When hope is a woman!

Elliot Ziwira At the Bookstore

In “The Colour of Hope”, playwright Taban lo Liyong adeptly uses setting, characterisation and imagery to purvey Man’s voyeuristic nature in his quest to subdue those he considers inferior to him.

Forever in a hurry to be at the top of the game, either through brawn, mental acumen or physical attributes, he forgets that he is the designer of the weaponry trained against him.

Man’s actions may be well-intentioned or ill-intentioned, but he has to know his limitations when it comes to eternity: nothing lasts forever. Situations, no matter how good or bad, will always change.

Published in 2010, “The Colour of Hope” was partly inspired by the Kenyan general elections of 2007, the violent disturbances following hard upon and the subsequent strange marriage of the averse ideologies of the parties involved. It implores Africa to look beyond itself without losing itself if it is to disentangle itself from the intricate web of history.

Taban lo Liyong’s thought provoking play traverses the familiar trail of political gridlock, duplicity and the nature of provocation.

The drama explores how cultural misnomers can lead to barrenness in relationships, leading to incestuous unions and bastardry. This paints a gloomy picture if read against the backdrop of the manner in which cultural dictates are used for political and social elevation.

The mystery of waiting and the anxious nature of expectation are explored through the Chief and his pregnant Queen. The fate of the entire chiefdom is linked to the sex of the unborn child, which metaphorically signals change.

Because of anxiety, the Chief seeks divine intervention in the interpretation of the unborn child’s sex. He believes that “human beings have amongst them those who have the foresight to see into the dark womb of time and divine what is to come; to see what will be born, as well as what it portends.”

Dark clouds may hang on the horizon, but they do not always signal doom, neither do they always bring boon and glee. It is through interpretation of the dark clouds, as culturally eschewed, that the future may be understood.

Putting too much faith in diviners, however, leads to charlatanism as oftentimes what is expected is given prominence over what is or would be.

The Queen is aware of this as she tells her husband: “Likely as not, these diviners, since they speak in tongues, almost in forked tongues, when they say left they may mean right. Their grunts may hide an agreement or even a grief.”

Because of his impatience, Man seeks solutions in diviners in his quest to thwart the hand of time and strangle fate. Certainly, waiting is not his forte and adaptation not his way either. Whatever is culturally ensconced in humanity takes forever to be disgorged.

Like most men, the Chief believes that only male children are “future inheritors” because kings “marry queens to produce for us future kings, as brave and as strong as ourselves.” It does not occur to him that a girl child could be a saviour and torch-bearer.

There is hope, however, though short-lived, when after prying “into the womb of the dark future three times” the diviner beseeches the messengers to “Tell His Excellency the Chief not to worry himself unduly. His wife the Queen will deliver a healthy human child; a child whose life will bring transformations into the chiefdom.”

Through characterisation and setting, Liyong captures the tragedy of carnal liaisons in the moulding of an authentic vision capable of steering societal aspirations.

When the Queen subsequently delivers a daughter, Princess Royal whom they call Wonders-to-Become, the Chief’s advisers invoke an age-old custom, which dictates that for purposes of keeping royal blood “pure”, he has to sleep with his daughter and sire an heir, much to the annoyance of the Native Advisers, who are brothers to the Queen.

As the plot unfolds, the Chief rapes his daughter, who later falls pregnant. He is caught in the act by his son, the Crown Prince, who informs his mother, the Queen about it. From this point events take a new twist as customs play havoc on the moral fabric that culture should uphold.

The colonial Chief and his fellow imperialists brought an alien culture that functions at a tangent with the prevailing cultures of the conquered.

Lacking interfaces of compromise, humanity finds itself pitted against itself, thus becoming the ultimate loser. With men thinking in carnal terms, women are always at the receiving end of the cultural carrot stick.

In “The Colour of Hope” women are exploited for men’s carnal pleasures with cultural blessings.

This rationale is aptly captured through Auntie Makhadzie, the Chief’s sister, who in a fit of rage, unleashes a tirade at her brother: “The culture that creates differences to ease life for men.

“The culture of weakness. . . Instead of leaving our parts as they were created you have to make them trimmed to make your lives easier. Then when you learn about the lands where private parts are left natural or elongated, you then abandon us and flock there.”

Genital mutilation leads to psychological, emotional and physical pain as women are robbed of sexual pleasure. Only men are supposed to enjoy sex through hiding their own sexual weaknesses. The cultural conflict that prevails exposes men’s imperfections and highlights the fact that inasmuch as men have a warped belief that they are in control, they remain at the mercy of women.

In the play, before marriage, men are passed as sexually capable by a disguised tester, who is later known to be Auntie Makhadzie. Ironically, Auntie Makhadzie’s genitalia is mutilated, which makes it easier for the inexperienced men to penetrate. She has to perform the task disinterestedly and dispassionately as none of the men knows the art of pleasuring her. None cares, even.

Auntie Makhadzie suffers the loss of her husband because of lack of interest in bed, yet she is the tester of men’s sexual prowess before marriage. On the other hand the Chief, her brother, whom she passed, fails to penetrate the Queen’s elongated genitalia on their wedding day. He has never been able to please her sexually in 17 years of marriage, preferring to call her a witch.

Consequently, the Chief seeks sexual pleasure from his sister, leading to the birth of their secret daughter, Niece At Court; and the Queen runs into the arms of her secret lover, The Palace Guard, who cuckolds the Chief twice, fathering two children for him.

After 15 years of sexual drought following the assassination of her lover, the Queen works in cahoots with Auntie Makhadzie to be a tester for a day to quench her sexual desires.

However, the candidate fumbles and fails to penetrate and leaves in a huff calling her a witch.

The Chief survives an attempt at his life at the hands of the Queen, who is later sentenced to death and survives courtesy of her connections in the security circles.

He eventually dies at the hands of women. He meets his death because of lust, as he is killed by his frustrated sister at the testing clinic in anticipation of two more young brides.

He intimates to his confidante, Isanusi, “If only the young brides’ youth were not beckoning, I would have said no. . . The Chief rules the earth. But two mounds on a girl’s chest rule the chief.”

As the plot thickens, Auntie Makhadzie and the charlatan Isanusi are hoist by their own petard, paving the way for change through the youth inspired by Princess Royal.

Aware that change is messy and that the ebullience and exuberance of youth alone fall short in inspiring a national consciousness capable of bringing hope to the doorsteps of the masses, the Regent extends her hand to the wisdom of age by inviting Chief, The Uncle, her mother’s brother to give them the “fruits of (his) cogitation.”

It may be drawn from the play that change for the purpose of change alone without any ideological impetus is doomed; and ideology alone without any clarity of vision leads an entire nation or continent even, into the mire.

The need arises for cultural integration, gender mainstreaming, political and religious tolerance as well as unity of purpose for the fruit trees of Eden to come to fruition for the common good.

A woman after all can do it in the same way that a man can do it or even better, as the wise Chief, The Uncle says, “Where a male regime has failed, let the women take over.”

It is such a compromise that Taban lo Liyong advocates in “The Colour of Hope”.