impatient aggression marks someone who will allow
no contradictions and tolerate no alternatives, nor
accept any conditions that might seem to threaten
his authority. His refusal to take counsel is further
reinforced on the same page with his declaration,
“Kabisa!,” a Swahili word that Achebe translates into
English as “Finished.” As a result of Sam’s lack of
political experience, the dubious means by which he
has attained power, and the false adulation poured
on him by sycophantic advisers, personal insecuri-
ties drive him to imagine subversive plots are being
hatched against him.
Sam’s paranoia leads him to curtail the freedom
of the press by placing both the print and electronic
media under government censorship and control,
and to appoint a director of a secret police force
(euphemistically called the Directorate of State
Research) that restricts individual and community
voices. For example, Sam forces Chris, his com-
missioner for information, to muzzle the dissenting
views expressed by Ikem, the editor of the National
Gazette. Following a speech that Ikem makes to stu-
dents at the university, the government-controlled
radio announces a series of manufactured charges
against him and later describes his subsequent death
while supposedly resisting arrest. After his own
attempt to reason with Sam, Chris is perceived as a
threat and is forced to go into hiding as the police
hunt for him throughout the city. Eventually, he
secretly flees the city, heading for the northern prov-
inces by bus. Meanwhile, the legitimate concerns of
a delegation from the drought-stricken northern
Abazon Province are brushed aside as Sam refuses
to meet with them, and he eventually has them
placed in detention for supposedly plotting against
the government.
As the state-controlled oppression of individu-
als and groups accelerates, Sam’s physical presence
recedes, suggesting just how out of touch he is and
how much he has isolated himself from the people
of Kangan. He last appears in chapter 11, the same
chapter that concludes with a description of the
arrest and, it is implied, torture, of the Abazon
delegation. Sam’s physical absence from the scene
reflects the need to speak out against oppression.
Besides the dominant forms of oppression prac-
ticed by a dictatorial military government, Achebe
also introduces the equally destructive abuses of
power caused by males against females, and by the
privileged, educated classes against the less educated
working classes. During the course of the novel,
Chris and Ikem move from differing degrees of
isolation—Chris has a “detached clinical interest” in
the workings of the state, while Ikem confesses to
finding a neighbor’s brutal beatings of his wife “sat-
isfyingly cathartic”—to a greater awareness, sympa-
thy, and even admiration for the oppressed.
At one point in the novel, a creation myth is
described in which Idemili, the daughter of the
Almighty, is sent “to bear witness to the moral
nature of authority by wrapping around Power’s
rude waist a loincloth of peace and modesty.” In
Anthills of the Savannah, Achebe not only presents
a biting critique of power in its various forms and
its capacity to abuse and oppress individuals, groups,
and nations; he also reminds us of the urgent need
to bear witness to its existence and act against it, if
freedom from oppression is to be achieved.
Kerry VincentsOcial class in Anthills of the Savannah
In his first novel, Things Fall Apart, Achebe includes
many proverbs, folktales, and rituals in order to rein-
force his depiction of a rich and ancient traditional
African society. He continues this practice in Ant-
hills of the Savannah but incorporates a much wider
variety of texts and registers, as a means of projecting
his ideal vision of an inclusive and equitable post-
colonial society that recognizes and acknowledges
the legitimacy of diverse voices from different
social classes, and not just those of a primarily male
elite. As Chris, Ikem, and Beatrice are increasingly
alienated from Sam’s manic exercise of power, they
gradually become more attuned to the voices of the
less privileged peasants and workers.
The catalyst for the sequence of events that lead
to Sam’s defeat and the deaths of Ikem and Chris
is the visit by the delegation from Abazon, which
very early in the novel highlights such oppositions
as rural-urban, uneducated-educated, poor-rich, and
traditional-modern. More than anyone, Ikem appre-
ciates the integrity of this peasant class, even as he
puzzles over how their values can be adapted to the
modern world.Anthills of the Savannah 125