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Theatre and Performance in Alternative Histories of Steve Biko's Death in Detention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

Jesse Bucher
Jesse Bucher*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Roanoke College
*
Email: [email protected]
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Extract

I still thought [Biko] was shamming. I had had experience before with this tendency.

—Colonel Goosen, 1977 inquest

There was also a BBC reconstruction of the inquest with a well-known actor who played Sydney Kentridge—which I said that he wasn't as good as Sydney Kentridge, they should have had Sydney play himself.

—George Bizos, 13 May 2008

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 182 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The American Society for Theatre Research, Inc. 2020

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Footnotes

This article has benefited from insights offered by Bongani Diko, Premesh Lalu, Marlis Schweitzer, and two anonymous readers.

References

Notes

1 Hilda Bernstein, No. 46—Steve Biko (London: International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1978), 52.

2 George Bizos, oral interview by the author, Johannesburg, South Africa, 13 May 2008. Bizos referred to the 1984 television movie The Biko Inquest, which was a filmed version of a play discussed below. Sydney Kentridge was played in the production by Albert Finney, who also codirected.

3 Ibid.

4 Indeed, in the late 1970s, playwrights directly borrowed inquest testimony to stage performances about Biko's death in South Africa and the British Isles; in the early 1980s performances of Peter Gabriel's song “Biko” dramatized inquest evidence in haunting tones to describe the conditions of Biko's final days; and the 1987 film Cry Freedom reenacted the drama of both Biko's death and the subsequent inquest to expose the atrocities of the broader apartheid system.

5 The two plays of 2008 were Judas’ Diary by Bongani Diko, and Biko: Where the Soul Resides by Martin Koboekae, both discussed later in this article.

6 Davis, Tracy C. and Postlewait, Thomas, eds., Theatricality (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

7 Barish, Jonas, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Hutchison, Yvette, “South African Theatre,” in A History of Theatre in Africa, ed. Banham, Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 312–79Google Scholar; Cole, Catherine M., Performing South Africa's Truth Commission: Stages of Transition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 The literature on theatre, especially popular theatre in South Africa is vast. See Coplan, David, In Township Tonight!: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Kerr, David, African Popular Theatre: From Pre-Colonial Times to the Present Day (London: James Currey, 1995)Google Scholar; History of Theatre in Africa, ed. Banham; Larlham, Peter, Black Theater, Dance, and Ritual in South Africa (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Davis, Geoffrey V. and Fuchs, Anne, eds., Theatre and Change in South Africa (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996)Google Scholar; Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu, Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa (London: Zed Books, 1985)Google Scholar; Kruger, Loren, The Drama of South Africa: Plays, Pageants, and Publics since 1910 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Orkin, Martin, Drama and the South African State (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and a special issue on “Performance and Popular Culture,” ed. Liz Gunner, published in Journal of Southern African Studies 16.2 (1990).

9 Mda, Zakes, “South African Theatre in an Era of Reconciliation,” in The Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader, ed. Harding, Frances (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 279–89Google Scholar, at 282.

10 Bozzoli, Belinda, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

11 Cole, Catherine M., “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Theatre Journal 59.2 (2007): 167–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 167.

12 Cole, Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, 65.

13 See ibid., especially chap. 2, “Justice in Transition: Political Trials 1956–1964.”

14 Morgan, Marcus and Baert, Patrick, “Acting Out Ideas: Performative Citizenship in the Black Consciousness Movement,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 6.3 (2018): 455–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 458.

15 Morgan, Marcus, “Performance and Power in Social Movements: Biko's Role as a Witness in the SASO/BPC Trial,” Cultural Sociology 12.4 (2018): 456–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morgan and Baert.

16 See Law and Performance, ed. Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018).

17 See Morgan and Baert; and Ngwane, Zolani, “Mandela and Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela, ed. Barnard, Rita (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 115–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Fa3.2.1–Counsel's submissions on behalf of the Biko family, A193: Ernest Matthew Wentzel Papers, 1953–1986 (hereinafter EWP), Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

19 “‘Postmortem Serial No. 1379/77’–Stephen Bantu Biko” from Fa3.2.7–further postmortem reports, EWP. The postmortem report does not define whether or not the police should have identified the injuries on Biko's body, but it does list them in a measure of detail that such a projection was readily made. Johann Loubser, the man who conducted the postmortem exam, also testified during the inquest, and described the extensive injuries and plausible explanations of their origins.

20 Goosen was quoted in Fa3.2.1–Counsel's submissions on behalf of the Biko family, EWP.

21 Barish, 66.

22 Hutchison, “South African Theatre.”

23 Kruger, 125.

24 Hutchison, “South African Theatre,” 359.

25 Kruger, 148.

26 Hutchison, “South African Theatre,” 359.

27 Magaziner, Daniel R., The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 136Google Scholar.

28 Ackerman, Alan and Puchner, Martin, “Introduction: Modernism and Anti-Theatricality,” in Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage (Houndmills, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan), ed. and, Ackerman Puchner, 1–17Google Scholar, at 2.

29 Nicholas Ashford, “World Interest in Case Surprises S Africans: Biko Family's Lawyer Scores in a Formidable Task,” The Times (London), 21 November 1977, 9.

30 Cole, Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, 37.

31 Bizos, George, No One to Blame?: In Pursuit of Justice in South Africa (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 1998), 54Google Scholar.

32 Bizos, oral interview, 13 May 2008.

33 Cole, Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, 64.

34 Blair, Jon and Fenton, Norman, The Biko Inquest (London: Rex Collings, 1978)Google Scholar; Essa, Saira and Pillai, Charles, Steve Biko: The Inquest (Durban: Upstairs Theatre, 1985)Google Scholar.

35 Desmond Tutu, “Foreword,” in Essa and Pillai, Steve Biko: The Inquest, 6–7, at 6.

36 Ibid., 6–7.

37 Essa and Pillai, 30.

38 Cole, Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, xii.

39 Amnesty Hearing of Harold Snyman, held on 10 and 11 September 1997 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth; case number: 3918/96. In Truth & Reconciliation in South Africa: The Fundamental Documents, ed. and annot. Erik Doxtader and Philippe-Joseph Salazar (Claremont, South Africa: New Africa Books, 2007), 201–2; italics in original. The case text is also available online at www.justice.gov.za/trc/amntrans/pe/snyman.htm, accessed 16 September 2018.

40 Lalu, Premesh, The Deaths of Hintsa: Postapartheid South Africa and the Shape of Recurring Pasts (Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2009), 9Google Scholar.

41 Hutchison, Yvette, South African Performance and Archives of Memory (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), 31–2Google Scholar.

42 Bongani Diko, oral interview by the author, Makhanda (Grahamstown), South Africa, 4 June 2008.

43 Refilwe Boikanyo, “Backstage with Martin Koboekae,” Times Live, 11 May 2010, www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2010-05-10-backstage-with-martin-koboekae/, accessed 6 January 2020.

44 Edward Tsumele, “Biko Play Back on Stage at Last,” Sowetan, 17 April 2008.

45 Martin Koboekae, Biko: Where the Soul Resides, typescript posted online at www.martinkoboekae.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&pop=1..., accessed 16 September 2008. The playwright's website has long been inactive—the domain name was dropped at the end of 2012—so this unpublished script is no longer available there. The present article draws on a printout made in 2008.

46 Nkosinathi Biko, oral interview by the author, Johannesburg, South Africa, 19 May 2008.

47 Diko, oral interview, 4 June 2008.

48 Ibid.