Panther. The loss of that role will probably have a ripple effect on other aspects of Wakandan tradition. When the time comes for a new king, the other tribes might wonder what makes the royal family special without the Heart-Shaped Herb. They might wonder why a Challenge Day ritual is even necessary at all, and once they begin to wonder about that, tribal strife will probably erupt. In other words, the peace and social cohesion that Wakanda has developed over millennia could be destroyed by a single man who thinks that he knows better than Wakanda’s traditions.
“What Has Happened to Our Wakanda?”
After Killmonger throws T’Challa over the waterfall during their ritual combat and assumes power, Wakandan society finds itself torn in two. Nakiya, a Wakandan spy, and Okoye, a member of the Dora Milaje, find themselves at odds about what it means to be loyal to Wakanda. Nakiya asks Okoye to help her overthrow Killmonger “before he becomes too strong.” Okoye will have none of it: “I am loyal to the throne, no matter who sits upon it!” Knowing how important Wakanda’s traditions are to the stability and peace of the nation, she is desperate to protect those traditions. “You serve your country,” she says, and Nakiya replies, “No, I save my country.”
The disagreement between the two women speaks to one of the gravest consequences of revolutions like Killmonger’s. Though each woman loves her country, Killmonger drives a wedge between them over how to best serve Wakanda. To the dutiful Okoye, serving Wakanda means serving a king she despises in the hope that she can maintain order in her country and usher it through a difficult time. To Nakiya, patriotism requires her to fight a man whose rule might be technically legitimate, but who blatantly opposes everything that Wakanda holds sacred. For a time, this means that two close friends find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict.
The wedge drives deeper, however. The Border Tribe happily embraces Wakanda’s new king, aiding him in preparing to wage war on the rest of the world. This leads to Wakandans hurting and killing their own people. As W’Kabi says in a deleted scene, “There will be war and death, but in the end it will be beautiful.” In helping Killmonger, the Border Tribe causes outright civil war – a war that alienates friends, spouses, and countrymen.
“Just Because Something Works …”
Those who are loyal to Wakanda have to oppose Killmonger with force, but what truly brings order and peace back to Wakanda is a reassertion of the traditions and customs that have shaped Wakandan society for millennia. Having stolen a single Heart-Shaped Herb from the garden before Killmonger had it burned, Nakiya flees with Shuri and Ramonda to the Jabari Tribe in the mountains. In her desperation, she intends to give the Herb to M’Baku so that he can have the strength to overthrow the new king. What she doesn’t know is that M’Baku recovered T’Challa’s comatose body after Killmonger threw him over the waterfall.
A man less devoted to the traditions of his country might accept the Herb and take advantage of the chaos in Wakanda in order to advance his own power, but instead, M’Baku allows the women to use the Herb to revive their comatose king. So, the man who seemed backward in his traditionalism at the beginning of the film turns out to be the key not only to the restoration of peace in Wakanda, but also to saving the world from Killmonger’s murderous revolution.
Moreover, when T’Challa recovers from the coma and returns to the Vibranium Mound to oppose Killmonger, he legitimizes his actions by asserting that the ritual combat isn’t over: “I never yielded, and as you can see, I am not dead!” Killmonger and the Border Tribe reject this reasoning, of course, but when the Dora Milaje and others see that Killmonger doesn’t yet have a rightful claim to the throne, they join T’Challa in stopping him from sending Wakandan weapons across the border and beginning a war on the rest of the world.
Burke might have predicted all of this. The division sewn by Killmonger’s effort to single-handedly reshape Wakandan society; the civil war; the willingness of some to shed the blood of their fellow citizens; the restoration of peace through a reassertion of tradition – each of these things is evidence of the danger of revolution that Burke warned against and the value that he saw in tradition.
None of this means that Wakanda has to remain “stuck in the past,” however. Far from it. In fact, T’Challa does begin to reform his country after he defeats Killmonger and resumes his place as king. Having seen that Wakanda could use its resources to help the rest of the world – “the world we wish to join,” as T’Chaka says in Captain America: Civil War – he begins establishing outreach centers in other countries. It isn’t the radical course reversal that revolutionaries like Killmonger and W’Kabi wanted, of course, but the incrementalist approach allows Wakanda to grow without subjecting itself to the dangerous turmoil that rapid change causes. It represents the kind of organic development that Burke thought was healthy for nations, and allows the reclusive nation to reform and open up to the world without losing its true identity.
Wakanda forever!
Notes
1 1. Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, In Consequence of Some Late Discussions in Parliament, Relative to the Reflections on the French Revolution, 4th ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1791), 472.
2 2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in Francis Canavan ed., Selected Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 2 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 122.
3 3. Edmund Burke, Observations on the Late State of the Nation, in Paul Langford ed., The Writings of Edmund Burke, vol. 2 (London: Clarendon Press, 1981), 196.
4 4. Burke (1999), 121.
2 Transforming Wakanda Justice (or Not?) in Black Panther
Steve Bein and Deana Lewis
Suppose the epic battle at the end of the film Black Panther took a different turn. T’Challa still delivers the final blow to Killmonger, but after a life-saving surgery, Killmonger wakes up to find himself handcuffed to a hospital bed. He still gets to deliver that killer line about death being better than bondage, but T’Challa replies with a sad smile. “I know the legal system you grew up with is designed for retribution,” he says, “but Wakandan justice is more civilized. You’ll see.”
Does justice demand letting a mass murderer like Erik Killmonger bleed to death? If he doesn’t die, what does justice demand then? That depends not only on how you define justice but also on what kind of justice you’re trying to define. The question of what punishment Killmonger deserves is quite different from the question of how to repair the harm he’s done, which again is quite different from the question of how to right the wrongs done to him. Philosophers have dedicated countless pages to these kinds of questions, and they’ve outlined a whole taxonomy of different kinds of justice. In this chapter we’ll look at two of the classical conceptions of justice and then examine the contemporary movements that arose to challenge these old concepts. But first, let’s look at Wakanda’s record on justice.
Wakanda Forever?
On its surface, Wakanda appears to be a utopia: beautiful, pristine, devoid of poverty, a land where the world’s most educated people care for each other using the world’s most advanced technology. Monarchy isn’t what
