African Spirituality and Resistance to Neocolonial (Bad) Governance in Lake God and Dance of the Vampires by Bole Butake

Africa continues to suffer from European imperialism and its related
extensive ills like exploitation, ethnocide, corruption, dictatorship,
embezzlement, and murder. In his plays, the Cameroonian dramatist,
Bole Butake, handles numerous problems plaguing Cameroon and other
African countries, and one of these is bad leadership caused by
neocolonialism. This study examined Butake’s perspectives on the
connection between European expansionism and African autochthonous
spirituality. Using Cultural Resistance by David Jeffress as the
theoretical framework, the work sought to answer the question: What is
Bole Butake’s vision of the link between neocolonialism and African
sacredness? The paper, which is divided into three parts, concludes that
Butake projects African traditional religion as a solution to
neocolonialism and its negative offshoots. It opines that African spiritual
entities should be associated with governance as elements of regulation,
control, and punishment so that bad leadership and the subsequent
suffering of Africans can be mitigated or eliminated.

Keywords: Neocolonialism, African spirituality, Postcolonialism,
Resistance, Leadership