Non-Violence as a Tool of African Revolutionary Praxis in Femi Osofisan’s Red is the Freedom Road

Abstract

Abstract The deployment of violence as a subversive and revolutionary tool for effecting social change in post-independent African states has been very controversial among literary scholars. This paper employs Marxism in re-reading Femi Osofisan’s Red is the Freedom Road, and argues that the use of violence as a popular means of engendering progressive transformation of society is too costly in blood and devastation. Instead, tackling the various sociopolitical challenges confronting postcolonial African nations is better pursued through dialogue and negotiation rather than armed confrontation. Osofisan’s revulsion in response to the use of violence permeates his drama; but this does not in any way reduce his literary stature when compared with Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Wole Soyinka, whose literary works seem to support the view that there comes a point when the deployment of violence becomes necessary.