Political Sycophantism and State Governance: A Political Discourse Analysis Reading of Niyi Osundare’s The State Visit

Abstract

Postcolonial discourse does not only interrogate western epistemology about postcolonial societies; it is a double-edged discourse that also analyses the activities of postcolonial states in order to establish whether they are not also responsible for their socio-political and cultural demise. This explains why issues of governance and political leadership are fertile discourses in postcolonial literature and cultural studies. This is so because the future of any society depends on how the society is governed. Thus, governance and leadership are the levers that can project a society to the summit of success or to the nadir of underdevelopment. This paper, therefore, aims
at articulating the relation between postcolonial political drama and the governmental and leadership situations in postcolonial societies, especially in contemporary Africa. The paper shows how the ideological posture in postcolonial dramaturgy is an interpretation and dramatization of political governance and leadership management in Africa. From the theoretical paradigm of
Political Discourse Analysis (PDA), this paper defends the premise that in Niyi Osundare’s The State Visit (2002) the African postcolony is retrogressing in development because of the kind of political leadership that cropped up in Africa after most African countries gained political independence. This type of leadership and governance has been the trademark in most African states even up to contemporary times. In the play under study, there is an acute lack of visionary and patriotic leadership that can lay the foundation for meaningful development and progress. The political leaders and their sycophants in this play are most of the time indulged in political demagogy, paternalism, manipulation, and sterile propaganda which have very little to do with concrete development and progress in their nations.