Wole Soyinka
authorized,decreedlanguages and culture of impunity of the state, the state
of drunken power and pomp, of obsession with rank and authority, of a
putatively inscrutable and infallible order of governance. Thus, though
Soyinka had said, as we saw in his document, “Death by Retroaction,”
that he had nothing more to say to the military autocrats,From Zia with
Loveconstitutes a response on a scale completely on a par with the depth
of the injustices, deceptions and cruelties unleashed on Nigeria by the
military despots.
The elaborate carnivalesque mode with which the anti-militarism of
this play is rendered puts it in the company of earlier plays of Soyinka
likeJero’s Metamorphosis,Opera WonyosiandAPlayofGiants, each of which
also marshals a combination of dialogue, music, spectacle and plebeian
festivity to attack the pretensions to absolute and invincible power by
Africa’s postcolonial military dictators. Like these other plays, and like
some of the “shot gun” skits and revues in the “Priority Projects,”From
Zia with Lovederives its ferocious power from a parade, a spectacle of
the excesses and atrocities of militarist barbarism, as boasted about or
directly enacted by power-mongers who are actual military putschists
(Emperor Boky inOpera Wonyosiand Kamini inAPlayofGiants, Military
Governor inThe Beatification of An Area Boy) or their civilian imitators
(Jero as “General” in the militarization of the hierarchy and titles of
his “metamorphosed” church inJero’s Metamorphosis). In this respect, like
these other plays,From Zia with Love, is relentlessly context-specific in
its allusions to figures, events and realities in the postcolonial encounter
of Nigeria and its peoples with military dictatorship. For this reason,
the play seems dated, overly localized and nationally “intramural” in
ways that might pose problems of identification, or even intelligibility,
to a non-Nigerian audience or readership. This is clearly evident in the
following set of stage directions and dialogue which together form part
of the performative crescendo that marks the climactic moment of the
play’s parade of militarist megalomania:
Next to invade the platform is a skimpy figure clad only in even skimpier underpants, blowing
an outsize saxophone. He is followed by female dancers doing a ‘shinamanic’ dance to the tune
of ‘Zombie’. The earlier group retreat. The WING COMMANDER stares aghast, recovers,
and breaks into maniacal laughter. His voice overwhelms the music of the intruders, while the
first group resume their motions with greater vigour.
WING COMMANDER:
Chief Kalakuta priest
we’ve got him in our sights