By Chris Thurman for The Conversation, part of the Guardian Africa network, 7 August 2015
Should Shakespeare’s plays be taught in Africa’s schools and universities? It’s a question that emerges, sometimes flippantly and sometimes in earnest, when conversations about post-colonialism and decolonisation turn to literature and culture.
It’s a useful and necessary question that I am often asked – and one that I often ask myself. But it is also a question which needs rephrasing.
Translation
The first problem is in generalising about the African continent. Education systems and their infrastructural or economic contexts are vastly different. This is not only true from country to country and region to region, but also within each country and region.
An obvious division could be made between Francophone and Anglophone countries, but even these categories falter. The engagement of African and Caribbean writers such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire with The Tempestinfluenced the Negritude movement, associated with poet and first leader of Senegal Léopold Senghor. Césaire’s post-colonial adaptation Une Tempête was first performed in Tunisia. But this has no purchase in other Francophone African countries like Gabon or Niger.
In Zimbabwe, despite occasional posturing, Shakespeare is a common and largely unproblematic reference point in political speeches, newspaper articles and daily conversation.
Photograph of Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré playing in Desdemona, based on characters from Shakespeare’s Othello, as part of this year’s Melbourne and Sydney festivals. Photograph: Mark Allan
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