Fanning Despotism through Ethnicity in Hama Tuma’s Selected Short Stories

Despotic leadership continues to thrive in Africa partly because modern despots employ various strategies that project a veneer of democracy which conceals their despotic tendencies but enhances their grip on political power. This paper engages with Hama Tuma’s six short stories to explore how the leadership entrenches their power through negative ethnicity. The stories have been purposively sampled from the twelve short stories in Tuma’s anthology, The case of the criminal walk and other short stories. The critical analysis of these stories is anchored on the theory of hermeneutics of suspicion. The paper argues that Tuma both unmasks and laughs at the chicanery of the despotic leaders who deploy the ethnic card in their manipulation of the masses to fasten their stranglehold on power.