The Uses of Nostalgia: Drama, History, and Liminal Moments in South Africa

Abstract

Timed to coincide with the first universal election and the official end of white minority rule in South Africa, the Market Theatre's revival of Sophiatown might have given pause to those who rushed to define the election as the liminal moment of all liminal moments: South Africa's final entry into a postcolonial era. Developed by the Junction Avenue Theatre Company (JATC) after the unrest of 1984/85 which made the townships "ungovernable" but did not dislodge the government, the play is set in 1950s Sophiatown, which, as the last mixed freehold suburb of Johannesburg, was a primary target for demolition by the architects of segregation. In encounters between a young Jewish woman and several Sophiatown denizens — writer, gangster. activist, landowner, and others of African and mixed descent — Sophiatown offered its audiences a glimpse of a somewhat integrated but hardly harmonious community. Performed in 1986 and again in 1994, the play revived what might be called the myth of Sophiatown. Part ghetto, part cultural bazaar, a meeting place of black radicals, bohemians of all colors, and organized and disorganized criminals, Sophiatown was an actual but thoroughly imaginary place that came to symbolize a fragile moment of racial tolerance and cultural diversity, crushed by the apartheid juggernaut and later buried under the weight of more militant times.