On the subject of Kings and Queens: 'traditional' African leadership and the Diasporal imagination.
African Studies Quarterly › Vol. 7 Nbr. 1, March 2003
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On the subject of Kings and Queens: 'traditional' African leadership and the Diasporal imagination.
Then you will die indeed, Chila Kintasi! Your own mouth pronounced judgment. Die and deliver the land from the abominations of drunkenness and gluttony. (She used a bunch of soft feather [sic] attached on a bamboo stick on the Fon [King]. The Fon begins to reel until he collapses.) Die! Chila Kintasi. Die, Fon! So that we may think. The people need your death to think. Die! Die! Die! ... The only men left in the land are the women. And they do not want any more Fons....
--Kwengong, from Bole Butake's play And Palm Wine Will Flow The 'historical conditions' must of course not be imagined (nor will they be so constructed) as mysterious Powers (in the background); on the contrary, they are created and maintained by men (and will in due course be altered by them): it is the actions taking place before us that allow us to see what they are. --Bertolt Brecht, from "A Short Organum for the Theater" INTRODUCTION These two excerpts show that the role of leadership is a highly contested and tenuous space. Cameroonian playwright Bole Butake's And Palm Wine Will Flow presents a dramatic representation of women who challenge a corrupt leadership and rethink the distribution of authority, while German playwright Bertolt Brecht's essay "A Short Organum for the Theater" suggests that power in societal institutions is maintained or changed by its citizens. Dr...See the full content of this document
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