Sony Tansi: The Shameful State

I’m not like National Haracho who siphoned off oil money on the quiet and then stashed it away in Swiss bank accounts, which didn’t prevent us from making him god-damn father-of-the-nation my God how shameful! And you saw how National Dascano slept all your women, you saw how he used to spend his nights at Lahossia Junior High, how he sired some sixteen hundred and eleven wrecks but you still stuck him in as father-of-the-nation, and now tell my hernia how many fathers you’re going to give this poor land? No no and no, I, National Lopez son of Mom, this is what I have to say: “This business of inviting shit has got to stop, and enough of your hernia games: no more father-of-the-nation bullshit, no more mirage-merchants: Hurray for the fatherland! Down with shit and down with bullshit! I’m handing power back to civilians! Infantrymen, return to your barracks with my hernia and wait for war.”

Cries of “Hurrah!” could be heard in the stadium and all over town in the way we do around here when someone scores a goal in the championship.

He ended up marrying the girl. We picked up his cases of mustard and his chamber pot just as we had done forty years ago, and accompanied him all the way to Moumvouka, Crazy-National-Mom’s village, while he, with that big smile on his face, sang the national anthem: “Long Live Lopez, down with Carvanso.”

Sugar-Hill, May 1st, 1980

SONY LABOU TANSI

(1947–1995) was a Congolese novelist, playwright, and poet whose groundbreaking work transformed postcolonial francophone African literature. He is the author of Life and a Half (IUP, 2011).

DOMINIC THOMAS

is Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has published numerous books and edited volumes on the cultural, political, and social relations between Africa and France, and on immigration and race in Europe, including Black France (IUP, 2007) and Africa and France (IUP, 2013). He is the Global African Voices series editor at Indiana University Press.

ALAIN MABANCKOU

is professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Franco-Congolese author who has received numerous literary prizes, including France’s prestigious Prix Renaudot. In 2015, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize. His novel Blue White Red (2013) is published in the Global African Voices series at Indiana University Press.