4 - Race matters in South African theatre

Summary

I am Black / Black like my mother / Black like the sufferers / Black like the continent.

(Mthuli ka Shezi, Shanti, 1972)

We all know that we are fragments / of a common segment / Cemented by the blood of a common struggle / We are a people with a common destination / We are the children of Shaka.

(Matsemela Manaka, Pula, 1982)

… the ‘black man good, white man bad’ syndrome is as dated in our theatre as last month's fish and chip wrappings.

(Raeford Daniel, 1992)

My strength is with black people … if you have the numbers you have the power.

(Mbongeni Ngema, 1996)

Race and nation in the theatre

Since 1976 a great deal of published opinion about South African theatre has drawn attention to the themes of racial discrimination and African nationalism. In debating these themes, theatre scholars and critics have neglected other themes as well as important developments in the forms and styles of performance which have emerged in the last quarter of the century. But there is an area of that debate which, it seems to me, can be enriched by yet further discussion, especially at a time when the euphoric response to South Africa's political miracle has begun to be replaced by more pragmatic debate about sustaining political transformation.

The history of the struggle for liberation from apartheid reflects an historical tension between at least two broad fronts: between on the one hand a majority non-racial tradition, and on the other a range of racially focused separatist traditions which, for convenience, can be described here as Africanist.