Observation

This question requires candidates to discuss Yoko as a tragic figure. It was very straightforward and many candidates attempted it.

Candidates’ responses were expected to contain the following:

• Identification of the major theme of the struggle for leadership involving the succession to power in the face of external aggression.  A sub theme is the power struggle between men and women in the play.
• Character Identification: Yoko is Gbanya’s favourite wife; beautiful, ambitious and head of the dancers; she is the sister of Lamboi who, with Musa, is her antagonist. Yoko becomes the queen of Mende land after the death of Gbanya.
• Yoko’s ambition: she gives up her right to motherhood in exchange for the chiefdom by joining the Poro cult, she overreaches herself by expanding her chiefdom thereby attracting enemies from within and from without.
• Yoko’s weaknesses: she is autocratic. She does not heed advice. She kowtows to the Colonial Administration. She is betrayed by the colonial administrators and by her enemies within.
• Fall of Yoko as the leader of Mende Land: she is embarrassed and disgraced by the allegation that she killed Jeneba. She does not recover even after the real culprits are found out. Yoko chooses to die by drinking a poisoned concoction.

Many candidates were able to do these; and the performance was good.