After Asagai arrives, Mama's attempt to impress him with her new knowledge of Africa is almost pathetic as she parrots what Beneatha has just told her, echoing Beneatha's previous dialogue almost verbatim. When Raisin opened in 1959, most people's knowledge of Africa was as limited as Mama's. Although a more enlightened modern audience might be chagrined by the political misconceptions of the late 50s, Lorraine Hansberry's prophetic vision is accurate and important, as though she envisioned the day that the true history of Africa would be widely known and that the shackles of colonialism would be broken. In 1959, when Raisin opened on Broadway, most African countries were under European rule. The following year, 1960, fifteen African countries gained their independence, and in eight more years, thirteen more had become independent.
In Act III, Beneatha and Asagai address the possibility of the African countries' replacing oppressive colonial rule with corrupt African leaders. Beneatha asks, "Independence and then what? What about the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come into power and steal and plunder the same as before — only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new Independence." Kwame Nkrumah received worldwide praise for his role in leading Ghana into independence in 1960.
However, immediately after taking office, Nkrumah began to spend the country's money with reckless abandon and embraced the Communist Parry. The people rebelled against all of his dealings, staged a successful coup d'etat, and he was overthrown in 1966. In retrospect, Hansberry's prophetic accuracy is once again evident, for Nkrumah, in particular, was one of the leaders most admired by Hansberry in 1959, when Raisin opened. Other African nations also experienced political instability after their post-1959 independence.
