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But the change began with the turning of our leaders into single peacocks strutting against each others splendour broke the individual cripples connectedness and threw him impotent against the shrunken group at home, the invidious family resentful of any loss of strength.
Why after that should the cripple acquiesce in silent suffering? Why, when ostentation had become the disease devouring a people, should not the most infirm in self-protection embrace the new contagion with the most triumphant eagerness? What wonder that we spawn Bokasa, Togbui, Budu, Sɛnho and a brood of other Cripples rivalling even the brilliant Sun of day in garnish ostentation?
There were others, a perfect compliment to these ostentatious cripples. These were the Askari’s. But how shall we explain their disease? Let sleep and death again give us an image. The mind: that is the souls conciliator with the body, the guide to keep the awakened body and the soul together. In sleep, in death, body and soul are apart. The body may fall victim to attack. The body may fall victim to an alien conqueror. The mind can also suffer attack; the mind can also fall to conquest. A mind attacked and conquered is guided easily away from the paths of its own soul. The body is then cut of from its spirit as in sleep, yet still instinct with conquerors imposed commands, a soulless thing, but active. In this state of souldeath the body blindly, sleepily obeys the conqueror. Such a body is set to persist in such obedience even if its conqueror be a distance of days and days away, a time of seasons sepetrate. Such zombies are. And among, such were the Askari’s.
– Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons
