Storying disillusionment : a decolonial reading of selected plays by Cheela Chilala, Blessing Hungwe, and Dunduzu Chisiza Jr

Abstract

This study offers a retroactive decolonial reading of two selected plays from each of the countries of Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, previously governed by the British under the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. With the independence of the two countries

in 1964 and Zimbabwe in 1980, I considered a duration of at least ten years of post- independence to bring these contexts to bear on the selected plays. Therefore, the study

examines play texts written or performed between 1990 and 2019. I chose the playwrights Cheela Chilala (Zambia), Blessing Hungwe (Zimbabwe), and Dunduzu Chisiza Jr. (Malawi) for their significant contributions to contemporary playwriting due to critical acclaim and cultural relevance in their respective countries.

A central thread that connects all these texts is that of disillusionment with post- independence, postcolonial contexts. Using a constructivist research paradigm, critical

discourse analysis as a methodological approach, and script analysis as a method, the study seeks possible traces of colonial patterns of power that continued to shape post-independence regimes and cultural production, and maps how the plays expose various typologies of postcolonial disillusionment manifested through political betrayal, cultural alienation, and socio-economic inequalities. The study demonstrates that, despite not intentionally writing with decoloniality in mind, the play texts, arguably shaped by comparable historical, cultural, and socio-political conditions in their respective countries, reveal decolonial resonances, positioning the play texts as a space for epistemic resistance and cultural reclamation. The study expands the scope of decolonial literary discourse in Southern Africa and makes an original contribution to existing knowledge by means of its retroactive decolonial reading of the plays. Moreover, it contributes to global discussions on the lasting effects of colonial legacies in the Global South.