Zulu Sofola Research Articles

Protest and Conflict in African Literature: The Nigerian Experience Expressed in Selected Plays by Zulu Sofola and Tess Onwueme

The prevailing social situation in a society at any given time determines the temperament of its literature. African literature of the post–independence period is generally reactive in temperament. This emergent trend in African literature is as a result of the prevailing economic, social and political situations in most African nations. In Nigerian society, for instance, there is inequality, injustice, unemployment, hunger, marginalization, environmental degradation, corruption, political instability, socio-economic ills and religious violence. Obviously, these suffocating experiences are bound to generate protests and conflicts arising from people who are dissatisfied. Drama and prose have been mostly deployed to confront these unjust and inhuman situations. However, this paper focuses mainly on the selected plays authored by Zulu Sofola and Tess Onwueme. The study is basically a survey of Zulu Sofola and Tess Onwueme’s selected plays which explore the thematic concern of this paper. Content analysis of the plays reveals that protest can be used to resist and protest all oppressive structures in society.

Proverbs and Postproverbial Stance in Selected Plays of Emeka Nwabueze and Zulu Sofola

Abstract Since the birth of Nigerian literature, writers have produced impressive collection of literature in English. African oral traditions like proverbs have been in use in creative works. Over time, there have been some alterations in proverbs as their usage and meanings slightly assume different dimensions on their seriousness, effects and explicitness of the message therein, forming either an extension to the traditional proverbs or coinages of certain expressions. It is contended that the meaning of proverbs can be interpreted within the semantic, ideational, stimulus-response, realist and contextual theories, as proverbs play significant roles in literary works. This paper anchors on J.L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory and examines the proverb uses and postproverbial reflections with the view to foregrounding their implications in two plays of common thematic preoccupations—Zulu Sofola’s Old Wines are Tasty and Emeka Nwabueze’s A Parliament of Vultures. Ultimately, it will highlight the proverbial stance and significance of the texts, thereby ascertaining the proverbial mutations in contexts.

Conversational Maxims and Implicature in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel and Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the gods

Conversational Maxims and Implicature in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel and Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the gods

Nigerian Female Playwrights and the Question of Patriarchy

One issue that Nigerian female writers have had to contend with repeatedly in their works is that of male domination as the manifestation of a deep patriarchal tradition that has for centuries been part of a people’s culture, behavior, and attitude. In almost all the plays authored by women in Nigeria, there is an indubitable promotion of a sexist agenda based on the sufferings of women from their sexual counterparts, men. This study therefore employs the patriarchy theory in its interpretation of selected plays of Nigerian female playwrights and interrogates Hartmann’s claim of a despondent relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. Through a study of selected works of female playwrights like Zulu Sofola, Tess Onwueme, and Foluke Ogunleye, the study discovers that capitalism, though an instrument employed for the furtherance of patriarchal interests, will not suffice to deliver women from male hegemonic deportments

Enemies of their Own: Rethinking Feminism in Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods

Enemies of their Own: Rethinking Feminism in Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods

Concept of Witchcraft in African Drama and Negative Female Stereotyping in Select Nigerian Plays

Drama as the saying goes is as old as man. It is an integral part of every human society. The mimetic bodily gestures of primitive man necessitated by the in-adequacies of spoken language gave birth to drama. Drama and theatre have over the ages been appropriated for diverse human purposes. It has at one point or the other of human development or civilisation been a tool for education, entertainment, propaganda, confrontation, opposition, socialisation, mobilisation and therapy amongst other purposes in society. This essay is an exploration of the concept of witchcraft as it is appropriated by playwrights in their dramatic creations. The thrust of the essay is the portrayal of female characters as witches in African drama. The essay is limited to the Nigerian dramatic tradition; it examines three selected dramatic texts: J.P. Clark’s The Wives Revolt, Irene Isoken Salami’ Emotan and Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods. All three dramatic texts explore the subject of witchcraft in female characters from three different trado-cultural perspectives.

Nuptials of the gods: Zulu Sofola and Zodwa Motsa compared

This article compares the works of Zulu Sofola and Zodwa Motsa, two playwrights who have written about the tribulations of the oppressed in the African society. One of the roles played by playwrights in society is that of a documentarist. In their plays, Wedlock of the gods and Of Heroes and Men, both playwrights have presented a documentation of Southern Nigeria and Swaziland of the colonial and early postcolonial period respectively. We discuss how both plays negotiate the relationship between the state and society, scrutinizing the protean and dynamic aspects of human nature as presented by the playwrights in the lives of the governor and the governed. The article posits that Zulu Sofola and Zodwa Motsa have, through their plays, examined the structures of the society, which promote oppression. They unequivocally stated that carnivorous traditions, undemocratic dictatorships and oppressive patriarchal structures should be demolished to give a new lease of life to the oppressed and to create an egalitarian society. Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 2 2005: 43-52

Reclaiming Images of Women in Films from Africa and the Black Diaspora

Female subjectivity in Africa, as elsewhere, has often been defined by men rather than by women. Black women have fallen victim to a tendency to de-womanize black womanhood - to paraphrase Nigerian playwright 'Zulu Sofola.1 Consequently, films made by African women and men are attempting to rehumanize portrayals of women and to reassert their identities. Furthermore, African women filmmakers are facing the challenge of regaining for women the power of selfdefinition and self-representation. Toward the accomplishment of such goals, new social and political currents in Africa and the black diaspora involve new levels of critical awareness and new challenges to Western intellectual hierarchies. The hegemony of colonialist ideologies and Hollywood domination cannot be excluded from a historical investigation that seeks to provide a nuanced portrait of complex ethnic and cultural questions. For a long time questions of cultural difference have been neglected by the dominant cinema and by dominant media practices, thus discouraging the articulation of an accurate and wholesome black identity. Given the heritage of distorted images, some critics understandably regard the docile ancillary African woman seen in much international cinema today as a media creation.2 Partly for this reason, the calling into question of the native informant, in Gayatri Spivak's term, is the sine qua non of the black woman's film project. As Maureen Blackwood and Martina Attille have noted, black women must be the ones who define the areas of importance in [their] lives: work toward the breakdown of 'mainstream' conventions and popular assumptions perpetuated by existing forms of cinema and television.3 Because of the ways black subjectivity has been constantly abused in films, a new sensitivity

First Women Playwrights Conference

The First International Women Playwrights Conference took place in Buffalo, New York, from 14 to 23 October 1988. It was attended by over 200 playwrights (and a few non-playwrights) from 34 countries. That number included many eminent women – Renée (New Zealand), Alice Childress (USA), Bai Fengxi (China), Miriam Kainy (Israel), Zulu Sofola (Nigeria), Somalatha Subasinghe (Sri Lanka), Iren Kiss (Hungary) – plus women (mostly, because of the cost, American) whose plays are as yet unproduced or who are beginning to write. Much of the focus was on how much theatre work is being written by women, but which meets with obstructions to performance.