The literary scholar in this interview justified his action, which goes against the grain of a new movement promoted by renowned Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiongo that Africans should write in their Indigenous languages and discard English and other languages of their erstwhile European colonisers.
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It was a complete hegemony, not just an economic conquest but a cultural conquest that continued long after colonialism. In other words, I understand where Ngugi is coming from. However, he has agreed to translate his works from English to Yoruba because he sees the essence of readership. If you write in your language, only Kikuyu people can read it—a tiny population even in Kenya, not to mention Africa.
Yinka: Your writings tend to portray you as a gadfly serving the interest of the under-served. But how much of the Nigerian poor class can you appreciate and empathise with their condition with the visible passion in your works?I am instinctively committed to advocating social justice, equality, and equity. It wasn’t clear to me at the start. I was just doing it instinctively. I was defending things just like that.
The enlistment of one’s commitment to the underprivileged was instant, and the search for social reconstruction derives from that – that is, if you say this is not good, what do you put in its place? We indeed started from the leftist perspective. We couldn’t change because we are in a crude capitalist structure, and our attempt did not gain political force or muscle.
When I went to Leeds and was staging my first play, The Knights of the Mystical Beast, I went to the workshop there, and I said I needed a few students or staff interested in African plays. Most of them didn’t know what an African play was, but they were excited, they were enthusiastic, and if you saw the kind of change that brought to the theatre workshop apart from teaching them the songs, teaching them the dance, even getting some of them to drum, they were excited.
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