Morena's second coming
2012-01-22 10:00
How naughty can theatre creators be?
Of all the mischievous probabilities out there, conjuring up (Morena) Jesus Christ’s second coming in apartheid South Africa must have been quite a shock, even for the jaded censors in Marais Viljoen’s administration.
In 1981 Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon wrote Woza Albert!, a play that has become one of South Africa’s most enduring pieces of theatrical satire, and had apartheid’s enforcers hopping mad as an added bonus.
It’s back at the Market Theatre for its umpteenth rerun, only this time the head of state is unlikely to be spooked.
In fact, far from it. After all, President Jacob Zuma was very clear that “the ANC would rule until Jesus comes back”.
No doubt the Nats who finally bowed out in 1994 thought they were durable; now Zuma has to face the reality that Morena’s back and so he’s on borrowed time.
But what if Morena (seSotho for the Lord) did come back now? What would he do? And how would ordinary people respond to his reappearance?
These are some of the questions that Prince Lamla, the director of the play’s current season, says fascinated him about the story.
This same stack of questions has also helped to keep Woza Albert! relevant over the years, Lamla argues.
Lamla is a controlled character, but gives off subtle animated moments when making his points. “These days we even hear stories of people killing themselves because they can’t get an ID book,” he says, clasping his hands behind his neck dramatically.
However, Lamla concedes that he had to tinker with its potentially dated elements.
“Though many young people will relate because it’s a setwork for matric, my vision was to make it feel and sound fresh.”
Woza Albert! was created in the apartheid context, but most of the issues it raises are still with us today.
“Like the divide between rich and poor,” he says.
To illustrate the play’s continued relevance, Lamla references a scene in the play where Morena’s arrival is at hand, and the media are interviewing
ordinary citizens about what they would like the Lord to do for them, personally.
A child working as a meat vendor to hostel dwellers wishes Morena would help him go to school, and that people would buy his meat.
Similarly, a homeless old lady dreams that there’ll be more – and more tasty – food in white people’s rubbish bins for her to scavenge.
The one thing none of them asks for, though, is a passbook.
In the apartheid context, government ministers are not to be upstaged either.
With Morena expected to return by landing in South Africa courtesy of SAA, apartheid critics are told to eat their hearts out because “he has chosen us”.
They don’t seem to realise he’s coming not to endorse their act, but to clean it up.
All the roles in this brilliant satire are played by two dextrous actors, Mncedisi Shabangu and Hamilton Dlamini.
Theirs is a script with a basic structure and a simple story told in a series of 26 scenes. Its sinew lies in their electrified delivery. They go through a succession of quick-action vignettes of gruelling physical theatre.
Woza Albert! dramatises the hypotheses of encounters imagined by Zuluboy (Shabangu) and his travelling mate, Bobbejaan (Dlamini), on a train.
They represent the everyman of South African society, and are as relevant today as they were three decades ago when the play was first performed.
The opening scene sketches the duet humming and busking as self-employed musicians plying their craft on the streets of Joburg.
Here they launch their first parody of the many absurdities of apartheid with a refreshing sharpness.
As Zuluboy encounters a police officer, they reveal a basic yet consequential dilemma: who should sign the passbook of self-employed artists who work on the street, far away from their so-called homelands?
Apparently no one knows. So the unfortunates are thrown in jail to do some quasi-slave work in the apartheid prison industrial complex.
This early in the show, the incredible chemistry between the two actors becomes evident.
Lamla says he knew he could count on it being there. “I saw them working together on Ten Bush, and with William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company in Woyzeck on the Highfield,” says the 30-year-old director.
Lamla believes there’s much more than the actors’ chemistry going on here.
“I was born the same year the play was created, in a town called Mbala in Pietermaritzburg. That’s actually where Mbongeni Ngema is from, you see?” he says with a smile.
Then he confesses to have wanted to do Woza Albert! since he first encountered the play a decade ago.
It was performed by Tony Kgoroge and Siyabonga Twala in 2002 at the Market Theatre, and on that occasion the pair were directed by Sello Maake ka Ncube.
“It was amazing,” says Lamla who then had just moved to Joburg from Qwaqwa where his family had settled.
About his choice of leading men, Lamla says: “I have a rich history with both of them and I knew I could trust them to do it the
way I wanted it done.”
He indicates that he first met Shabangu back in Qwaqwa when the actor was giving acting workshops there. Lamla also became Shabangu’s student in 2002 at the Market Lab. He’s worked with Dlamini on a number of projects too.
Lamla has, between then and now, co-directed plays like Coal Yard in 2006 and Blackbird in 2007. The plays landed him residences as a director-in-training at the Spilhaus in Vienna and Live Theatre in England. He believes all this was preparation to ultimately be able to do Woza Albert!
“I couldn’t do it back then. After graduating I needed experience,” he says.
So it’s been 10 years since the script was taken to the Market Theatre boards, a decade since they toyed with the notions of resurrecting Morena into the South African body politic, and how apt that it happens as the ANC celebrates its centenary.
So we can only wait and see how the head of state and his posse will react this time – since, as witnessed in Woza Albert!, the Nats back in the play’s struggle days misguidedly thought Morena would be on their side.
This is until he is seen joining striking workers at a brick making factory. After that, Morena’s fate is sealed. One of the workers is bribed to alert the police to Morena’s whereabouts.
After his arrest he flies out of the 10th floor window of John Vorster Square Police Station, a benefit of being the Lord. After his second arrest he walks across the water from Robben Island back to the mainland.
Now this immaculate weaving together of apartheid reality with biblical narrative is sealed with a series of resurrections of struggle heroes.
First, Robert Sobukwe, Lillian Ngoyi, Bantu Biko and then it’s woza Chris Hani, and ultimately woza Albert, Zulu for “come Albert”, in reference to the Nobel Peace Prize winning leader of the ANC, iNkosi Albert Luthuli.
Oh and the infamous apartheid pass office in Joburg was located on Albert Street. So, yeah!
This year’s rerun perhaps poses this question: having been resurrected would these struggle-era saviours rejoin the ANC of today? Let’s hope our current crop of self-proclaimed heroes of the people give that some serious thought.
» Woza Albert! is on at the Market Theatre until February 5
- City Press