Wole Soyinka
infestation of the creeks and lagoons of the Lagos metropolitan area by
a species of wild and aggressive water hyacinths in thes which both
spelt economic ruin for the fishing villages in the area and for a long time
confounded the knowledge and expertise of the country’s marine and
environmental scientists; and, of course, the big-time entry of Nigeria
into the illegal international drug trade.
The strong claim ofFrom Zia with Loveto being Soyinka’s most suc-
cessful, most powerful anti-militarist play lies in its uniqueness among
the playwright’s anti-militarist dramatic works. More than the other
plays in this particular body of Soyinka’s dramas, its deep immersion
in topicalities of time and place is underscored by a symbolic framework
which gives its deliberately scrappy, pastiche-like lurch from one “c.v.” or
“sit-rep” to another imaginative coherence. Moreover and equally im-
portant, in its deployment of motifs of the grotesque and the macabre,
this symbolic framework lifts the actual menace and malevolent ramifi-
cations of militarism beyond merely local or even regional expressions
to frightening, disquieting intimations of what the playwright deems
the constants of power. In its most graphic and perhaps atavistic in-
scriptions in the play, this symbolic framework revolves around ritual
murder and its links to the mobilization of dark, occult forces, either
to attain vast concentrations of wealth or power, or to avert the fate of
being victims of power sadists in control of the state. In this particular
aspect, Soyinka in the play is responding courageously to the rash of
ritual murders that scandalized the whole country in the lates and
s and, especially constituted a great embarrassment for the middle
class elites. But at a deeper level,From Zia with Lovepushes its graphic
depiction of the literally macabre and grotesque to an exploration of
the moral and spiritual ramifications of a power lust so extreme in its
disregard for human life that it seems that there is no better way in
which to imaginatively confront it than through the prism of deities
and avatars whose cults require the sacrifice of human lives. Only this
conception of totalitarian power as basically cultic and atavistic wher-
ever, and in whatever forms and guises it manifests itself in the modern
world, explains why the apologia for militarism by the Wing Comman-
der in the following dialogue has a profoundly disturbing ring of truth
about it:
: You know what I am talking about! Zia, Zia, Zia! What
did he do which you bloody civilians haven’t done here? I mean, you are
beginning to sound like these University types...