nothing was finally arrived at until theplay closed. . . . Forhim [Soyinka]the text, evenhis own text, was merely a map with many possi-ble routes."3This largely unscripted, hit-and-runkind of street theater, targeting specific politicalenormities, mounted with minimalpublicity, andvanishing before the playerscould be rounded upby the police of the latest repressiveregime, main-tained a topical commentary which was bestsuited to the raw atmosphereof marketplaceandlorry park. "The cosy, escapist air of formal the-atres tends to breed amnesia much too quickly,"Soyinka had remarked of his earlier sketches ofthe 1960s.4Over the next decade the links betweenSoyinka's theatrical and political involvementswere to be particularlyclose, and the "shotgun"satires,runninga constant causticcalypso on pub-lic affairs,were a frontlineforce in the responsesto Nigeria's succession of political and economiccrises and subsequent scandals and outrages:shrinking oil revenues, plunging foreign ex-change, the chronic shortage of books and infor-mation, and multiplying ministerial embezzle-ments and politicalmurders.SometimespointedlyNigerian in reference, as in Beforethe Blowout(1978)and PriorityProjects1983), and sometimesconcerned with evils on the African continent atlarge, as in OperaWonyosi, he revue satires havein their favorthe urgentrelevance of theirpolitical


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28 WORLD LITERATURE ODAYcomment and the spontaneity of the theatrical"happening,"with its capacity orsurprise,shock,and audience involvement. In their publishedform, however, they inevitablysufferfrom a limit-ing topicalityand ephemerality.Performanceherehas priority,and when the works' virtuoso satirictechniques are allowed to interfere with the dra-matic integrity of fully-crafted stage plays, theresults are apt to be disappointing:a satiricmean-ness of characterization,nstancedin the mechani-cal lining up and wheeling on of slight and unsub-stantial targets (Requiem or a Tuturologist, 1985);and a linguistic flatness and general thinness oftexture(APlayofGiants,, 984),the more noticeableafter the verbal richness and somber grandeurofDeath and the King's Horseman. The invasion ofSoyinka' stage drama by the styles and tech-niques of the opportunistic satiric revue has, Isuspect, had much to do with the markeddilutionof the substance and quality of his later dramaticwriting.OperaWonyosi/ balladoperafirstperformed n1977 but not published until 1981, is the mostsubstantialand sustained of these satires.With theaid of an eclecticmedley of Englishballads, KurtWeill songs, jazz and blues, and the tunes of the1950s Ibo folk singer Israel Ijemanze, Soyinkatransposes the eighteenth-century London ofGay's Beggars'Operaand the Victorian Soho ofBrecht'sThreepenny pera o a bidonville of Ban-gui, capitalof the formerCentralAfricanRepublic,on the eve of the imperialcoronationof Jean-BedelBokassa, who was to be overthrown two yearslater when his involvement in the murder ofschoolchildren became widely known. The ob-scenely decadent extravaganzaof Bokassa' coro-nation in one of Africa'spoorest countries, whichtook place in the same week as Soyinka' Ifeproduction, substitutes for the royal jubilee thatforms the background o the actionin the GayandBrechtoriginals and provides Macheath with hisroyal reprieve at the climax. (Significantly, inSoyinka' Africanversion, the royal pardonwhichliberatesvicious criminals s not extended to politi-cal detainees.) The emperor "Boky," or "FolksyBoksy," a crazy caricature of feudal barbarismmixed with servile, sentimental Francophilia,makes one unforgettableappearancein the play,during which he drills and clubs senseless hisgoon squad before stomping off to "pulp thebrains"of the childrenwho have refused to wearhis uniforms. The motley collection of rogues andthugs who make up the cast of OperaWonyosi,however, are Nigerian expatriates.These are the"beggarly" racketeers of Chief Anikura (thePeachum of the original);the venal police chiefand securityexpert "Tiger"Brown, on loan to theemperor; the psychopathic Colonel Moses, mili-tary adviser to the same; and the thieves, arson-ists, drug peddlers, and murderers gathered

around the highway robber Macheath. Lest theaudiencejump to the conclusionthat the Nigerianmilitaryregime has exportedall of its undesirableelements, however, it is made clear at the outsetthat the expatriatecliques of the Nigerian quarterare meant to serve as a satiricmicrocosmof thehome country during the oil boom of the seven-ties. In a programnote Soyinkainsisted that"thegenius of race portrayed n this opera is entirely,indisputably and vibrantly Nigerian."PreferringGay's ebullientindictmentof specifichistorical vices and corruptions to Brecht'sportrayalof universal human depravity, Soyinkauses the wisecracking cynicism of the expatriatescoundrels to draw up a ghastly inventory ofNigerian outrages in the years of the oil dollaror"petro-naira" government-sponsored extortionand assassination;arsonand atrocitiesby a power-drunksoldiery (notoriously,the burningdown ofFela Kuti's "KalakutaRepublic"); he public flog-ging of traffic offenders and execution of felons;murderouslypunitiveindustrialconditions n gov-ernment cement works and levels of state respon-sibilityso low that month-oldcorpses were left todecompose on public highways; and a generalcraze for wealth which was epitomized by thewearing of the gaudy wonyosi, he absurdlyrag-ged-looking but fantastically expensive lace thatwas the rage of the tasteless Nigerian nouveauxriches in the 1970s. (Ogunbiyi points out that,accented in a certain way, opera n Yoruba canmean "the fool buys.")5Anikura' beggars are, of course, more thanwhat they seem, and theirfeigned physicaldefor-mities are more than distant symbolicallusions tothe moral deformation of their country. Amongthe ragged band are lawyers, professors,doctors,and clergymenwhose begging is used by Soyinkaas a precise metaphorfor the shameless sycophan-cy to "khaki and brass," the groveling in militarygutters by which the professional classes wonpreferment and promotion during the years of"nairomania"("Khakiis a man's best friend,"runs the refrainof one song). Sycophancy,backedup by coercion,is the way to a slice of the nationalcake. In the words of the garrulousDee-Jay,whoreplaces Gay's beggarly poet and Brecht's Mori-tatensanger, "That's what the whole nation isdoing begging for a slice of the action. . . . Herethe beggars say, 'Give me a slice of action, orgive me a slice off your throat.'"6But Soyinkaliteralizes his metaphors, and labors them some-what, by having his mendicantprofessionalsturnprofessional mendicants. Professor Bamgbapo,who has "bagged"the chairmanshipsof anumberof industrialcorporationsas well as his universitychairby "sucking up to the army boys" ("To begis to bag," runs the beggars' anthem), has evencome to Anikura for "a refresher course" in theformof fieldwork with full-timebeggars! 65)Thus


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WRIGHT 29the street beggars become synonymous withfawningbureaucrats,and the smallcrooksactuallyturn into big ones before our eyes. Anikura, thebrainbehind the beggars' protectionracket(a "be-neficent society for the relief of burdened con-sciences"), is "chairman of highly successfulgroups of companies,"while Polly plays the stockmarket and, if we can believe it, amalgamatesMacheathenterpriseswith a multinationalcorpo-ration:"Let'sgo legitimatelike the bigger crooks"(46, 62, 66). However, though the links betweenlegal business practice and crime, and betweencapitalismand gangsterdom,arecertainlypresent,Soyinka's play is not the assault on capitalismwhich Brecht meant his to be; instead it is essen-tially a satire on power. The culprit is the oil-produced wealth that promoted power and thetarget the criminallengths to which people werepreparedto go to get the money that would buythem power.OperaWonyosi s devastating, merciless satire,and the government's promptintervention to pre-vent a Lagos production was proof that the playhad struck powerfully home. There are odd mo-ments of pure hilarity(Anikura' referenceto theAmericanhabit of "pleading the Fifth Command-ment"),and the dialogue crackleswith verbalplay("WhileMackie and Brown were ripping the in-sides of foes" in the civil war, the notoriouscorpse-stripping "attack traders" were "rippingoff both sides"), but the sugar coatingon the bittersatiricpill is usually very thin (71, 43). Sometimesthe tone is brash, swaggering cynicism in theBrechtianmode, as in Macheath' remarkthat thestupidity in a Nigerian can be only temporaryorfeigned because "the smell of money endows thedumbest Nigerian with instant intelligence," orAnikura' comment that fraud by one's fellowcountrymen is an infallible alibi for destitution,since everyone knows "that any Nigerianwill robhis starving grandmother and push her in theswamp" (54, 4). The latter threatens to have anarmyof realbeggarsmarch on coronationday, notto embarrasstyranny with poverty but to black-mail it into arresting his personal enemy Mac-heath. At other times the satire is pure vitriolicrage, as in the Bangui equivalentof the Bar BeachShow at Mackie' execution, where schoolchildrenare given a holiday to watch the spectacle ontelevision and a deathbed patient from the hospi-tal falls over his wheelchair in righteousbloodlustfor a ringside seat and promptly bursts into agruesome parody of Donald Swann's "Hippo-potamus Song": "Blood, blood, glorious blood /Nothing quite like it for offering to God / Banishthe gallows / So I can wallow / In the crimsonjuiceof the criminal sod!" (78). Reality here seems al-ways one step ahead of satiricinvention, and theunspeakable needs little enhancement from thewriter to provoke a sense of outrage.

The terrorizingof civilianpopulationsby mega-lomaniacalmilitarybuffoons and the squalidcom-pliance of the professional classes, cowed by amendicant mentality, were the painful Nigerianand Africanrealities of the 1970s, and satire tar-geted at them walks the fine edge between the realand the surreal. Soyinka stated in the playbill tothe 1977Ife productionthat"the charactersn thisopera are either strangersor fictitious,for Nigeriais stranger than fiction, and any resemblancetoany Nigerian, living or dead, is purely accidental,unintentionaland instructive."7The repellanthis-toricaloriginalsof characters ike Boky, more gro-tesque than any invention, have a way of parody-ing themselves, but even in the case of the moregeneralized Nigerian material the preposterousrealitykeeps breakingthroughat unexpectedmo-ments to dissolve the conventional safe divisionsbetween the stage world and the "real" world.The very closeness of these two worlds madepossible a number of surpriseeffects in perform-ance: Soyinka had the "attacktrade"women de-scend into the audience at the intervalto sell theirgrisly wares, and a coffin, ostensibly containingthe real corpse scooped from the roadside theprevious day by Tai Solarin,was carriedby pall-bearers into the auditorium,thus implicatingev-eryone in willful blindness to the daily publicobscenity. In one performance he shock tacticsofthe Theater of the Real were even turned againsthis own actors:on Soyinka' secret instructions,his orchestrahalted the opening number so that

Wole Soyinka

co3cD


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30 WORLD LITERATURE ODAYProfessor Bamgbapo (played by a real-life aca-demic) could be dragged from the chorus and, infront of a universityaudience, thrashedby a figurelooking very much like a real-lifeNigerian armyofficer.

Time has, inevitably, taken the sting from thesatire in these topical allusions, which call forconstantupdating, but Soyinkahas been equal tothe task. One year on he reassembledhis beggarlycrew on Nigeriansoil to satirizepoliticalopportun-ism at the lifting of the ban on political activitiesand a contemporaneous national wave of carthefts: in the two sketches of Before he Blowout,"Home to Roost" and "Big Game Safari,"ChiefAnikura (now Onikura)returns home to pursuethe careerof a popular philanthropicpoliticianandsmuggles in new and stolen cars to sell at inflatedpricesor use in his electoralcampaign(the cars arethe "big game," hidden in the jungle and hunteddown with metal detectors). In a 1983 revival ofthe opera itself Soyinka dispensed with ColonelMoses altogether, replacinghim with a subtle andslipperyacademic advisormore suited to the civil-ian governmentof the Second Republic.Thisabili-ty to improvise modifications around basic struc-tures of dialogue, song, and mime to suitchanging venues and historical contexts is, alongwith the amount of audience participation, n thebest traditions of the traveling mask theater, thealarinjo,which name originated, appropriately,asa term of abuse referringto "rogues, vagabondsand sturdy beggars."8The published text of such works can give onlyslight indication of their effectiveness in perform-ance, but few critics would single out OperaWonyosi s Soyinka' best work. The musical scorehas not been widely commended, and even withinthe loose and highly stylized formof the Brechtianplay-with-songs, which attempts no naturalisticblend of lyric and action, the plot creaks withsome ratherobvious devices. Chiefamong these isMacheath's invalidation of Anikura' chargeagainst him by having the begging fraternityde-clared a secret society of the kind banned by theNigerianmilitaryregime:the point is simply to setup the satiric tour de force of the beggar-lawyerAlatako,who succeeds in provingthat the govern-ment is itself a conspiratorial secret society, acartel createdfor mass exploitationand terroriza-tion, implemented always by "unknown sol-diers." The extreme length of Wonyosidraws at-tention to its episodic, patchwork structureneither a full-length play nor a series of revuesketches and the mechanicaltying of the actionback to the Gay and Brechtoriginals proves irk-some at times. Mackie's sexual intrigues and be-trayalsarepoorly integrated nto the anti-Nigeriansatire, and, though Macheath'slargely allegoricalconnectionwith big business hints cynicallyat the"moral"of the big fish going free, this is but a

faint gesture toward exploding the light opera'sconventional happy ending. In accordancewiththe latter,he turns out to be a lovableroguewhomwe feel, in some way, deserves to cheathis fatean impressionquiteat odds with thatconveyedbythe local satire that he is a vicious and evil forcerotting society from top to bottom. Macheath,inthis version as in the Gay and Brechtmodels, is arather artificialvillain, something of a satiricdeadend, and Soyinka' use of the characterhas a freerein only when he departs from his originals ortakessuch libertieswith them as to makethemsaysomething entirely new.In his foreword to the play Soyinka envisageshis task as "the turning up of the maggot-infestedundersideof the compostheap"as "a prerequisiteof the land's transformation"iv), and he has saidelsewhere that if satire is to have any reformistorrevolutionary purpose, the satirist must firstarouse"a certainnausea towardsa particular itu-ation, to arouse them [people] at all to accept apositive alternativewhen it is offered to them."9For Soyinka, the satiristappears to be a kind ofpurifying carrierwho, through ridicule and dis-gust, clearsaway the junk of the existingordertomake possible the constructionof an alternativeone; it is the role of another the reformer todiscover that alternative. He does not take thenegative view of satire as a social safety valve,having merely therapeuticor catharticvalue, butneither does he see it as offeringsolutions. OperaWonyosiwas criticized,somewhat unfairly, by theNigerian Left for its failure "to lay bare unam-biguously the causal historicaland socio-economicnetwork of society"and for its lack of"a solid classperspective."10 oyinkahas repliedto these criticsthat the satirist's business is not exposition butexposure in this case of the "decadent, rottedunderbellyof a society that has lost its direction"(iii) and that programsof reformand revolution-ary alternatives are the province of the social an-alyst and ideologist, to whose roles the writer'sown distinctive vocationis merelycomplementary(ii-iii).Still, there are varying depths and densities ofexposure, and if there is in Wonyosi uprisinglylittle penetration, for such a long play, of theforcesunderlyingthe crimes andcorruptionspass-ingly referredto, then the fault is not that expo-sure is unaccompanied by analysis but that toomuch is being exposed for anythingto be focusedvery clearly.In the last thirdof the play the topicalreferences to guilty parties crowd too thick andfast into the text some speeches are mere lists ofsuppressed riots, arson, and lootings and theresult is satiric overkill. The opera takes on toomany issues, is too thinly all-embracing,and theoverall effect is a diffusion of intensity, a kind ofsatiric ear-gassing nsteadof a few carefullyaimedbullets, more smoke than shot.


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WRIGHT 31Soyinka has always been more of a crusaderthan a revolutionary, campaigning for selectedcauses rather than for the total transformationof

society, and in the late seventies he advancedsome of these causes by directing the Oyo StateRoad Safety Corps, bombarding the press withletters on police harassment,censorship, and po-liticalcorruption,and, in 1980, affiliatinghimselfwith the short-lived People's Redemption Party.At the launchingof his autobiographyAke n 1981he protestedthat his "faith n an inevitablerevolu-tion" had nothing to do with his own actions butwas based squarely in the depredations of theShagari government.11 Nevertheless, Soyinka'use of his GuerillaTheaterUnit to mobilize opin-ion against the Shagari government and his at-tempts during the years of the Second Republic(1979-83) to reach a wider audience by experi-mentingwith the more popularmediums of streettheater, Gramophonerecords, and film have allthe makings of revolutionary art. Rice Unlimited(1981), in which the actors piled sacks marked"rice"in front of a police-guardedHouse of As-sembly, attackedthe running down of food pro-duction during the years of oil mania and thesubsequent government racketeeringin the saleand resale of imported rice, which made staplefoodstuffsunavailableor unaffordable or most ofthe population.Anotherunpublishedcollectionofsketches,PriorityProjects1983),provocativelyper-formed under the nose of Shagari'spersonalsecu-rity guards during a presidentialvisit to the Uni-versity of Ife, targeted abortive agriculturalandbuildingschemes designed to enricha ruling partyin open connivancewith business tycoons, policecommissioners, and traditional chiefs. In thesesketchesthe nationwhich the civilwar was foughtto keep united is seen as really being two coun-tries: "Mr Country Hide and his brother Seek."The big politicalbrother hides millions of naira,pouring them down bottomless pits of extrava-ganceand corruption thefutiledigging and fillingin of holes is a prevailing mage)while his brotheron the street searches in vain for some visiblereturn from the reckless spending. Some of thesongs fromPriorityProjectsppearon Soyinka' hitrecord"UnlimitedLiabilityCompany"(1983).Thescandals of the anarchicShagariadministrationillegal currencyexportation,private jets and heli-copters, criminalsappointedto company director-ships, arsonand massacre,deportationof politicalopponents, municipal breakdowns resulting inpart-timeelectricityand mountains of uncollectedrefuse are mercilessly exposed in their sharp,instantly graspable pidgin lyrics: "You tief onekobo, dey put you in prison/ You tief ten million,na patriotism."12This was candidly experimental theater, re-hearsing and performingin the public view onstreetcorners,in markets,and in open spaces on

university campuses and casually inviting audi-ence participation.It was also dangerously con-frontational n its use of guerrilla acticsto deliverbold and brave satire, and Soyinka himself cameundersome pressureover his record,which quick-ly made him a household name across the country(government action was taken against radio andtelevision stations which played it). The writer'slast word on the Shagarigovernmentwas the filmBluesfor a Prodigal(Ewuro Productions, 1984),aboutthe politicalrecruitmentof scientists as dem-olition experts to blow up the opposition. Filmingcommenced in the dying days of the now thor-oughly rotten republic but still had to be shotsecretly, with minimal scripting and severalswitches of location to evade the authorities,andto be processed abroad."We utilized the guerillatacticsof the travellingtheatre,"Soyinkasaid in arecent interview.13Ironically, the Lagos print ofthe film was immediately mpoundedby the secu-rity forces of the new militaryregime, which thusidentified itself with the repressions of its civilianpredecessor.Perhapsas a result of overactivity n revue workand in other mediums, Soyinka published onlytwo full-length dramatic works in the eighties,both, predictably, n the "shotgun"mold. Return-ing, in Requiem or a uturologistfu to the theme ofreligious charlatanismexplored in the two earlierJeroplays, he pokes fun at the astrologists andparapsychologistswho came to exercise consider-able influence over public and politicallife duringthe Shagari years (the main target was one ofShagari's toadies, the powerful Dr. GodspowerOyewole). The specific model for the play, fullyacknowledged by Soyinkain the introductoryma-terial, is Swift's satiric prediction and later an-nouncement, in TheBickertaffLetters, f the deathof the astrologer John Partridge, who then hadgreat difficulty convincing people that he was stillalive. In Soyinka' vision the rogue-futurologist,the ReverendDr. GodspeakIgbehodan, is caughtin the trap of his more cunning protege EleazorHosannah, who, with a view to superseding hismaster, predictshis death during a television pro-gram. As Eleazor has the Godspeak pedigree,everyone instantly believes the prophecy, andwhen he publishes Godspeak' obituary,an impa-tient mob of the faithful lays siege to the master'shouse, determined to pay their last respects andrefusing to be swayed in their resolve by anyamount of live appearances.Eleazor,the archmanipulator nd masterof dis-guise, tricks his way back into Godspeak's em-ployment under the semblance of the metaphysi-cian Dr. Semuwe, in which guise he causes thehapless Godspeak to doubt the realityof his ownexistence and to entertain the possibility that hemay, afterall, be dead. In this cause Eleazor evenbribes the local egungun o feign recognition of a


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32 WORLD LITERATURE ODAYfellow spirit in Godspeak' figure at the window(no religion is sacred in this play). As the furiousmob preparesto storm the house, the bewilderedmaster reluctantly agrees to play dead and lie instate, and the play ends with Semuwe revealingthat "everythingis under control,"becoming Ele-azor again and proclaiming himself the reincar-nated Nostradamus, a figure who is the source ofmuch comic disquisitionin the course of the play.There is a limited amount of political satire inRequiemn the form of parallelsbetween religiousand political opportunism. Regimes, like theprophets they refer to and rely upon, promisewhat they fail to deliver, and cling to power longafter their authority has outrun its legitimacy. Itwas no accidentthatin the 1985publishedversionGodspeak' demise is predicted for New Year'sEve 1983, the date of Shagari'sdownfall. Thoughthe play was written for the celebration of thetwentieth anniversary of the University of Ife,Soyinkawithdrew it because even its limitedpolit-ical content had drawn the threat of governmentinterferenceand censorship, and when the playwent on a tour of the university campuses, hemade a point of opening each performancewith aprocession of political parties and different reli-gious faiths. There are also a few sideswipes atfavorite local abominations, such as "the highlyoriginal driving habits" that provide a roaringtrade for the play's undertaker,and some satire atthe expense of the death industry itself, notablythe Ghanaian "MasterCarpenter"who allows hisclients' vulgar fantasies of wealth and status tocarryover into the grave in the form of designercoffins shaped like their Cadillacs and televisionsets. The bulk of the satire, however, is reservedfor the human gullibilitythat invests superstitiousfaith in the pseudoscience of charlatans. Becauseof their automatic and absolute belief in astrologi-cal predictions, the prophet's followers, whoknow a walking corpse when they see one, areunable to accept the idea that Eleazor has merelypretended that Godspeak is dead: they thereforebelieve that the master is reallydead and pretend-ing to be alive. Thus is Godspeakboxed, farcically,into a cornerfrom which every protest that he isalive is takento be one moreproofthathe is dead.Underlying the verbal and visual humor of thissituation, and the fantasticallycredulous news-paper cuttings cited in the introductoryparapher-nalia, there is the disturbing picture of a societycaughtin a spiritualmalaise, thirstingafter llusionand virtually begging to be deceived. (The play,with its multiple disguises and costume changes,is itself a kind of conjuring rick,depictinga worldwhere all is trickery.) Still, whatever its darkerimplications, Requiem s essentially lightheartedand acutely local satiriccomedy, disappointinglyslight as a stage play (it evolved out of a muchshorterradioplay) and with the elaborate oke on

the life-deathinversion carriedon perhapsa littletoo long. If Requiems really, as Soyinka has be-musingly claimed,partof a "trilogyof transition,"following TheRoad and Death and the King's Horse-man,,hen it relatesto these two toweringachieve-ments as the satyr play related to the tragedy inthe Greek festival: as satiricpostscript and lightcounterweight.A Play of Giants,written for a fully equippedtheaterand with at least one eye on internationalaudiences, is more substantial areand representsthe author's political satire at its most ferocious.Soyinka gathers under the roof of the Bugaran(meaning Ugandan) embassy in New York, andunder the transparentanagrams"Kamini,""Kas-co," "Gunema," and "Tuboum," a gruesomequartet of real-life African dictators: Amin,Bokassa, Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, andMobutuof the Congo. In the firstpartof the play,while ostensibly sitting for a sculpturefor a Ma-dame Tussaud's exhibition, these strutting, gib-bering psychopaths explain with sadistic relishhow their appetites for power are satisfied, theirpeople terrorized, and their barbaricdespotismsmaintained: by voodoo (Gunema), cannibalism(Tuboum), and an imperium of "pure power"(Kasco).Kamini, who has no talent for analysis,does not have to speak of power: he is power, inits most fearsome and ridiculous embodiment,and never .ceases to exercise it.The play is a succession of Kamini's psycho-pathic explosions, which, like those of the realAmin, arise from willfulmisconceptions,the para-noid twistingof trivialoffenses, andpure, ground-less delusions, such as his bizarrenotion that theTussaud statuettes are really life-size statues in-tended for the United Nations Buildingacross theroad from the embassy. When the Chairmanofthe BugaraBank informshim of the World Bank'srefusal of further loans and explains that he can-not print any morebanknotesbecausethe nationalcurrencyis worth no more than toilet paper, Ka-mini has his head flushed repeatedlyin the toiletbowl; and when the Britishsculptor, revealingthetrue destinationof his work, utters the unguardedaside that its subject properly belongs in theChamber of Horrors, Kaminihas him beaten upand maimed. The sculptorrepresents symbolicallythe obsolete, lame Westernview of Amin that hewas not a dangerous threat but a circus freakwhose savagery could be contained like a wax-works horror n a museum and it is ironicallyaptthatwhen the sculptornext appears,heis a muse-um piece, gagged and "mummified" n bandagesfrom head to foot.Kamini'sanxiety complexesare not entirely gra-tuitous, however, for defections of Bugarandiplo-mats are constantly reported and the mountingcrises culminate in the news of a coup in hisabsence. Instantly assuming that the coup has


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WRIGHT 33been engineered by the superpowers, Kamini re-actsby takinghostage a group of visiting Russianand American delegates and threatening to un-leash rocketsand grenadesfrom his embassyarse-nal upon the United Nations Building unless aninternational orce is sent to Bugarato crush theuprising. In the fantastic apocalyptic finale therockets go off and the last light fades on thesculptor, quietly working away at what is now aliving chamber of horrors. Kamini, who inSoyinka's prefatorywords "would ratherpresideover a necropolis than not preside at all,"15 urnshis embassyinto a fortressand then into a tomb, apyramidalmonumentto his own barbaric xcessesand the sycophanticself-interestof the West. Thefinal sculpted work is, in fact, Soyinka's play,which catches in their frozen manic gestures themost monstrous manifestations of power everspawned by the African continent.Soyinka was one of the first to see throughAmin's buffoonery, and from 1975 onward hewaged a determined campaign in the Africanpress against the dictator'sreign of terror, lam-basting Western and African governments andintellectualswho either supported Amin or culti-vated a convenient deafness to the horrorstoriesthatwere emergingfromUganda. In the play thelatter forces are representedby the ScandinavianjournalistGudrun,mindlessly devoted to the dic-tatorout of some romantically wisted concept ofracialpurity, and by the black American academicProfessorBatey, who, out of misplaced loyalty tonotions of blackbrotherhoodand pan-Africanism,holds up to the blackpeoples of the world a massmurdereras a model for emulation.Bothplay andpreface make clear that Kamini and his cronies,like theirhistoricalcounterparts,areoriginallythepostcolonial products of the Western super-powers. Kasco is a Gaullist, Gunema a Franco-worshiper,and Tubouma Belgianpuppet given tofake Africanizationschemes. Kamini is placed inpower by the British,financedby the Americans,armedby the Russians (until they refuse him anatom bomb to drop on his socialist neighbor),eulogizedby the Westernpress which had unseat-ed his predecessor, and finally deserted by all ofthem when supportfor insane Africandictators sno longer in their interest. A Play of Giants s asurreal fantasia of internationalpoetic justice inwhich Western support systems catastrophicallybackfireand the monster runs out of his maker'scontrol: the Russian-suppliedweapons are nowtrainedon their own delegations, and the horrorcomes home to roost in the American sponsor'sown back yard."I'd rather kill them, but I acknowledge myimpotence,"Soyinkasaid of his power-grotesquesin an interviewat the time of the play's New Yorkproduction."All I can do is make fun of them."16Itis, inevitably,a horrifickind of fun, and they are

the more terrifyingpreciselybecause their histori-cal originalswere once thought to be merely ridic-ulous comic figures. Soyinka commented in thesame 1984 interview that the work was not in-tended to be "a realisticplay," that his "giants"are artificial,composite constructs,endowed withmore intelligence, introspection, and eloquencethan their originals could muster. Nevertheless,many of their mouthings are reportage materialbased on original speeches and press statements,and the fantastic virtuoso satirizing of Amin,enough to burst the bounds of any "well-madeplay," infuses the historical igure'sown devilish,manichysteriainto the mood of the play. Soyinkaclaimed in the interview that the entire rogues'gallery of A Play of Giantsare "excellent theatricalpersonalities."17History plus Burlesque does not quite equalDrama, however, and if, as Soyinka remarked,Amin was "the supreme actor," he was a ratherobvious, unsubtle one, best suited to broad farceand the 1970s television sketches which made himthe constant butt of their satire. The theaters ofpolitics and artare very different.If dramaticeffi-gies of Hitlerand Mussoliniwere put on stage andtheirmouths stuffed with theirspeeches and pressreleases, they would not be much moreinterestingor authentic as dramaticcreations than Soyinka'sgruesome foursome. There are odd quirky mo-ments when one of them may spring to life, as inGunema' chilling, shocking anecdote about hisattempt to "taste" the distilled elixir of power bysleeping with the wife of a condemned man andthen having them both garrotted. For the rest,they are the vaudeville freaks anticipated bySoyinka's opening circus flourish: "Ladies andGentlemen, we present ... a parade of miraclemen . . . Giants, Dwarfs, Zombies, the IncredibleAnthropophogai, the Original Genus Survivan-ticus (alive and well in defiance of all scientificexplanations)" PG, x). Cartoonpuppets that theyare, they burble nonsense and twitch at the behestof every passing sadistic whim and crack of thesatiricwhip, and the fact that their real-lifemodelswere much the same does not make them theat-ricallyviable. Thoughhaving just enough distancefrom contemporaryhistory to work as convincingsatiriccreations,they are too close to it to succeedas autonomous dramaticones. The result is thatAPlayofGiants, ike so much politicallyengaged art,is dramaticallyunengaging.It is also curiously unpenetrating. In the inter-view Soyinka expressed the hope that the playwould "raise certain ntellectualand philosophicalquestions about power,"18and the text tosses afew ideas about. It is suggested thatpower calls topower, that "vicarious power responds obse-quiously to the real thing," and that the "conspir-atorial craving for the phenomenon of 'success'. . . cuts across all human occupations," which


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34 WORLD LITERATURE ODAYwould explain the professor's admirationof theidiot- yrant (vi-vii). There is also a hint that theAfricandictator'spower mania is the pathologicalproductof colonialism's ong suppression of tradi-tional male authorityand the continued tauntingof Africanmanhood in the postcolonialworld (theRussian diplomat describes Kamini as an "over-grown child"). These suggestions, however, aremore in the preface than in the play, which isconcernedto derideand debunk,not to analyze.APlayofGiantss unflagginglysavageburlesque,butit does not add a great deal to the knowledge ofthe nature of dictatorshipalready gleaned fromSoyinka's earlier Kongi'sHarvest(1965) or fromOperaWonyosi,and it retains all the usual limita-tions of its medium. Its claustrophobicset andnervous constricted aughterare, of all these latersatires, at the furthest cry from the expansivemetaphysical universe of the dramatist'smiddleperiod, and for the first time in a Soyinka playthere is no music, dance, or mime, indeed not ahint of the visual and aural spectacle of festivaltheater.In the late seventies and eighties satirecame toconstitute Soyinka's characteristic response toNigeria's and Africa's worsening political crises,and as the bitter-satiricelement of his dramaticwriting deepened, there was a thinning out of itsonce rich texture which has not, to date, beenrepaired.It is perhapsunreasonableat the presenttime to hope that, aftermore than a decade's workin this vein, he will return to subjects which,though not necessarilymore worthwhile, at leasthave a greater dramaticviability.

Northern Territory University, Darwin

1JamesGibbs,"Soyinka n Zimbabwe:A Questionand An-swer Session/' LiteraryHalf Yearly,28:2(1987), p. 63.2Thissketch was originallypublished n Soyinka'sBeforeheBlackout,badan,OrisunActingEditions,1971.It is now avail-able separatelyas Childe nternationale,badan,FountainPub-lications,1987.3Yemi Ogunbiyi, "A Study of Soyinka'sOperaWonyosi,"NigeriaMagazine,128-29 (1979),p. 13.4Soyinka, prefaceto BeforeheBlackout, . 4.5Ogunbiyi, p. 3.6WoleSoyinka,OperaWonyosi,London,RexCollings,1981,p. 1. Furtherpage referencesare given parentheticallyn thetext,using the abbreviationOWwhere needed forclarity.Forareview, see WLT55:4(Autumn 1981), p. 718.7Quoted in BernthLindfors,"BeggingQuestions in WoleSoyinka'sOperaWonyosi,"Ariel, 12:3(1981),p. 31.8JoelAdedeji,"'Alarinjo':TheTraditionalYorubaTravellingTheatre," n Theatren Africa,Oyin Ogunbaand Abiole Irele,eds., Ibadan,IbadanUniversityPress, 1978, p. 34.9WoleSoyinka,"Dramaand the Revolutionarydeal, in InPerson:Achebe,AwoonorndSoyinkat theUniversityf Washing-ton, KarenL. Morell, ed., Seattle,Instituteof Comparative&ForeignAreaStudies Universityof Washington,1975,p. 127.10Ogunbiyi, p. 12; Bidun Jeyifo, Drama and the bocial

Order:Two Reviews,"PositiveReviewIle-Ife),1 (1977),p. 22.11Quotedin JamesGibbs,"Tear he PaintedMasks,JointhePoison Stains:A Preliminary tudyof WoleSoyinka'sWritingsfor the Nigerian Press," Researchn AfricanLiteratures,4:1(1983),p. 40.12UnlimitedLiabilityCompany,eatunng 1unji Uyelana andHis Benderswith music and lyricsby Wole Soyinka,EwuroProductions,EWP001, side 2.13WoleSoyinka, nterviewwith JeremyHarding,New States-man,27 February1987, p. 22.14Wole Soyinka, Requiemor a Futurologist,London, RexCollings, 1985.15WoleSoyinka,A PlayofGiants,London,Methuen, 1984,p.vii. Furtherpage referencesare given parentheticallyn thetext, using the abbreviationPG where needed for clarity.16Art Borreca,"'Idi Amin Was the Supreme Actor: AnInterviewwith Wole Soyinka,"Theater, 6:2(1985),p. 32.17Ibid., p. 34.18Ibid., p. 36.

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Soyinka's Smoking Shotgun - The Later Satires