HOW SOCIETY AFFECTED SOUTH AFRICAN THEATRE

Even a cursory knowledge of the history of the South African nation ensures that it comes as no surprise to readers that its arts, and theatre in particular, have been shaped and guided over the centuries by many hands and minds, often with minimal regard for or interest in the local culture. The home-grown stories told to young and old around the fire that form the origins of South African drama may never have died, but these indigenous tales have evolved into today’s theatre via a complex route, through difficult times. Over the years, many and varied dominant forces in society have imposed their views and demands on South African theatre, satisfying their own political and cultural needs. This affected the development and artistic growth of black theatre, shaping its form and messages, and forcing it underground. But it ultimately meant that theatre was taken directly to the people, in townships and streets. It was here that it began to rebut what white society was imposing on it. Increasingly, black theatre was re-establishing the dignity and validity of the suppressed African culture. It gave the poor and uneducated, as well as the frustrated intellectual, the opportunity to rediscover and share in an art form that came to mean so much more than just entertainment. As a means of expression, the theatre rarely played a more important role than in the darkest days of South African apartheid.
Ultimately, then, we shall see that whilst society has had a major affect on South African theatre, particularly during the time the apartheid state, theatre has also played a big part not only in affecting society, but effecting changes within that society. This is not a new concept, indeed Robert Kavanagh (1985) highlights that the “Founders of Marxism emphasised art was an important weapon in the ideological struggle between the classes.” To understand the effect society has had on South African theatre, let us first take a look at the society itself, and how the black nation came to find itself alienated from its own culture and, disaffected by its rulers, strangers within its own country.
Colonisation between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries saw many nationalities dipping their fingers into the South African pie. The Dutch-dominated Cape peninsula was a base for importing slave labour, but through trade with local inhabitants, the period also saw the beginnings of a performance culture in the area. When French influence in Cape Town was expanded and a garrison established during the latter part of the eighteenth century, the popularity of theatre grew and a semi-permanent space created to indulge the pastime. But as Temple Hauptfleisch (2005) points out “the other, lesser known influence come (sic) from the slave quarters, where an underground theatre tradition appears to have sprung up.” Although there is little to substantiate this claim, it is, however, certainly within the bounds of credibility that these slaves may have created the first protest theatre in South Africa, a tradition that was to come to prominence and grow in strength and impact, in the twentieth century.
The dawn of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of a British colony in the Cape and a fresh attitude towards the theatre was evident. The form of performance drama switched from the Dutch educational approach, to one of entertainment but still the material performed was imported rather than indigenous, and though less puritanical than the Calvinist influenced earlier material of the Huguenots, it bore little if any relevance to the lives of black South Africans.
The hegemonic grip of white colonial society extended into every area of life and this was to continue to increase and expand into the twentieth century, culminating in the repressive system of apartheid. But despite the lack of opportunity provided by the regime, not least in terms of education, early voices of dissent began to be heard amongst the black population and in 1912, the South African National Congress was founded, later to become the ANC. As the capitalist society expanded in South Africa, alongside it the growing urban environment and townships nurtured an alternative, black culture. During the 1930’s and 1940’s, black writers began to carve audiences out of the townships, audiences eager to be entertained and receptive to a form of culture they could identify with. Amongst those writers struggling to challenge the domination of black culture was a teacher called Herbert Dhlomo. A musician and journalist as well, his play The Girl Who Killed to Save was the first play to be published by a black writer, writing in English. Dramatic societies began to spring up and the performance based theatre culture of black South Africa thrived despite the difficulties imposed upon it by the State. Segregation prevailed on every level, and those keen to explore the possibilities for expression as well as entertainment that drama and theatre could offer, had no option but to seek new venues and opportunities. And this they did, very successfully, writing stories that had real meaning to them, and performing them wherever an audience could gather – and be reached. Conversely, many black writers were banned under the State’s system of apartheid from working in white theatre, so as a direct result of these policies, a huge range of talents – and their messages – were lost to white theatre audiences. Instead, white audiences were presented with an array of entertainment theatre that failed to touch on the reality of the society they were living in.
By the middle of the last century, many black artists and writers began to feel a compulsion to be rebellious in their work, a mood initiated by the governing society’s determination to suppress anything that might be seen as culturally or politically opposed to the status quo. But alongside this political paranoia, white entrepreneurs were beginning to recognise a growing interest in the music and theatre of the townships. This resulted in collaborative musicals such as the indigenous musical King Kong. When it was performed in 1959 to a multi-racial audience at the Witwatersrand University Great Hall, King Kong was a great success and launched the internationally successful career of Miriam Makeba.
As the official South Africa information website confirms, Athol Fugard, from Port Elizabeth, also made a huge impression on the Johannesburg stage with a play in the late 1950’s entitled No-Good Friday. “It was created with a number of black intellectuals from Sophiatown”, an area of Johannesburg described as “vital, vibrant and violent”. During this evolving era of performance art, Lewis Nkosi’s created ‘The Rhythm of Violence’. Written in exile in 1964, though banned in South Africa, it provoked huge debate on all sides as the story centred on a group of young black intellectuals who were drawn to political violence.
Promoted by, amongst others, legendary black stage producer Gibson Kente, productions would tour the townships, performing to audiences eager to watch shows performed by black actors for black audiences. Amidst one such tour, two young actors – Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema – discussed what Jesus Christ might do if he was reborn, now, in South Africa. From these idle debates came the internationally successful Woza Albert!, an award-winning two-handercreated with Barney Smith from the Market Theatre.
Whilst these dramatic performances brought a sense of legitimacy to a previously ignored culture, by the 1970’s they had arguably added to the fragmenting of black theatre, as Kavanagh (1985) suggests. “Black theatre became a crucial area of cultural and commercial conflict. As it increased in scope, so various interests competed to control it for their own commercial or ideological purposes.” As well as the overriding power of the State and the Afrikaans nationalists, both white and black English-speaking theatre managements and impresarios were keen to manipulate and exert influence, for either ideological or commercial ends.
But a growing force to be reckoned with in black theatre was beginning to hold sway. A burgeoning number of organisations, collectively referred to as ‘Black Consciousness Movements’, were starting to unite. Harassed and censored, subjected to bans and shut downs of anything viewed to be against the interests of the State, black theatre was finally coalescing instead of fighting within itself. The harder the State clamped down, the more spontaneous performances appeared. Rarely written down, scarcely ever published, these plays, songs and dances were nevertheless transcending racial and linguistic barriers. A fragmented nation was at last becoming a rainbow one.
Mthuli Shezi, the president of the Student Representative Council at the University of Zululand, a cultural activist and intellectual, was also a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. He went on to become the vice president of the Black People’s Convention, the forerunner to the Azanian People’s Organisation and through the medium of plays, he not only awoke the interest of ordinary black South Africans to the concept of black consciousness, but also influenced an entire generation of activists. Kavanagh (1985) describes his famous play Shanti as being “like ‘King Kong’, an inter-racial collaborative effort, but of a different kind for in this case, no whites were involved. Instead, members of different black groups collaborated.” After performing in Shanti, actor Nomsisi Kraai spoke of her contempt (Kavanagh 1985) for the dramas by earlier writers that told stories giving prominence to only the perception of black lives, stories centring on murder, bewitching, black fighting black, and unfaithful wives.
When the People’s Experimental Theatre Group performed Shanti in the early 1970s, there were rapturous welcomes from audiences experiencing a new awakening to the possibilities the future held – not only for black theatre, but also for the black nation. The PET didn’t last long, shattered by arrests and detentions, but it was a trailblazer in terms of establishing the trend and tone for the future of theatre at a crucial time. Mthuli Shezi himself killed in 1972. He was pushed in front of a moving train at the Germiston railway station by a white station cleaner. Shezi had made the mistake of interceding when the worker hosed a group of African women. The ‘accident’ went unpunished, the tragedy serving to highlight not only this particular injustice, but also the national humiliation that the life of even one of the most highly prized black intellectuals of the time ranked lower than a humble white manual worker in the State’s political justice system. At his funeral, Shezi’s own famous promise that ‘blacks can be liberated through the theatre’ was repeated defiantly in one of many heart-felt speeches.
Despite the persecutions and injustice, the BCM was, however, succeeding in drawing a line in the sand between the ‘correct’ black viewpoints, and the real black viewpoints. Stephen Bantu Biko, President of the student organization SASO, (founded in 1969) declared that the time had come for blacks to formulate their own thinking. In a direct attack on the rival factions for control of black theatre, he asserted black theatre had to be independent of and unpolluted by the ideas of anyone with a stake in maintaining the status quo, be that the government, their ‘agents’ amongst black theatre, or those with a more commercial interest. So whereas Lena Slachmuijder (1999) quite properly cites the period after the first post-democratic elections as showing an industry “responding to, reflecting and provoking the society in which it exists”, it is clear the seeds of this were already in place over a quarter of a century earlier. The notable difference is that in the new democracy, the industry was embraced, not demonised or crushed by the society in which it lived.
Biko and many other SASO leaders were in turn banned and detained, arrested under the Terrorism Act. He died in detention in 1977, just a year after the student uprising in Soweto, but by this time revolution was more than just in the air and culturally, there was a very real distinction being made between ‘theatre presented by blacks’ and black theatre. Kruger 1999, however, highlights criticism of the BCM’s emphasis on the intellectual rather than the material hardship of ordinary black South Africans. There was, however, an undeniable groundswell of support for the BCM probably because ultimately, even the poorest uneducated South African could understand what the struggle was against even if the aesthetics of what it was for were more intellectually elusive.
An interview between author and actor Thembi Mtshali and Jenni Murray on BBC Radio 4, described in ‘African Theatre – South Africa 2004’, illustrates this growing awakening. It was during Thembi’s visit to the London International Festival of Theatre in 2001 that she spoke of the Soweto uprisings, which happened while she was in New York waiting to open on Broadway in Ipi Tombi. The impact on Thembi of the tragic events was of course, immense, but they were possibly made even more significant because at the time she was residing in a comparatively freethinking society. She found herself amidst people who wanted to know what was really happening in South Africa rather than just watch “some song and dance.” Thembi was inspired by this exposure to a free society to write her own songs, putting her own experiences in life into words, and music.
Black theatre was communicating the messages that were impossible to get across openly on the streets of the townships and villages: prison, the infiltration of security police, detention without trial – the yoke forced on the black population by the State was now provoking a creative plethora of provocative material. Banned by the State from the political platforms, their protests saw the light of day in the forum of theatre – street theatre, sports halls, spaces such as the University of Witwatersrand and in the Baxter Theatre on the University of Cape Town campus, to name but a few. George Gurvitch’s observation, highlighted in the paper ‘Society and the Arts 1974’ could never have been more appropriate: “Theatre is simultaneously a sort of escape hatch from social conflicts, and the embodiment of these conflicts.” Lizbeth Godman 1993 cites ‘Have you seen Zandile’ by Gcina Mhlope as a largely autobiographical play that at once entertains and releases the audience into a world involving Zandile and different parts of her life, yet at the same time it illustrates the author’s “growing awareness of the meaning of her blackness in a culture divided by racial prejudice.” Performed successfully at the 1990 Edinburgh Festival, Zandile is focused on the life of an eight-year-old girl. The play is made up of fourteen short scenes that illustrate the times and social pressures that can divide families. Mhlope herself was born in KwaZulu-Natal in 1959 and worked as a domestic servant before eventually following a career as a newsreader and then as a story-telling performer, a skill she credits her grandmother with.
One of the key effects of the State’s suppression of artistic expression meant that the material used in Black performance theatre had to be ideally suited to one-night stands; easily – and quickly – moved. The Market Theatre slipped beneath the radar of the Group Areas Act, which stipulated theatres in white areas should be for white actors and audiences only. Established on the site of the former Indian fruit market in Johannesburg, the complex of galleries and theatres was set up and run entirely by private funding, receiving nothing from central government until the end of apartheid.
The announcement in February 1990 of the thirty-year bans on organisations including the ANC, was a precursor for one great performance that was to follow hot on its heels; the long-awaited release from prison nine days later of Nelson Mandela and the beginning of negotiations for a democratic South Africa. Slachmuijlder cites an “encouraging portrait … of an industry insisting on redefining itself, by responding to, reflecting and provoking the society in which it exists.” But she also highlights the risk of weak developmental initiatives post-apartheid:
“South African protest theatre transported the voice of freedom fighters across the stages of townships and the world… yet in its final phase, the fact that it had become synonymous with the liberation struggle raised questions about its lifespan once that battle was no longer.”
The remit of today’s theatre in South Africa is now far broader than protest. Entertainment is no longer a dirty word and the experiences, challenges, and humour as well as issues that continue to threaten the lives, the well-being and the happiness of all South Africans, are being played out in front of multi-racial, multi-ethnic audiences. Now issues that were considered subordinate to the bigger struggle can be explored and aired, with writers seeking out new ways to draw in the audiences who had become weary of the old protest messages. Plays that tackle the role of women in South Africa’s new society. Plays involving gays and lesbians, Aids, crime, love; they all now mingle on the schedule with what were the ‘innovative’ plays of the seventies that continue to play to old and new audiences alike, but are now seen as classics.
After years of evolving along separate paths, segregated by ideology or the State, cross-fertilisation of ideas and talent from numerous groups means that joint ventures can now be brought to fruition. Suddenly there was no need to ‘justify’ theatrical performances. What the theatre produced succeeded or failed purely on its own merits, not the validity of a cause or dissention. The nation’s culture was being redefined on a day-to-day basis as life – and the theatre – reflected the huge spectrum of people that made up the ‘rainbow nation’ and its activities. The imperative used by many, including Biko, and quoted by Hauptfleisch, that writers should forget the aesthetic and other aims of literature in favour of “a moral obligation to join the fight against the current evil and help to conscientise and mobilise the people” has passed. Previously excluded voices can now be heard, and their words are moving forward with the times, not just reflecting on the past. It is not only a new order that has been created, but also a new and more cohesive society.