Teabags and Oranges as Metaphors of Sacrificial Positive Leadership in Africa: A Comparative Study of Selected TV Commercials and Plays

Abstract

The general perception that good leadership has eluded Africa has inevitably provoked works of certain fervor, tone or attitude. Theatre and media artists, employing metaphors of positive sacrificial leadership, have particularly been forceful in their campaigns against the deficit of good governance in Africa. This study examines the metaphors of “teabags” and “oranges” in selected TV commercials, and comparatively draws inferences from selected African plays to advocate the significance of object lessons. Semiotics is employed as the framework for this study. Semiotics bears upon the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible actions and influences, which involves creating, interpreting and understanding objects and their respective meanings. This accounts for the investigation of positive leadership, its determinants, capacities, prevalence and the prospects for its sustainability in Africa. Two TV commercials: “Top-tea” and “Fumman Juice”, and two plays: Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, and Tewfiq al Hakim’s The Song of Death are purposively selected for this study, and are subjected to comparative, literary and critical analyses.
Theatre and media artists in Africa have manifested the struggles of a continent undergoing the painful process of political transformation, evolving the paradigms of aesthetic representation, ethical responsibility and sacrificial leadership to argue that a leader can have an impact on the society only if he/she transits. In the selected T.V commercials, teabags and oranges simulate life situation exhibiting very strong penchants for eternal existence through transition. While the teabags cheerfully jump into teacups of very hot water, the oranges passionately and persistently beg some farmers to pick them for industrial use so that they can give their nutrients to man for his healthy living. If they do not give away these nutrients, they will decompose by natural chemical processes. To avoid this
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destruction, they transit into profound forms: healthy people. In Death and the King’s Horseman, Soyinka locates these metaphors in Olunde who purposively plunges into suicidal mission to save a dying race. The artistic credo of al Hakeem’s The Song of Death is an unwavering commitment on these metaphors illustrated in Alwan who submits, first to denunciation then assassination to give life to his people. These characters consider it a disaster beyond human reckoning for a leader to dwell on the tears and sweat of his people yet deny them his own sacrificial death needed for their existence and his own immortality. The selected TV commercials and plays share affinities of pragmatic responsibility metaphysically contained in the engaged emblematic vehicles and the universe of the African mind – the world of the living, the dead and the unborn, and  the numinous passage which links all: transition. Theatre and media artists in Africa have drawn from the realities of the continent's social-political processes in the finest tradition, exploring ways in which positive leadership can be integrated into the broader continental discourse on governance, tapping the opportunities that present themselves for the renaissance of the continent.