Remembering the home you never knew. Rural traces in contemporary urban township performances

Abstract

Life in the black townships surrounding Cape Town is very hard, but in spite of day-to-day difficulties, theatre is practised prolifically by the youths who, born and raised in a post-apartheid world, have spent all their lives in the urban township. In spite of, or possibly because of, today's harsh urban conditions, the plays by these youths are haunted by ideologies, characters and cultural traditions attached to older generations living in rural conditions with which the young have very limited lived connection. This article examines why this might be so and also why the youths find such ‘old-fashioned’ ideas worth embedding in their plays. Impelled by African scholars' theories concerning how individuals nurture selfhood in the shiftless everyday of contemporary African cities, and drawing upon Marvin Carlson's concept of haunting, and Pierre Bourdieu's proposition that we make meaning by positing oppositions, the article investigates how and why the youths dialogue with these oppositional attitudes and states. Two plays, developed in Cape Town's townships and performed in 2007, are discussed as exemplary instances.

Keywords:

• colonization
• township theatre
• rural origins
• beliefs
• haunting

Notes

1. Aspects of this research have already appeared in articles in this journal (Morris 2007, 2008) and in RIDE (Morris 2013). In the field I conducted interviews with individual theatre-makers and groups, I viewed some 40 plays in performance and I held a day-long symposium on theatre in the townships with leading local black theatre-makers (Symposium, 2008).

2. This article does not include discussion of a play which revolves around the freedom struggle for reasons of length. The struggle era (1961–1990) occurred before the theatre-makers whom I encountered were born. There are, however, many of the plays made recently in the townships which deal with the freedom struggle. Some examples are Old Brown Joe (2005, 2006, 2007), Red Song (2006) and The Red Winter (2008).

3. In ‘The pillars of apartheid’ Michael Stent (1994, p. 54) succinctly discusses the key pieces of legislation of the Nationalist government which effected racialized and spatialized segregation of land, jobs, amenities, education and opportunities. In short, these were the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949), the Population Registration Act (1950), the Group Areas Act (1950), Natives (Abolition [sic!] of Passes and Co-Ordination of Documents) Act (1952), the Separate Amenities Act (1953), the Bantu Education Act (1953), the Extension of University Education Act (1959), the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959) and the Bantu Homelands Act (1970). The point about these laws is they did not only affect people's experience, they confined and defined the relations of people of colour to geographical space and place, as well as to race, education and employment.

4. Nevertheless, research has shown that the economic circumstances of Khayelitsha residents are better than those in the majority of the areas of the Eastern Cape (Ndegwa et al. 2007).

5. ‘Wattle and daub’ is shorthand for a building method extremely prevalent in the Eastern Cape throughout the apartheid years and still practised in isolated areas. A circular scaffolding with a peaked roof is constructed out of hewn wood, usually the trunks and branches of the pervasive alien Wattle trees – originally from Australia. Then this scaffolding is rendered solid with ‘bricks’ of soft mud mixed with grass and cow dung to bind it. When the walls are complete, the whole is plastered with soft mud which dries in the sun. The pitched roof is thatched.

6. At the time of the performances I employed past students of theatre who speak both English and Xhosa as my research assistants. During the performance one sat alongside me, translating in whispers as the play progressed. Together we watched the videos and they refined their version of the ‘text’. In the case of Masimbambisane's play, I also asked Mluleki Sam, the leader of the Masimbambisane organization, to translate the video of the performance again in preparation for this article. At the time when the play was made he was in Sweden, so was not involved in the making process. The video recordings made at the live performances are far from perfect. In almost every case there was no second opportunity to re-record a performance. Sometimes the performers are inaudible on the recording. Single words and even whole interchanges are lost. Sometimes the protagonist is not visible in the video because they are not ‘in shot’; so the rendering of the plays offered in this article is what was achievable under the circumstances. For a more detailed explication of this process, see Morris, 2010, pp. 63–69.

7. The New King by Ingqayi Educational Theatre Project in Nyanga East was presented at the Ikhwezi Theatre Festival, Baxter Theatre Centre in March 2007. This was a story of a traditional monarch whose two wives were barren, but finally he is rewarded with not just one son but twin boys. Against the wishes of the traditional healer he makes the eldest king and the second twin the ruler of the land.

8. In Xhosa culture it is traditional to dance in age and gender cohorts.

9. Praise poetry is an established part of the repertoire of performance forms in Xhosa culture. Praise singers, iimbongi, are usually men and will usually mostly praise (or criticize) leaders in the community on important occasions. But each individual may also construct their own praises, drawing upon their clan and family names as well as their notable features.

10. On Monday 4 November 2013 I saw Bash or be Bashed, written and directed by Thoko Ntshinga with a cast of youths from local townships. The play was developed from material arising in interviews with groups of young people attending workshops in local black townships on the problems of substance abuse in high schools, arising, the play implied, from the youths having no goals but present enjoyment. The correspondences with what Lethu represents in Ukuzingisa eGugulethu are obvious.

11. The play reveals that the girl Thabisa, thrown out of school because of her pregnancy, is working at the shebeen so the drunk knows her well; he is not prescient, although Lethu surmises that he might be.