New territories: theatre, drama, and performance in post-apartheid South Africa

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Notes

1 Ubuntu has predominantly been defined as a practice of humanism or human-ness that emphasizes ideas of togetherness. The philosophy is associated with the phrase, “I am because you are” which encapsulates the spirit and practice of ubuntu. However, Leonhard Praeg warns that the practice of ubuntu requires applications of “critical humanism that are contextually located to consider the relations of power that systematically exclude certain people from being considered human in the first instance” (Praeg, 2014, p. 12). The proposition by Praeg challenges the simplistic identification of ubuntu as a practice of human-ness and togetherness, but one that considers its emergence against the backdrop of a socially and politically exclusionary history (of Black people) in South Africa during apartheid.

2 The rainbow nation is a philosophy of social cohesion coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and endorsed by former Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki to encourage nation-building social and cultural processes in post-apartheid South Africa.