From a postcolonial ecocritical standpoint, this essay analyzes the play Le Cri de la forêt (2015) coauthored by Henri Djombo, a cabinet minister from Congo-Brazzaville, and Osée Colin Koagne, a stage director and environmental activist from Francophone Cameroon. Mindful of the rich biodiversity of the Congo Basin where the playwrights originate, the essay interrogates why the forest in the play is screaming and moves on to engage with related ecological questions such as the scapegoating of witchcraft and doubtful traditional beliefs amidst climate change. It examines the controversial ways in which the play simultaneously promotes indigenous knowledge systems and capitalism. Furthermore, the essay grapples with the oft-debated role of overpopulation on climate change and ecological degradation, particularly in regions of the global South such as Africa. And, finally, it explores the playwrights' depiction of women and children as both victims and combatants of environmental collapse, stressing their important role in fighting climate change as opposed to some critics' claims that they are merely helpless victims. The essay therefore constitutes a double intervention in ecocriticism in the Francophone African world: both the playwrights and the present author seek to intervene in ecological discourses and actions. ResumenDesde un punto de vista ecocrítico y poscolonial, este ensayo analiza la obra Le Cri de la forêt (2015) co-escrita por Henri Djombo, ministro de gabinete de Congo-Brazzaville, y Osée Colin Koagne, director de escena y activista ambiental del Camerún francófono. Consciente de la rica biodiversidad de la Cuenca del Congo, de donde se vienen los dramaturgos, el ensayo cuestiona por qué el bosque de la obra grita y se involucra en cuestiones ecológicas relacionadas como el chivo expiatorio de la brujería y las dudosas creencias tradicionales en torno al tema del cambio climático. Examina las formas controvertidas en que la obra promueve simultáneamente los sistemas de conocimiento indígenas y el capitalismo. Además, el ensayo aborda el papel tan debatido de la superpoblación en relación al cambio climático y la degradación ecológica, en particular en regiones del Sur global como África. Y, finalmente, indaga sobre la representación que hacen los dramaturgos de mujeres y niños como a la vez víctimas y combatientes del colapso ambiental, destacando su importante papel en la lucha contra el cambio climático en contraste con las afirmaciones de algunos críticos de que son simplemente víctimas indefensas. Por lo tanto, el ensayo constituye una doble intervención en el ámbito de la ecocrítica en el espacio francófono africano: tanto los dramaturgos como el autor actual buscan intervenir en los discursos y acciones ecológicas.

This article examines Ekpe Inyang’s play entitled The Hill Barbers (2010) using postcolonial ecocriticism. Combining postcolonial theory and ecocriticism - in order to foreground the author’s postcolonial Cameroonian/African society, the article investigates some of the numerous ecology-related issues raised in the play, among which deforestation, exploitation, capitalism, agency for nature, and the apocalyptic trope. It emerges, from both the play and article, that humans are destroying nature and are consequently suffering from this very destruction. Among the many effects of environmental destruction felt by the Mbungoe human community of the play are acute shortages of drinking water and dwindling animal species on their hills and mountains. One of the major findings of this article is the author’s ability to reconcile hitherto opposing ideologies and practices, such as Judeo-Christianity and African religions and Western science and African traditions, in seeking ways of redressing the increasing ecological problems faced within Cameroonian/African communities and elsewhere around the globe, advocating sustainable behaviour and respect for nature. The paper joins ongoing research attempts to apply ecocriticism in reading literature from postcolonial African societies. Resumen      Este artículo examina la obra teatral de Ekpe Inyang titulada The Hill Barbers (2010) a través de la perspectiva de la ecocrítica postcolonial. Combinando  teoría postcolonial y ecocrítica, el artículo analiza algunas de las numerosas cuestiones relacionadas con la ecología que se plantean en la obra, cuestiones como la deforestación, la explotación, el capitalismo, la preservación de la naturaleza y el tropo apocalíptico. De la obra y del artículo se desprende que los seres humanos están destruyendo la naturaleza y, por consiguiente, sufren los efectos de esta misma destrucción. Entre las muchas consecuencias de la destrucción ambiental sufridas por la comunidad Mbungoe en la pieza teatral están la escasez aguda de agua potable y la disminución de las especies animales en sus colinas y montañas. Uno de los principales hallazgos de este artículo es la capacidad del autor para conciliar ideologías y prácticas hasta entonces opuestas, como el judeocristianismo, las religiones africanas, la ciencia occidental y las tradiciones africanas, apara dar solución a los crecientes problemas ecológicos a los que se enfrentan tanto las comunidades camerunesas/africanas como otras en diversas partes del mundo. De esta manera, se aboga por un comportamiento sostenible y por el respeto hacia la naturaleza. El artículo supone una contribución a los intentos actuales de hacer una lectura de la literatura producida en las sociedades postcoloniales africanas a través del prisma de la ecocrítica.

This essay explores the ecopolitics of water pollution and land (ab)use through disorderly urbanization in two plays from the Congo Basin. I argue that bad governance, in the form of absented-absence and corruption-plagued presence, leads to the double violation of human rights and the rights of nature through water pollution and haphazard urbanization. In other words, I use two plays to suggest that political absence and bad governance amount to governmental responsibility for ecological vulnerability manifested through freshwater pollution and unregulated urban expansion. In the first part, I suggest that the government's failure to provide potable water to its citizens leads to water pollution, violations of the rights of nature and the human right to water and sanitation, as well as disregard for the entangled relations between humans and nature in Ekpe Inyang's Water Na Life ([2002] 2006). In the second part, I use Henri Djombo's Le mal de terre (2014) to examine urban sprawl and its effects on the rights of nature as well as land disputes and contested claims to land as consequences of bad governance. Overall, the essay foregrounds freshwater pollution, urban sprawl, and land (ab)uses which are often neglected in ecocritical scholarship from/on Africa.

No abstract

Starting with European colonization, African natural resources in particular and nature in general have been coveted and exploited mainly in the interest of Euro-American industrialized countries, with China as a recent major player from Asia. Interestingly, the incessant quest by some Western NGOs, institutions, and governments to protect and conserve African nature not only are inspired by ecological and climatic concerns but also often tend to propagate a false image of Africa as the last Eden of the earth in order to control Africa’s resources. Using literary texts, this article argues that some Euro-American transnational NGOs and some of their governments sometimes conspire with some African governments to spread global capitalism and green colonialism under the pretext of oxymoronic sustainable development as they attempt to conserve a mythical African Eden. Utilizing three novels and one play from the Congo Basin, namely In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo Inc.: Le Testament de Bismarck (2014), Assitou Ndinga’s Les Marchands du développement durable (2006), Étienne Goyémidé’s Le Silence de la forêt ([1984] 2015), and Ekpe Inyang’s The Last Hope (2011), I contend that such Euro-American environmental NGOs and their governments sometimes impose and sustain fortress conservation (creation of protected areas) in the Congo Basin as a hidden means of coopting Africa’s nature and Africans into neoliberal capitalism. For the most part, instead of protecting the Congo Basin, green colonialists and developmentalists sell sustainable development, undermine alternative ways of achieving human happiness, and perpetuate epistemicide, thus leading to poverty and generating resentment among local and indigenous populations. As these literary texts suggest, nature conservation and sustainable development in the Congo Basin should not be imposed upon from the outside; they should emanate from Africans, tapping into local expertise, and indigenous and other knowledge systems.