By Daniel Muhau
Written in 1962, the play,  The Black Hermit, is one of Ngugi waThiongo’s early works that depict the problem of postcolonial Africa. While the play is staged in Kenya, the society that Ngugi portrays is Africa in general. The play is about conflicts of the change from colonialism to post-colonialism, and in it the playwright reflects a strong and principled political voice.

The events in the play begin in an African village where one of the villagers, Nyobi, a middle-aged mother, is complaining that her younger son Remi has chosen to live alone in a far away big city, ignoring his duties and obligations at home.

Apparently, Remi’s extended absence imposes even more pain upon his wife, Thoni, who longs to bear a child. She also expresses her desire to be with her husband, saying it is only her man who can make her feel ‘a new self’.

Witchcraft
Purporting to understand the problem better, the leader of the village accuses their neighbours of witchcraft, which he blames for Remi’s absence from home and decision to stay in the city, far from his wife and tribe. He comes to Nyobi to explain his intention to travel to the city and persuade Remi to return.

Being the best-educated son in the village, Remi is their best hope for acquiring national political advantage, according to the village elder. He believes that Remi’s decision to leave resulted from Christian training, which undermined his loyalty to the traditional ways.

The villagers are clearly not happy with the ways of the whites that Remi has chosen to follow. The young man is forced to look down on his own people. For example, being the first university graduate in his village, he now considers the tradition of inheriting his late brother’s wife as barbaric. What he prefers is to marry a white lady, Jane, in the city.

Play a critical role
Yet the village leaders still believe in him a lot. They want Remi to come back to the village and use his acquired knowledge and wisdom to play a more critical role, like forming a political party.

So, in order to “make ineffective the bad medicine” and call Remi back home for political leadership, the village elders devise the means of traditional magic power. At the same time, his mother, Nyobi, consults the pastor to use the power of the Bible.

Here Ngugi not only shows the conflict between two different religions: the African traditional beliefs and Christianity, but also how the villagers are torn between the two, thus creating confusion.

The pastor, who represents the Christian ideology, and the elders, talk about many issues that, apparently, Ngugi is reacting against.  They are against the established authorities or value of the colonialists in the play.  

Some of the problems affecting them are taxation, oppression, forced labour and abuse of power, which became the bane of national development in postcolonial African society. It isalso  emphasised in the play that tribalism always prevents people from advocating societal development.

In the play, Ngugi as a postcolonial writer hammers the question of what Uhuru (independence) has brought to the people. Although politically free, the people are still in social bondage – of tribalism, culture, economy and religion as patterned by the colonialists.

In a nutshell, like other postcolonial writers, Ngugi uses the play to reclaim the African past and erode colonial ideology by which the past has been devalued. Remi later claims to be tired of the city.

This suggests a sense of nostalgia or homesickness. Such other postcolonial issues as disillusionment, tribalism and racism versus nationalism are portrayed in the play. The two sides involved in this conflict are the family, tribe and race on the other hand and the whole nation on the other.

In addition, the playwright condemns factionalism at various levels of society in the interest of overall harmony and progress.

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