The Return Of Mgofu

Betrayal in the City, first published in 1976 and 1977, was Kenya's national entry to the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria. The play is an incisive, thought-provoking examination of the problems of independence and freedom in post-colonial African states, where a sizeable number of people feel that their future is either blank or bleak. In the words of Mosese, one of the characters: "It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing our future."--Page 4 of cover

In his last play published posthumously the late Francis Imbuga presents the dramatic dialogue of his characters as mind games. In addition to using a narrator, Sikia Macho, to fill us in on the broken politics of Kafira, centring around detention without trial, Imbuga deliberately delays the inciting action, the formation of the Green Party of Kafira which then challenges the hitherto political monolith called the National Party. The candidate of the new party, former detainee Pastor Mgei, wins the election, and thereby dethrones the so-called Chief of Chiefs. In The Green Cross of Kafira, Imbuga, with a renewed sense of urgency, addresses the theme of dictatorship in Africa, and completes his trilogy of the Kafira plays which begins with Betrayal in the city followed by Man of Kafira.