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the complete review - drama

The Ghost of Patrice Lumumba

by
Ogali Ogali

general information | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

C : dramatic but unconvincing

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       Patrice Lumumba's life and tragic death made for good dramatic material, and Ogali used it effectively in his very successful play, Patrice Lumumba (see our review). He couldn't leave well enough alone, and since he couldn't resurrect the character he offered his spirit instead. The Ghost of Patrice Lumumba is "an imaginary story dramatised to show that whatsoever happens, and under all circumstances, the law of retributive justice must be maintained."
       In his preface Ogali maintains that Lumumba was killed by the "the Congo Vampires -- Tshombe, Kasavubu and Mobuto in the very nose of the United Nations". In his play he sends Lumumba's ghost to haunt the various characters. It annoys and scares them mightily. UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjoeld is a prime target: "Anon Hammarskjoeld ! Anon !" Lumumba's Ghost tells him, knowing poor Dag's fate (a fatal plane crash).
       Roy Welensky (the Rhodesian Prime Minister) is also haunted: "Satan has entered your mind", Lumumba's Ghost tells him -- and Welensky is blamed for Hammarskjoeld's death. But when Dag's ghost meets up with Lumumba's they decide they'll go pay a visit on Sir Roy ... though this (and their other expeditions) isn't covered in the play.
       Dag is properly contrite when he has met his maker -- or at least the spirit of the man he did not adequately support. Hammarskjoeld doesn't get a great send-off on earth: "that Jew who refused me my husband's corpse", Mrs. Lumumba calls him -- and she seems none too sad when she can announce "the Jew has died". (Ogali's odd insistence on calling Dag a Jew -- obviously meant as an insult -- is an unfortunate touch in both his Lumumba-plays.)
       Billed as a tale of retribution, it is only Hammarskjoeld that learns his lesson. The play was written in 1961, before history played itself out: in retrospect the target seems among the less interesting one. In fact, it seems that Ogali missed his target. While Patrice Lumumba endures -- if slightly uneasily -- The Ghost of Patrice Lumumba pales beside the devastation in the Congo in the decades after it was written. It was the material Ogali had to work with at the time (Hammarskjoeld conveniently dying), but there would be no retribution for Mobuto for almost thirty years -- the Congo suffering all the while.

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Links:

• Onitsha Market Literature: From the Bookstalls of a Nigerian Market - at the University of Kansas
• Indiana University Library collection

• The collection Veronica My Daughter and Other Onitsha Plays and Stories, which includes:
  • Adelabu
  • Caroline the One-Guinea Girl
  • Eddy the Coal-City Boy
  • History of Item: Past and Present
  • Long Long Ago
  • Mr. Rabbit is Dead
  • No Heaven for the Priest
  • Okeke the Magician
  • Patrice Lumumba
  • Smile Awhile
  • Thirty Years for the Director
  • Veronica My Daughter

• Ludo De Witte's account of The Assassination of Lumumba
• Ronan Bennett's novel The Catastrophist, set in the time when the Belgian Congo gained independence.
• Michela Wrong's account of Mobutu, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz
• Adam Hochschild tells of earlier horrors in the Congo in King Leopold's Ghost
• Emmanuel Obiechina's introduction to An African Popular Literature
• Life Turns Man Up and Down, edited by Kurt Thometz
• Index of books relating to Africa

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About the Author:

       Nigerian author Ogali A. Ogali was born in 1935 and was a leading author of the pamphlet literature sold at Onitsha market.

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