Many works of Western literature retrace the exploits of magnificent military heroes. Reading them, well, I often questioned myself on the existence of exploits of African military heroes. Although post-independence African literature has paid great attention to the military phenomenon, it has had relatively little interest in the war itself. And speaking of the military, African writers have evoked the wicked more than the heroes. It is as if antagonism has developed between writers and the military, with the exception of liberation fighters in Northern and Southern Africa. Even a liberation poet like Dennis Brutus in South Africa has ambivalent feelings about “boots, bayonets and belts”.

We can therefore ask ourselves two questions. Why are there so few literary works on military heroism in postcolonial Africa? And so why are there so many about their villainy?