Torture and Trauma in WodOkello Lawoko’s The Dungeon of Nakasero

Abstract

African literature is characterised by the struggles and challenges of Africans, entailing pains of slavery, primitive colonization and modern colonization otherwise referred to as neo-colonization or imperialism. The continent’s postcolonial challenges include poor leadership, government instability, corruption, poor justice administrative system, underdevelopment, and poverty, among others. Prison memoir, which is a form of witness and resistance literature, particularly, the one written by Prisoners of Conscience (POC), is usually a documentation of these challenges including the trauma experienced as a result of torture experienced from bad leaders. Journalists, being part of society have not been excluded from the societal problems, principally, the torture and trauma experienced from undemocratic leaders. Some journalists have captured these experiences in their writings. However, while scholarship in African literature has paid attention to the various problems of Africa, it has not sufficiently explored torture and trauma in literary texts, mainly, the memoirs written by journalists. WodOkello Lawoko’s The Dungeon of Nakasero, a journalist memoir of sufferings, torture and trauma in the hands of their worst dictatorial military head of state, General Idi Amin, captures the highlighted African struggles and challenges. Therefore, against this backdrop, this study explores the nexus between torture and trauma in The Dungeon of Nakasero, a journalist’s prison memoir that presents the real-life ordeals of Ugandans during the reign of Idi Amin. The study relies on Carthy Caruth’s trauma theory to undertake a textual analysis of the text. Apart from depicting Idi Amin as the worst dictatorial head of state in Uganda, it further places him as one of the worst leaders in Africa. The text depicts journalism as one of the riskiest professions in the world and notes that only the unison of Africans can rid the continent of dictators and poor leadership.