A comedy about Apartheid
Last night I went to see a play, a comedy, on of the lives of people under apartheid, called “Woza Albert”, named in reverence to the 1950s ANC leader Albert Luthuli (and nobel peace prize winer). Even living on South Africa, it is easy to forget what living in apartheid must have been like.
It stared only two actors, adept at doing their own sound effects (they did a great train), accents and dashing behind a clothes rail at the back of the stage to grab another costume. The play gave a montage of characters and a snapshot of their lives under the constraints of the regime.
What the play showed again and again, is apartheid's devastating impact on people’s psychology; how they saw themselves and how they felt. The play’s gambit was that there was news that Christ had made a second coming and arrived in South Africa. As the play progressed the characters eventually met him, or at least who they thought was him, and ask him to fulfill their hopes. Having seen how unfair and tough their lives were, you expected emotional pleas along the lines of ending apartheid. But, for example, the two guys who were making bricks for their “baas” asked Christ for “more bricks please - let it rain down with bricks”, the women eating food in the rubbish hoped to, “find more chicken in the bins, let the while man put some more chicken in his rubbish”. Despite the plays numerous attempts at making light of the whole situation (including mooning the crowd repeatedly in one scene), overall it was heart sinking, and tragic. In fact the idea that people were making comedy of it made it much more uncomfortable and shocking.
Seeing the play explains better than most history books, why Steve Biko, a student from Durban, leader and intellectual heavy weight of the South African black consciousness movement is often heralded as the other side of coin to Mandela. Mandela addressed the structural barriers of apartheid, he gave people back their civil liberties; Biko addressed the psychological impact of apartheid, he challenged the real lived experience of feeling inferior. It is that inferiority complex that also explains, in part, why there was little resistance to apartheid for years. And, most worrying, its a psychology that people still talk about remaining.
I was surprised to see a play that billed itself as a comedy about apartheid. Is it now OK to laugh about apartheid? I didn’t really get an answer, this comedy still had a dark and disturbing underbelly!
It stared only two actors, adept at doing their own sound effects (they did a great train), accents and dashing behind a clothes rail at the back of the stage to grab another costume. The play gave a montage of characters and a snapshot of their lives under the constraints of the regime.
What the play showed again and again, is apartheid's devastating impact on people’s psychology; how they saw themselves and how they felt. The play’s gambit was that there was news that Christ had made a second coming and arrived in South Africa. As the play progressed the characters eventually met him, or at least who they thought was him, and ask him to fulfill their hopes. Having seen how unfair and tough their lives were, you expected emotional pleas along the lines of ending apartheid. But, for example, the two guys who were making bricks for their “baas” asked Christ for “more bricks please - let it rain down with bricks”, the women eating food in the rubbish hoped to, “find more chicken in the bins, let the while man put some more chicken in his rubbish”. Despite the plays numerous attempts at making light of the whole situation (including mooning the crowd repeatedly in one scene), overall it was heart sinking, and tragic. In fact the idea that people were making comedy of it made it much more uncomfortable and shocking.
Seeing the play explains better than most history books, why Steve Biko, a student from Durban, leader and intellectual heavy weight of the South African black consciousness movement is often heralded as the other side of coin to Mandela. Mandela addressed the structural barriers of apartheid, he gave people back their civil liberties; Biko addressed the psychological impact of apartheid, he challenged the real lived experience of feeling inferior. It is that inferiority complex that also explains, in part, why there was little resistance to apartheid for years. And, most worrying, its a psychology that people still talk about remaining.
I was surprised to see a play that billed itself as a comedy about apartheid. Is it now OK to laugh about apartheid? I didn’t really get an answer, this comedy still had a dark and disturbing underbelly!
posted by Dave at 9:56 AM
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