A Play of Giants by Wole Soyinka

Summary

The play is a biting satire on African military dictatorships, centered on four African heads of state Kamini, Gunema, Kasco, and Tuboum who are gathered at the Bugaran Embassy to the United Nations in New York. The leaders are posing for a monumental group sculpture intended for the UN building while awaiting a scheduled address to the General Assembly. As they converse, the narrative exposes their grotesque brutality, obsession with absolute power, and the complicity of international powers and intellectuals who sustain them. The play culminates in chaos when a coup d’état occurs in Kamini’s home country, leading him to take international delegates hostage in a violent final stand.

Plot

• The Sitting: The action begins with Kamini (Bugara), Gunema (Equatorial Guinea), and Kasco (Central African Republic) sitting for a sculptor in the embassy. They discuss their philosophies of power, which involve the ruthless elimination of “subversives”.
• The Loan Dispute: The Chairman of the Bugara Central Bank arrives with news that the World Bank has refused a loan because the national currency is worthless. Kamini, enraged, accuses the Chairman of treason and forces him to drink toilet water as punishment.
• The Hero’s Arrival: General Barra Tuboum joins the group after crushing a rebellion in Mbangi-Gwela, boastfully detailing how his “striped leopards” (elite troops) eat their enemies to re-absorb power.
• Intellectual Complicity: A delegation led by the Mayor of Hyacombe and Professor Batey arrives to grant Kamini the “freedom of the city”. Batey, an African-American academic, vocally defends Kamini’s regime against “capitalist plots” and “human rights” accusations, despite evidence of the dictator’s atrocities.
• The Russian Confrontation: Two Russian delegates visit to inspect the sculpture. They insult the dictators in Russian, calling Kamini a “buffoon” and a “butcher”. Professor Batey, who speaks Russian, exposes their insults using a secret tape recorder, revealing the hypocrisy of the superpowers who publicly support the regimes they privately despise.
• The Coup and Hostage Crisis: News arrives via telex that a coup has occurred in Bugara. Kamini’s ambassador flees, and the embassy’s communications are cut. Paranoid and desperate, Kamini takes the Russian and American delegates, as well as the UN Secretary-General, hostage.
• Violent Conclusion: As Bugaran exiles gather outside to protest, Kamini orders his Task Force to open fire with machine guns and rocket launchers. The play ends with a bloody confrontation as Kamini prepares to “reduce the United Nations to rubble”.

Setting

The action is set entirely within the Bugaran Embassy to the United Nations in New York. The time is specified as “a few years before the present” (relative to the play’s publication). The primary location is a lounge converted into a sculptor’s studio, featuring a sweeping stone stairway and a balcony overlooking the UN building.

Themes

• The Architecture of Tyranny: The play explores how monsters are created and sustained, emphasizing that power is often sought as an end in itself rather than for responsibility.
• Complicity of the Intelligentsia: Soyinka critiques intellectuals (represented by Batey) who rationalize and applaud crudest barbarities of dictators to share in the “aura of success”.
• Superpower Pragmatism/Opportunism: The play depicts the US and Soviet Union as “pragmatists” who install and sustain psychopaths in power to serve their own geopolitical interests.
• The Dehumanization of Power: The dictators’ casual discussions of torture, cannibalism, and mass murder highlight the total loss of human sensibility that accompanies absolute rule.
• Cultural Resistance and Martyrdom: Through the dedication to Byron Kadadwa and the mention of murdered artists, the text highlights the high cost of resisting such regimes.

Characters

Major Characters

• Field-Marshal Kamini: Based on Idi Amin of Uganda. He is the central “Giant,” a volatile, illiterate, and murderous dictator who believes himself a “big uncle” to his people while ruthlessly executing anyone he perceives as a “kondo” (bandit/traitor).
• Benefacio Gunema: Based on Macias Nguema. A practitioner of voodoo who believes his power is “mysterious” and “tranquil,” using it to “surveillance” his subjects’ souls.
• Emperor Kasco: Based on Jean-Baptiste Bokassa. A parody of Napoleonic grandeur, he wears imperial purple and believes he possesses an “imperial sign” on his forehead.
• General Barra Tuboum: Based on Mobutu Sese Seko. He is obsessed with “authenticity,” changing all foreign names to African ones and leading a fearsome, secret elite force.
• Professor Batey: A sociologist and “link” for the dictators in the West. He is a “willed” ignorant who provides academic cover for Kamini’s crimes.

Minor Characters

• The Sculptor: A man from Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, he is eventually beaten and bandaged by Kamini’s guards under suspicion of being a spy.
• The Chairman of the Bugara Central Bank: An official who is brutally humiliated for stating the economic truth about Bugara’s currency.
• Gudrum: A Scandinavian journalist and sycophant writing a book titled The Black Giant at Play, which portrays Kamini as a “jovial family man”.
• The UN Secretary-General: A “nice man” and “civil servant” whom the dictators view as a subordinate meant to carry out their orders.
• The Bugaran Ambassador: A fearful official who ultimately deserts the “sinking ship” when the coup occurs.
• Russian and American Delegates: Represent the cynical international interests that manipulate African politics.

Literary Devices

• Satire/Parody: The dictators are portrayed as grotesque parodies of historical figures like Napoleon or Chaka, highlighting the absurdity of their self-image.
• Irony: It is deeply ironic that the dictators seek to display a monument of themselves in the UN a building dedicated to peace while they discuss mass murder.
• Symbolism: The sculpture represents the “Architecture of Tyranny,” a physical manifestation of their ego. The toilet water incident symbolizes the “shitty” state of the national economy and the leader’s debasement of his subjects.
• Metaphor: The “Chamber of Horrors” is a recurring metaphor for both the literal wax museum and the reality of life under these regimes.
• Dramatic Irony: The audience is aware of the dictators’ impending doom (the coup) while the leaders remain obsessed with minor protocol and sculptures.