Colonial Alienation and Postcolonial Marginality in African Drama: Implications for Lasting Peace in Africa

Abstract

Africa enjoyed relative peace before the contact with the West. Though the colonial enigma left mixed feelings of optimism and skepticism, it produced atomic molecules that interplayed with its off shoot (post-colonialism) to trigger off conflicts that changed the existential essence of Africans. Therefore, the problem of this study is how to resolve African conflicts directly or indirectly rooted in these realities. Thus, objectives of the study include examining the views of African playwrights on these realities as they relate to conflicts in Africa and how the dramatic approach can help bring lasting peace to the African continent which is currently bedeviled with different conflicts. Hence, the researcher carried out analyses of Lewis Nkosi's The Rhythm of Violence and Esiaba Irobi's Hangmen Also Die to ascertain what the plays can contribute to ongoing peace building processes and conflict resolution projects like: the Nigerian Niger Delta epileptic Amnesty Programme, Federal Government/ Boko Haram peace agreement and South African Peace Initiatives. Case study and content analysis approaches of the qualitative research method were adopted for the study. The study concluded that the select plays captured the conflict resolution implications of these "colopostcolonial" variables, hence, peace projects in Nigeria and South Africa remain peripheral without a re-visitation of the African past..