On not giving up — An interview with Fatima Dike

Abstract

This interview was recorded on 22 October, 1994 and updated in 1996. It represents an ongoing dialogue between Dike and Flockemann, and also sums up some of the most compelling stories Dike has to tell about her experiences as a woman in South African culture ‐ on the brink of major change ‐ and in South African theatre. At the beginning of the interview, Flockemann and Dike talk about Dike's comment (to Stephen Gray in 1977) that her entry into theatre was the result of hearing of the brutal rape and murder by a migrant worker of a seven year old township girl, to which Dike responded by saying, ‘I had something to say to my people about that’. Flockemann asked whether she still thought of the same people as ‘her people’ now, after the elections, to which Dike replied: ‘Yes, because the effects of apartheid policies have taken a serious toll on township family life, and this situation has not improved, despite the election’. In the interview, these themes are developed within the frame of in‐depth interview on Dike's politics and writing; themes discussed include Dike's strong feelings on the displacement of traditional values within her community ‐ demonstrated by her amusing account of irritation with ‘coconuts’ (children who go to white schools and speak mainly English) and her pleasure that her youngest daughter has nevertheless discovered that: ‘If s cool to be black’. Dike remarks of her daughter: ‘You can't take the township out of her’, but Flockemann notes that she moves between two worlds. Both worlds are explored in this interview, which is an edited version of a follow‐up interview (the first was held with Fatima Dike and Mavis Taylor with a group of students at the University of the Western Cape, held in August 1994).