Acting Africa

Abstract

I begin with two images of African actors. The first, from Asinamali by the South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema (1985; Plate 23), shows a group pose drawn directly from protest theatre—angry men in prison khaki, with fists clenched, bodies tensed in readiness and, one can assume, voices raised against the invisible but all too palpable forces of apartheid. The second, from the centenary celebrations of the American Board Mission in South Africa (1935; Plate 24), portrays the ‘smelling-out of a fraudulent umthakathi’ (which can be translated as diviner or trickster), which were followed, on this occasion, by other scenes portraying the civilizing influence of European settlers. While the first offers an image of African agency and modernity in the face of oppression, the second, with its apparently un-mediated reconstruction of pre-colonial ritual and, in its teleological juxtaposition of ‘tribal’ and ‘civilized’ custom, seems to respond to the quite different terms set by a long history of displays, along the lines of the Savage South Africa Show (1900), in which the authenticity of the Africans on stage was derived not from their agency but by their incorporation into the representation of colonial authority.