The Junction Avenue Theatre Company's Sophiatown and the Limits of National Oneness
A new post-conflict chapter characterized not by bigotry but by national
unity is being written in South Africa. Playing a key role in the rewriting,
representation, and remembering of the past is the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission which, in 1996, started the process of officially
documenting human rights violations during the years 1960-1993. This
nation-building discourse of reconciliation, endorsed by both the present
government and South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC),
has been a crucial agent of a new collective memory after the trauma of
apartheid. But the confession of apartheid crimes proved beneficial mostly for
perpetrators in search of amnesty rather than a genuine interest in a
rehabilitated society. Thus, the amnesty system did very little to advance
reconciliation. It is for these reasons that the South African TRC was cynically
regarded by its critics as a fiasco, a "Kleenex commission" that turned human
suffering into theatrical spectacle watched all over the world. There is, in
fact, little that is "new" or "post" in a country that retains apartheid
features of inequity. What is often overlooked in this prematurely celebratory
language of reconciliation is South Africa's interregnum moment. Caught between
two worlds, South Africans are confronted with Antonio Gramsci's conundrum that
can be specifically applied to the people of this region: an old order that is
dying and not yet dead and a new order that has been conceived but not yet born.
And in this interregnum, Gramsci argues, "a great variety of morbid symptoms
appear" (276). Terms like "new South Africa" and "rainbow nation," popularized
by former president F.W. de Klerk and Desmond Tutu, the former chairperson of
the TRC respectively, then, not only ignore the "morbid" aspects of South
Africa's bloody road to democracy, but also inaccurately suggest a break with
the past. This supposed historical rupture belies the continuities of apartheid.
The past, then, continues to infringe on the present in often-disturbing ways.
But the question of how history is remembered is an interesting one. In South
Africa, a pervasive rhetoric of amnesia permeates the social fabric. Indeed, as
Ernest Renan asserts, the process of forgetting is "a crucial factor in the
creation of a nation" (11). For the victims of apartheid, however, there is too
much to remember. A case in point is the recent commemoration of the forced
removals of thousands of people from the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown.
Fifty years ago, the apartheid government, threatened by a location which was a
microcosm of what South Africa could be like without the apartheid shackles,
bulldozed homes that were in the way of "progress." Today, Sophiatown is, in the
minds of many, a time and place of mythical proportions, often remembered with
much nostalgia. For David Graver, who includes the Junction Avenue Theatre
Company's 1986 play, Sophiatown, in his anthology titled Drama for a
New South Africa, the memory of Sophiatown is resurrected because it
"contemplates the possibilities of a world after apartheid," in which "people
from very different cultural backgrounds can forge a common social order" (24).
This article, a critique of the dominant discourse of reconciliation, will
examine critical responses to Sophiatown as well as consider the
relevance of this play for the "new" South Africa. Put differently, how much of
an achievement is Sophiatown and to what extent is its focus on
reconciliation a model for the future?
To answer the first question, there is no doubt that Sophiatown, a play
set in the 1950s and performed in the mid-1980s, shows the creative vision of
playwrights who, independently of institutional discourses, wrote against the
grain. In his twenty-page introduction, Graver finds solace and hope in the very
performance of a play like this during a period characterized by the military
occupation of black townships and thousands of apartheid-related deaths. But
four years before former president Nelson Mandela's release from Robben Island,
this was a time when apartheid structures were crumbling, as Graver accurately
points out. The Immorality Act of 1957, for example, was repealed and marriages
could, for the first time, occur across colour lines. These changes
notwithstanding, "the White minority government [still] refused to entertain any
notion of sharing power with the Black majority" (Graver 24). Graver's
hopefulness, then, is sustained by a play that transcends these difficult
material conditions.
While Martin Orkin's comments on the play do not evoke Graver's "vibrant hybrid
culture" (24), he nonetheless describes Sophiatown as "perhaps amongst
the most successful of the post-1976 plays produced by a number of dissident
ruling-class as well as oppressed subjects" (198). Unlike other township plays
written about this period, which "[were] mostly unable to move beyond the
parameters permitted by prevailing discourse" (199), Orkin observes that this
play was better able to articulate "a national culture, to construct or recover
what might be called a people's history and myth about its past" (198). Both
Graver's and Orkin's evaluations rightly suggest a time when the illogic of
apartheid was defied through the mixture of various ethnic groups in places like
Sophiatown where blacks had freehold rights. But whether or not the national
culture privileged by Orkin is worth emulating is the other question to be
explored.
With regard to how the play came about, journalist Jim Bailey explains in
Malcolm Purkey's introduction that Sophiatown was inspired by actual
events set in motion by two black South African writers: "Nat [Nakasa] and Lewis
[Nkosi who] set up house together [in Sophiatown] and advertised for a Jewish
girl to come and live with them. Despite all the legislation of South Africa,
they obtained one." Bailey explains that he "met the sporting lass... [who] was
good enough looking but very tall and thin" (Graver 25-6). Notwithstanding the
objectification of a woman reduced to body measurements - a point I will elaborate
later - Purkey created the play in conjunction with members of the multiracial
JATC. Although the members of this theatre company were fascinated by the
account of a mysterious woman who became an important part of the play's
inspiration, the following questions were still asked: "Who could she [the
Jewish 'girl'] possibly have been? Why did she take up the challenge?" (Graver
26) These questions remain unanswered, but the "she" who answers Nakasa's and
Nkosi's odd advertisement is, in the play's rendition of events, Ruth Golden. As
Purkey clarifies, however, in writing the play they "deliberately refrained from
pursuing too far the actual facts of that event, attempting, rather, an
imaginative reconstruction" (26).
Aside from the fact that Purkey edited the story independently of the
multiracial company when he "was sent off for six weeks to shape the material
into a working script" (Graver 27), there is a sense in which Purkey wants to
establish that these "imaginative reconstructions" were not too far from the
actual truth. He explains: "we were ....aware of our enormous responsibility to
the people of Sophiatown - we had to strive to remain true to the spirit of the
times. And so we started a series of interviews with representative figures from
the period" (26). It is this "spirit of the times" that needs serious
examination.
Before exploring the play's limited national oneness, it is important to
elaborate on the historical significance of a production that captures the high
emotions of a people rendered helpless in the face of massive government
apparatus. The play dramatizes the 1955 bulldozing of a Johannesburg location
called Sophiatown, sandwiched between white suburbs. Tom Lodge, who dedicates a
chapter of his survey of black politics since 1945 to "The Destruction of
Sophiatown," describes the show of force displayed by the eight government
lorries and "two thousand armed police" (108) which descended on Sophiatown on
the dawn of a rainy day. Spanning a period of five years, with the final
resettlement of mixed-race people completed in 1960 (108), these forced removals
signaled the "triumph" of apartheid. The all-white suburb that replaced
Sophiatown, Triomph - an Afrikaans word for triumph - was evidence of the apartheid
state's blatant maliciousness. There were many such removals, and millions were
displaced in the process.
Lodge places the razing of Sophiatown in the context "of a much wider social
process in which many old-established inner-city African communities were
uprooted and reconstructed under the supervision of the authorities" (93). Aside
from their proximity to white neighbourhoods, the Western areas - which included
Sophiatown, Martindale, and Newclare - were, as Lodge explains, increasingly
viewed as "hotbeds of African resistance" (99). In fact, the most organized
branch of the ANC had its headquarters in Sophiatown (105), a situation which
likely made the white minority government extremely uneasy.
Aside from political activists, Sophiatown was home to many different types of
people. Writer and critic, Lewis Nkosi, who lived in Sophiatown, has described
his years there as a "fabulous decade" (16-17). For him, this now-famous
location represented "a time of infinite hope ...possibility [and] great ferment"
(16-17). But critics such as Loren Kruger have questioned this depiction and
have rather suggested Sophiatown as "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 " (60). More important, she maintains that Nkosi's
"fabulous decade" shared by Sophiatown writers and residents like Bloke Modisane
and Don Mattera, was the non-representative view of "only a small,
English-speaking [black] literate elite" (64). Given the divergent views of
Sophiatown, it is crucial to be specific about which Sophiatown is being
referred to. Contrary to Purkey's one-dimensional focus, there were seemingly
many Sophiatowns. The residents of this famous town, who were not all writers
and intellectuals, were themselves not one.
In "remain[ing] true to... [Purkey's historic] spirit of the times," the play's
opening scene evokes the memory of the "blood [which] ran in the streets of
Sophia" (29) as the powers-that-be cleared the area for the "Boere's dream of a
white-only world" (29). Lulu, a student living in the Sophiatown home where the
bulk of the action takes place, reads a "special notice" (59) left for her
mother and home-owner, Mamariti. Specified in the note are the "terms of the
Native Resettlement Act of 1954" (59) requiring the vacating of the premises.
The new location is the area of Meadowlands, "twenty miles from town" (64),
where Sophiatown's black residents would be accommodated. But surprised by a
removal that, counter to the notice occurs "three days early" (7), the residents
can only hurriedly collect their piles of packed boxes and "a lifetime of
furniture and possessions" (75).
Displayed in the play is Kruger's "fragile moment of racial tolerance" rather
than Nkosi's "fabulous decade." And contrary to Orkin's reading, there is very
little evidence of characters' transcendence of the restrictive parameters of
the day. The black characters in this play are stereotyped while Ruth Golden,
the Jewish "girl" who answers an advertisement placed by a journalist named
Jakes, is a more well-rounded character. She is the play's catalyst and voice of
reason, even as she is mercilessly objectified by the men of the Sophiatown
home. But despite this objectification, she is somehow elevated as the play's
teacher who defines how racial reconciliation will be achieved within the scope
of the play.
Sophiatown's eight characters, who supposedly exemplify Orkin's "racial
tolerance,"
live in a "cramped but comfortable [house], suggesting care and warmth" (28).
The stage directions indicate that each character's relative space is "defined
by his or her things" (28). Mamariti, the owner of the home under discussion, is
a Shebeen Queen, a seller and brewer of alcohol. Her trade provides the money
needed to send her daughter Lulu to school. On the morning of the forced
removals, Mamariti is quite assertive against the "five tall Dutchmen" (75) who
invade her home in the very early hours of that fateful day. Fahfee, a political
activist in his forties, is the first to bring the news that "homeowners in
Sophiatown must sell their property to the government" (35). Mamariti's son,
Mingus, is a gang member in his late twenties whose job description involves
"robbing people on trains" (64). Although his acts of robbery are in the main
directed against white oppressors, he remains an unlikable character who is
abusive to both his "good-time" black girl-friend, Princess, and his
shoe-obsessed and "barely articulate" (28) mixed-race side-kick, Charlie. Ruth
Golden, as I have indicated, is the Jewish woman from the white suburb of
Yeoville who agrees to become part of Jakes' experiment in racial tolerance and
reconciliation.
As the intellectual voice of the play, Jakes deviates somewhat from the stereotypical characterization of Shebeen Queens, criminals, and "good-time girls." In his opening monologue addressed to the audience, he reveals the central role of stories in his life. When we are first introduced to him, he is searching for "something new, something different" (29). Ruth turns out to be this novelty, which will facilitate his new story. But before she arrives, his journalistic efforts are confined to writing love letters for Mingus in exchange for the details of the latter's gang-related escapades. When Ruth arrives, she becomes the subject of Jakes' article about the dynamics of living with a white woman in Sophiatown. The article about Ruth Golden, "a Sophiatown phenomenon" (53), which is an important "break" (57) for Jakes, is the first of four stories to be later published in the "native" magazine Drum. What the article reveals, however, is the shallowness of a journalist who is difficult to take seriously. In fact Jakes, who is quite self-effacing, refers to himself as a "would-be intellectual, living in a wasteland, with no power to change anything except words - and a fat lot of good they do!" (46) Part of the article on Ruth Golden reads:
Mixing it up in Softown. Dig that crazy white girl living it up in Gerty street! Pshoo!Was there a scramble when word went round Sophiatown that a Jewish girl was living at Mamariti's Diamond shebeen...A Jewish girl living in Softown! It's not possible. Is she crazy as a bedbug?...Well, folks, let me introduce you. She is none other than Ruth Golden. Height: five foot three inches...A pert but comfortable figure. Curious bright eyes...Could she be an eager intellectual? A wide-eyed jazz maniac? A demure but daring do-gooder? Or is it just an advertising stunt?... Hey no man, Ruth Golden's just a gal with a golden heart. (53)
There seems to be a lack of sincerity in the words of a writer who has given up. But it is possible that the creators of the play thought that they were realistically portraying not only the crippling effects of a censored society but also Drum magazine's well- documented "relentless machismo" (Nixon 20). But this overt surrender does not allow Jakes to develop very effectively as a character.
In terms of Jakes' personal life, there seems to be very little commitment
there as well. His relationship with Ruth can only grow at a very superficial
level. Although Lulu tells Ruth that Jakes is in love with her, the reader does
not see any evidence of this. Perhaps, again, it is just a sign of those times:
under apartheid, love across colour lines had to be an underground affair, a
point driven home by Jakes when he repeatedly says, "White skin, it's a fatal
attraction" (43). Since he cannot have Ruth, the next best thing is to scorn
her.
But Ruth, who is unbelievably tolerant, takes her objectification in stride.
While she contests her presence in an article where she does not speak, she is
more concerned about her height, which is an inch taller than what Jakes
documents. But she does show curiosity at another time when she is caught by
Mingus trying to read one of Jakes' stories in the middle of the night. What is
even more curious is that Jakes' Drum piece on Ruth's presence in
Sophiatown may have made both blacks and whites aware of the possibilities of
racial integration. But as Lulu asserts, Drum was not a magazine widely
read by whites. And I doubt that Sophiatown denizens would have been as excited
as Jakes is over the visit of a single white woman to their neighbourhood. Aside
from the fact that the men in the location think that Ruth is sexually
appealing, Jakes' article over-simplifies race relations, especially black
men's implied fascination with white women.
The often-passive and ever-patient Ruth eventually contests Jakes'
condescending attitude: "Look at me," she says, "You write about me, but you
never look at me properly. Try to see beyond your own fictions. It's me, Ruth
Golden, the girl with the golden heart, pert, comfortable, curious. Why don't
you look at me properly, Jakes. Just once?" (66). In her plea, Ruth challenges
not only Jakes' belittling descriptions of her but also the laws of the day
that prohibited such close proximity between different races. But it seems that
Ruth, who subsequently develops strong feelings of love for Jakes, is the one
who is caught up in fictions. Sexual relations between black males and white
women were dangerous affairs in apartheid South Africa. A cursory glance was as
risky as it was in the segregated southern states of America where black men
were lynched for their "roving" eyes. At the root of this paranoia, in both
countries, are the myths of black men's exaggerated sexual endowments, which
could perhaps explain Jakes' reluctance to involve himself with a white woman
who could possibly cry rape. However, there is an exceptional character in the
play who comes close to fitting the stereotype of a violent black male. After
having his sexual advances turned down by Ruth, Mingus calls her a bitch, "a
piece of rubbish!" (69). The other housemates are never this aggressive; they
are simply curious.
Although Ruth quickly becomes "part of the family" (43), as Jakes states, her
colour renders her suspect. Lulu finds her "a strange European lady nobody
understands" (48). Fahfee, on the one hand, demands that Ruth work for her
acceptance and aggressively insists that she "earn...[her] trust." On the other
hand, Mingus, who is generally violent both in deed and language, reminds Ruth
that in the war for liberation it will be her blood that will be spilt (51).
These hitches in racial acceptance and reconciliation are to be expected at a
time in history when blacks and whites were at loggerheads. Although the racial
reconciliation that is being tried out in the play interestingly reverses the
object of curiosity - which is not the usual black person othered in his or her
own country but a white woman put under a microscope and on unfamiliar ground - I
do not read this subversion as a radical and new South African moment of racial
tolerance. Arguably, the JATC members were reversing a stereotype of a black
object or other. However, Ruth's otherness is temporary. Even as she is
objectified, she is, for the most part, what we all should be: enabled subjects.
But the colour of her skin affords her certain privileges, and in this position
she is able to define the parameters of reconciliation.
Ruth defines reconciliation by privileging cultural fusion or Graver's
already-mentioned "vibrant hybrid culture." She influences her new "friends" to
the point that they eventually agree that they are one. This topic of cultural
fusion is brought up when Ruth is provided "lessons on how to survive in
Sophiatown" (43). During these lessons, which are delivered by Jakes, Farfee and
Mingus, she responds to Jake's question about the differences between whites and
Jews: "What's Jewish? I don't know what the hell I am. I'm Jewish on Mondays,
I'm white on Tuesdays, I'm South African on Wednesdays, I'm a Democrat on
Thursdays, and I'm confused on all the other days. Mostly I'm just confused"
(46). On this particular day, the general confusion in the house is intensified
by Ruth's surprise, her "home-made Jewish Friday night wine" (55). As the jolly
characters now under the influence of alcohol commune and "break bread" with one
another, they participate in a cultural exchange that supposedly exposes their
affinities. What they discover is that Hebrew sounds like tsotsitaal, an urban
street slang that blends Afrikaans and African languages. There is also a
conflation of amadlozi (African ancestors) with an allegedly-similar
Jewish ancestor, the ghost of Elijah (55). While some differences become
apparent in terms of the number of gods worshipped in each religion, these,
however, eventually become inconsequential. What is of concern, especially to
Jakes, is the blessing of a "perfect confusion" that will help to engender a
"brand new generation" (56).
Even before the characters discover a shared culture, Ruth instantly feels quite
comfortable in Sophiatown. She is shamelessly pampered by her hosts who "want
life to be easy for the lady" (45). They go to great lengths to provide her with
a bath they initially do not have in the house. When one is eventually found,
Ruth is embarrassed by the special treatment and insists on wanting "to be like
everybody else" (41). Aside from the fact that the unused bath ends up as a
brewery because she refuses to use it, Ruth remains of another world. The
Sophiatown residents, then, are far from being one.
The polarization of the Sophiatown denizens is evidenced by the alcohol and
money that Ruth brings into her new home. Her stay in Sophiatown, in the first
place, is on condition that she pay the "steep" (36) rent required by Mamariti.
So, the cultural fusion suggested by Graver goes awry. Ruth, whose parents are
unaware of her whereabouts, also has an upper-hand in terms of her undisclosed
reasons for accepting the curious advertisement that brings her to Sophiatown.
While she is acquainted with the secrets of surviving the streets through a
language lesson (43), it is only much later that she reveals to Princess, after
being asked, that what brings her to Sophiatown is "curiosity" (41). While the
truthfulness of her answer is appreciated, what is confusing is her lack of
openness when Lulu, at another time, asks her a similar question. This time she
responds curtly: "Let's just say I've got my own stories to write" (49).
Ruth's motivation for coming to Sophiatown remains oblique even as the play
ends. What is clear is what Ruth does not find in Sophiatown. Apart from her
feelings for Jakes which are not reciprocated, she does not find a healthy
hybrid culture. There are too many schisms between her reality and that of the
others. A movement towards "cultural confusion" only serves to reveal a strained
reconciliation that is not achieved in the play and has not been achieved yet in
a new South Africa where whites are generally not interested in the language and
culture lessons Ruth tries to immerse herself in. This, I believe, is the play's
revelation - a revelation that Graver perhaps misses in his zeal to celebrate the hybridity of his new South Africa.
Thus, cultural hybridity means naught if Africans themselves are not reconciled
to their own cultures. Jakes is clearly a culturally-alienated man. His
veneration of Bach and Russian novels is not a dilemma in and of itself.
However, his over-zealous love for English gained from "our church schools"
needs a postcolonial critique that is obviously not available to him. So it is
left up to Ruth - who says, "but you don't want to lose your own language" (62) - to
shed light on the situation. While this "lesson" elevates Ruth to the level of
teacher, it serves to re-establish Jakes' lack of depth as a misinformed student
steeped in colonist discourse. But insight is given to Lulu, who knows just how
rotten Bantu education is. Unlike Jakes, she refuses colonial mimicry by
satirizing William Wordsworth's canonical poem about "a host of golden
daffodils" (Wordsworth 33) - a poem divorced from her hard reality.
Ruth, then, is often the belle of the ball. She is the one who sets the
parameters of the plot and fundamentally moves it forward. It would be useful at
this point to remember that Ruth initially enters a space where she is not
expected. When she is eventually embraced, it is because of the material
improvements she will make to the home. The romance of Sophiatown,
however, is not sustainable. Ruth exits the play at a moment when the apartheid
government was brutally crushing any semblance of racial fusion.
At the play's end, as the characters are forcibly removed from Sophiatown by the
South African State, Ruth is shunned by Jakes, who treats her quite unfeelingly.
Aside from the fact that her attraction to Jakes is not made explicit during the
course of the play, she is willing to make enormous sacrifices for love. Jakes
rejects her offer to shut the door on her family and explore the possibilities
of living with him in another country (74). He snaps: "I'm not letting some
white girl put her hands around my heart when she feels like it...we lost what
little chance we had" (74). Jakes' response here is rather curt. But it can be
read positively as an important moment of resistance by a man whose words and
actions during the course of the play suggest someone who has lost direction.
And unlike Frantz Fanon's black man who cannot resist the glamour of whiteness,
at the end of the play Jakes knows what he wants. He is not going to "marry
white culture, white beauty, white whiteness" (63). Perhaps at a different time,
if true agency was his, a functional relationship could have developed. But this
is not the case in the play. The environment, which is extremely unhealthy, will
not allow a state of normalcy.
Although Jakes does attempt to find Ruth at a later stage, the meeting seems
impossible (77). His compassion towards her at this point suggests that his
earlier insensitivity was perhaps misdirected. So Ruth exits the play
unceremoniously. But during the course of the play, she is far from
insignificant, even as Jakes insists that she'll "always be looking from the
outside" (65).
While Fahfee, in his political optimism, holds fast to the belief that writers
like Jakes can help "make a new South Africa" (60), the characters in
Sophiatown do not seem to know how to realize this transformation. For a
variety of reasons, these characters are not able to achieve a genuine
reconciliation, a point that Graver misses. As in current discourses of the
"new" South Africa, the architects of the boundaries of reconciliation are
white. But an argument can be raised that Jakes rejects Ruth and perhaps sets
the limits of reconciliation himself. At the end of the play, he too has agency
enough to determine the trajectories of his dealings with her. But in other
areas Jakes simply does not have Ruth's power. On such unequal footing, then,
reconciliation is aborted.
Graver, who reads Sophiatown more optimistically, celebrates the
cross-fertilizations of the new South African theatre. Characters like Ruth
Golden, who outwit apartheid's obsessions with racial hierarchies, are held up
as exemplary South Africans interested in the erasure of differences. But it is
important to point out that this ideal of national unity is not Graver's alone.
It is, in fact, the stated policy of the ruling African National Congress. There
are, necessarily, many South Africans who take issue with this language. In his
essay, "Guilt and Atonement: Unmasking History for the Future," Njabulo Ndebele
expresses serious reservations about the so-called "new" South Africa celebrated
by critics like Graver. As far as he is concerned, the phrase "new South Africa"
is "fraught with much meaning and meaninglessness all at once" (337). He
observes that the root of the problem is the fact that "South Africans don't
know one another as a people" (336). Rather, there's a cultural "stand-off"
(337), with those who still hold the keys of the South African economy, the
white South Africans, "prescribing the manner in which the new friendship [and
reconciliation] is to be carried out" (337). This article makes similar
observations about the cultural strangers in Sophiatown and in
contemporary South Africa.
While optimists such as Graver rush towards a theorization of South Africa's
globalized hybrid cultures where blacks and whites are happily merging, cynics
display not only a necessary caution but also a suspicion of the usurping
language that encourages racial blindness. While current president Thabo Mbeki
voiced his reservations about the ANC's language of oneness - specifically his
assertions in a 1998 speech about a racially and economically divided two-nation
state (71) - there are those who insist on a healed "nation" even in the face of
its glaring wounds.
In terms of the theatre of the new South Africa, Coleen Angove privileges a
"reconciliation theatre," "in which the reality of a polarized society is defied
to present human beings from all racial and cultural groups, communicating,
sharing and understanding one another's problems" (44). Like Angove, Ian
Steadman, who calls for a unified South African literature, is interested in
ignoring the divisions of South Africa. His plea for a united South-African art
that does not dwell on black and white camps, especially given that "the battle
against apartheid has, to all intents and purposes, been won" (Blumberg and
Walder 26), however well-intentioned, is perhaps too optimistic. In his opinion,
labels such as "black theatre," "black people," and "black aesthetic" "reflect
not a nationalistic image of the politically defined State but a nativist image
of a racially defined essence" (33). But in an indirect response, Maishe Maponya
asserts that "as long as blacks do not have equal rights there'll always be
black theatre" (Steadman 104). Critics such as Maponya imply that South Africans
of colour have gained political rights but whites have all the wealth. This
generic South African literature thus feigns a state of oneness.
Thankfully, there are many critics in South Africa who see a problem with
skipping crucial steps in a rush to get to the much-desired new South Africa. In
an interview with Ashraf Jamal about the "artistic and cultural vision" of an
emerging nation, several of these critics resist Angove's contrived theatre of
"reconciliation." As far as they are concerned, reconciliation is not yet being
performed. Mannie Manim's response points to the societal fractures of a new
South Africa which could potentially take "many wonderful directions" (Nuttall
and Michael 198). But she also argues that "the previously empowered [white
South Africans] are living in denial. Emigration is a fact" (197). Jamal argues
in a similar vein: "It is impossible today to speak of ‘the full dimensions of
the new country and new people.' There is nothing whole here" (Nuttall and
Michael 198). Unlike Graver, who does not qualify the new in the new South
Africa, these critics necessarily "do not ignore the apartheid era," neither do
they "look beyond the narrow concerns of the anti-apartheid struggle to more
abiding cultural realities" (1) as Graver seeks to do. The reduction of the
anti-apartheid movement to a "narrow concern" by Graver is astounding.
In a climate where "apartheid has passed" (1), Graver asserts that "South
African theatre deserves continued attention for its innovative variety of
hybrid dramatic forms rich in vivid language, forceful performance styles and
incisive social functions" (1). Apparently, hybridity not only makes a new South
Africa accessible to the outside world but also makes it relevant in terms of
its "universal lessons and appeal" (1). Graver's starting point is clearly not
South Africa but the globalized culture as a whole. So Dennis Walder is right in
his criticism of Graver's primary valorization of an American audience, which
perhaps explains his general carelessness with the spelling of characters' names
(Walder 673). There are also problems with the translation of Zulu words.
Important in South Africa today are not the currently-fashionable creolized
identities but rather a focus on other reconciliations. To date, there has been
a lopsided focus on reconciliation between black and white South Africans. As
evidenced by Sophiatown, characters like Jakes need to come home,
culturally, because in a country like South Africa colonization has exacerbated
the alienation from African cosmologies. Attempts by some black South Africans
to reconnect with an African past are often viewed suspiciously by those who
associate Afro-centrism with an exclusive black consciousness. A case in point
is Daniel Herwitz's response to African praise poetry, which he finds
"over-the-top" and "so eminently unreadable, and so highly distasteful" (51).
In terms of what Sophiatown can add to current discourse, perhaps a good
place to start would be an appreciation of an awkward reconciliation tried out
under difficult circumstances. Also important is a culturally introspective
approach that does not turn the spotlight solely on Ruth Golden, but on other
characters in the play who are in serious need of reconciliation and healing.
Jakes, for example, needs to come to terms with his cultural alienation. And
Mingus, whose violence is extreme, gives the present South Africa a chance to
contend with a long history of colonial violence which was often brought into
the home - with girls and women being the usual victims. Glamorizing Mingus'
gangster life is counter-productive in a country that is already so troubled.
With regard to the school lessons that Lulu finds so detestable, students in the
new South Africa no longer have to suffer the poison of Dr. Verwoerd's inferior
Black education that can be blamed for Jakes' colonial mentality. But
linguistic colonization nonetheless continues in a country where English and
Afrikaans retain control. Then there is Charlie, Mingus's coloured human "dog"
and sidekick who, because of his cultural difference, cannot join his "master."
He is stabbed to death at the old Sophiatown home. His character offers an
important opportunity to theorize vexed black/coloured relations. Graver may
take issue with this, but evidently the struggle continues.
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