By Dr Augustine Tirivangana

IN my previous article on King Lear, I questioned the wisdom of a king partitioning his kingdom among his daughters without the least consultation of the people, and made it plain that this idea of taking leadership for granted and the personalisation of politics was far from Africans’ understanding of responsible and accountable leadership.
Now, to buttress the observation that the Western notion of political office treats the people as pets with no say in how they are governed, we will witness the same kind of royal bigotry in yet another of Shakespeare’s plays, Measure for Measure.
Depravity and sexual immorality have become rampant in Vienna.
They have reached the proportions of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.
Such immorality and debauchery tell us something about the quality of leadership and the values espoused in such a society.
It is a society without Unhu/Ubuntu.
But look at the double standards of the Duke (king) under whose dukedom such perversion has proliferated.
Duke Vincentio decides to take a break from ruling, and appoints Angelo to rule in his absence, assisted by a trusted councillor, Escalus, to clean the mess that has multiplied under his very nose.
The Duke tells Angelo that he is going away to Poland and will be leaving him in charge.
He gives him a commission to ensure that moral laws are upheld, but he remains in Vienna in disguise to keep an eye on his deputy.
A citizen, Claudio, has got his fiancée, Juliet, pregnant.
He is tried and sentenced to death.
His sister, Isabella, who lives in a convent, about to take her vows as a nun, hears the news.
She hurries to Angelo to beg for mercy on behalf of her brother.
Angelo denies her request but as she persists he is overwhelmed by lust for her and tells her he will think about it, and that she should return the next day to hear his verdict.
She goes back the next day and he tells her that he will pardon her brother if she will have sex with him.
You then wonder whether this is the same man whose name is next to ‘angel’.
The irony cannot be missed.
The Duke Vincentio, in the meantime, has not left Vienna, but disguised himself as an itinerant friar and is moving about among the people to observe the effect of Angelo’s rule.
He tells Juliet to prepare for Claudio’s death, assuring her that there is no way around it.
Isabella is horrified by Angelo’s proposition and refuses.
She visits Claudio in prison and tells him about it, making it clear that she will not subject herself to that, and that he will have to die.
The Duke overhears their conversation and suggests a solution.
He tells her that she should agree to it and he will arrange for Mariana, who has been jilted by Angelo because her dowry was lost at sea, to take Isabella’s place and sleep with Angelo, who will not know it isn’t Isabella in the dark.
Once a schemer, always a schemer.
The Duke is a master at playing deception.
Do you not wonder how morality is restored using immoral means?
Angelo is preparing to double-cross Isabella, however, and gives instructions for Claudio’s execution.
The cold-bloodedness of Angelo is again exposed; yet he claims to be a champion of morality.
The Duke, still disguised, persuades the prison governor to execute a long-term prisoner, Barnadine, instead, and deliver his head to Angelo as demanded, claiming that it is Claudio’s head. Barnadine refuses to agree so they decide to use the head of a prisoner who has just died.
Here we witness a chain of double standards and duplicity and one wonders whether this justifies the pursuit of justice.
Marianna fulfills her part of the bargain, sleeping with Angelo, who believes that she is Isabella.
The next day the ‘friar’ tells Isabella that Angelo has deceived her and had Claudio executed.
He also announces his return, as the Duke, to Vienna.
Isabella and Marianna decide to go together to greet him and complain about what has happened.
The Duke arrives in Vienna with a big public display.
Isabella begs for justice.
The two women tell their story and Angelo is exposed in public.
He is forced to marry Marianna.
Claudio and Juliet are reunited and the play ends with the Duke proposing to Isabella.
We again wonder what moral example he is setting.
Can it not be said that the Duke is shrewd after all, outwitting everyone to land himself a virgin nun in the end when others have had prostitutes imposed on them by chicanery?
There are more moral questions that we ask about the play from an Africa-centred position.
First, the Duke has allowed Vienna to get out of hand morally.  
We then wonder how he intends to restore moral probity by surrogating his authority to his junior.
We also wonder whether morality can be legislated in the first place.
In other words, can morality be enforced by law?
Africans believe that morality is a matter of the constitution of the heart, what Unhu/Ubuntu stands for.
In the final analysis can we say justice has been done as the title Measure for Measure suggests?
By putting Angelo in charge, the Duke attempts to right the perceived wrongs in his society. 
Of course, Angelo when given the power misuses it.
It is really clever how Angelo gets caught in the bed trick. 
He was so quick to punish Claudio for premarital sex when he, himself, lusts after Isabella. 
By being forced to marry Mariana, an ironic sense of justice is the result.
The release of Claudio is just since he was only guilty of doing what had become accepted practice in Vienna. 
All along he had intended on marrying Juliet.
If prostitution is a crime, it could be said that the imprisonment of Mistress Overdone is justice.
Lucio is another example of ironic justice. 
He doesn’t know when to shut up and being forced to marry a prostitute is a kind of justice for this strutting fool.
The ultimate moral of Measure for Measure is that mercy is greater than retributive justice; but the unanswered moral question is at what moral price is this justice achieved?