ISSN 2360-7998
Abstract
Accepted 2nd March, 2015.
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: “top-tea” and “fuman juice”, and comparatively draws inferences from selected African plays: Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, and Tewfiq al Hakim’s The Song of Death 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 as represented in the selected T.V commercials and plays. These texts 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. They draw 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 discuss on governance, tapping the opportunities that present themselves for the renaissance of the continent.
Keywords: Metaphors, sacrificial leadership, Africa, transition, iconoclasm.