'Are these the kings of whom the griots sang? Are these their descendants? We do not know them, but we know from which lines--between those who resisted, and those who fawned on the presence of their enslavers -- the majority are descended .... If, in a freak teleological reversal, the world were to follow Napoleon's example and reinstate slavery after its abrogation ... we recognize among us those who would be first in line to offer up their own kith and kin; their genealogy is branded on their foreheads like the mark of Cain.
The righteous armor of demand for ancient wrongs is thus sadly dented. The ignominious role of ancient rulers, continuing into the present, serves to remind us of their complicity in the cause for which reparations are sought'' ~ The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness
Fifty years ago, on the eve of Nigerian independence, my publishers entered a full-length play, A Dance of the Forests, for a drama competition to select a work that would be commissioned for the national celebration. As it happened, it won. At the last moment, however, the commission was withdrawn. Why? And what was the play about?
The action centered on a "Gathering of the Tribes," a grand assemblage of a people in festive circumstances -- not too difficult to discern as an "Independence Day"-type celebration. However, the forest denizens took over the ceremony and brought the humans to judgment for unexpiated crimes against their own kind. The Independence Committee felt that this was no piece for expressing the euphoria of a newly liberated nation, a sentiment with which -- little did they know it -- I did sympathize, but only to a limited extent. I felt that the insertion of a warning, the recognition of a watershed for candid introspection, was equally appropriate, indeed essential within the act of celebration.
The process of the independence struggle had already thrown up ominous signs of human inequities that would bedevil a newly liberated entity -- a familiar tendency toward self-attrition, once the external enemy is gone. I staged the play on the "Fringe," as it were, and still partook in other events that marked the Great Day. I experienced no contradiction in all this -- to participate in the insertion of a landmark event in national consciousness, yet exhume a shameful, glossed-over history as a warning for the future. That history was that of African's culpability in the enslavement of her own kind.