The semantics of poetic and dramatic works: the case of Mapanje and Chimombo

When President Banda touched down at Chileka Airport , Blantyre, Malawi, on the 6th of July, 1958, after the leadership of the Nyasaland African Congress had called him to help them liberate Nyasaland from British colonialism and especially to free his people and 'break their stupid federation', Malawians sang of having been saved from colonial bondage. Barely two months after political independence from Britain Malawi was thrown into a political crisis. The aftermath of the political crisis gave Banda an opportunity to consolidate absolute power and establish a benevolent dictatorship which was to last for over thirty years and perhaps affect the way Malawi was to be governed for a long time after his death in a South African hospital on the 25th of November 1997.

The author’s aim in this paper is an attempt to interpret the semantics of Jack Mapanje's poems in “Akoma Akagonera” and the meanings of the language use as employed by Steve Chimombo in his “Wachiona Ndani”. He demonstrates that through a careful choice of diction and decontextualization the two writers were able to comment, criticize and interrogate a system that allowed no overt expression of dissent to the leadership of the day. Through the imagery of a 'riderless' canoe on Lake Malawi, for instance, and the use of a singing mosquito complaining about the lack of a real or 'genuine' mouth, the author shows that Mapanje was able to comment on how the Malawian nation was allowed to gravitate in an uncertain direction due to the ailing and aged leadership and the lack of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. He also shows that through decontextualization and language use the playwright Chimombo managed to elude Malawi's censorship's attention as to what he was exactly saying in "Wachiona Ndani".

The paper concludes by observing that the semantics of the two works can be fathomed only when the reader has an idea of the socio-economic, historical and political set up in which they were conceived and produced.