Postcolonial South Africa Research Articles

Comment

Comment Loren Kruger We all know where South Africa is, but we do not yet know what it is. —Albie Sachs This statement by Albie Sachs—former anti-apartheid activist, Constitutional Court judge, and most recently chair of the commission setting up a National Arts Council in South Africa—was first uttered at a meeting of the African National Congress in exile in 1989, but it is still apt today. The unifying energy of the anti-apartheid struggle has dissipated under the pressure of daily life and mundane politics. Without the binding force of a common enemy, discrepancies in economic and social conditions, as well as cultural conflict, are too powerful to permit easy appeals to a united national culture. In particular, the moral conviction that sustained several generations of theatre activists and cultural workers since the 1930s and that culminated in such memorable political theatre events as Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972), Woza Albert (1981), and Born in the RSA (1985) has given way to a variety of not-quite-compatible political persuasions and cultural practices. “Blessed with a perfect confusion,” in the words of one character in Sophiatown (1986), the play that dramatized that township’s urban and intercultural legacy, theatre in South Africa is now more diverse but also more conflicted. The provocative image on our cover, for instance, would have been unthinkable in the days of struggle. Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys’s appearance as Winnie Madikizela Mandela draped in a Nelson Mandela T-shirt does not simply present the spectacle of an “Afrikaner-Jewish drag queen” impersonating the woman known as “mother of the nation” (at least until she was dismissed from the Cabinet). Its hybridity also challenges South African audiences and performers to think skeptically about national icons and founding fictions when competing appeals for national, regional, and ethnic affiliation continue to echo across the country. The articles in this special issue on “Performing (in) South Africa,” take readers beyond (and before) the vivid and familiar images of anti-apartheid theatre to critical investigations of other performances with national aspirations, past and present. Most of the authors are practitioners as well as critics; all are based in South Africa. Researchers on the ground are in a unique position to map uncharted terrain and to open up new perspectives on well-trodden areas. In “Masques, Monuments, and Masons,” Peter Merrington draws on the theoretical work of Benedict Anderson and Jean-François Lyotard to analyze the South African Pageant of Union in 1910, and the local drama of the enmity and reconciliation of the “white races,” Boer and Briton, against the international backdrop of Masonic ritual and British imperial iconography from Canada to the Antipodes. Complementing Merrington’s historical investigation of the invention and performance of national tradition in a partially postcolonial South Africa is Jacqueline Maingard’s essay, “Imag(in)ing the Nation.” Her account of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Rugby World Cup, hosted by South Africa in 1995, shows the remarkable continuity of motifs and format between this “postapartheid” celebration of the “rainbow nation” and the pageants celebrating Union (1910) and the Tricentenary of Jan van Riebeeck’s landing at the Cape at the height of the apartheid era (1952). Taken together, these essays illuminate the unacknowledged legacy of South Africa’s conflicting pasts as well as the remarkable achievements of the present and so remind us of the difficulty as well as the necessity of coming to terms with those pasts in the present. Hazel Barnes’s essay, “Theatre for Reconciliation” directly addresses the roles that theatre and ritual may play in working through the past in the present. Her account of her production of Desire, a play by anthropologist David Lan about reconciliation in the wake of the Zimbabwean struggle for independence, draws on Victor Turner’s reflections on social drama as well as the interaction of student actors and spectators from different backgrounds. She shows how the performance and reception of conflict and redress in the theatre might foster the kind of thought and feeling necessary for reconciliation, while acknowledging that the translation of theatrical into social action is a difficult and delicate operation, especially in strife-torn...

The same difference: Jesusa Palancares and Poppie Nongena’s testimonies of oppression

Two women's texts from postcolonial countries, Mexico and South Africa, on different continents show surprising correspondences in subject matter and style. Elena Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte Jesús mío (Till I meet you, my Jesus) and Elsa Joubert's Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (The journey of Poppie Nongena) examples of testimonial writing, both address issues of gender and politics in an innovative way. They combine autobiography and biography to render a dramatic account of social injustice despite their disparate backgrounds/cultures and subtle differences in style. In comparison, the texts not only affirm the validity of women’s writing and contribute to its enrichment, but also constitute a valuable contribution towards the formulation of a general feminist aesthetics. In fact, they illustrate conclusively that comparative literature fulfils a vital function in the exploration and interpretation of women's literature from different cultures.