/ 10 May 2010

Forgotten hero takes centre stage

Forgotten Hero Takes Centre Stage

One of the most provocative works on sale at this year’s Joburg Art Fair was a humorous reworking of the immortal last words of slain Umkhonto weSizwe guerrilla Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu.

The collage showed the silhouette of a guerrilla — a gun slung across his back — with the caption: “Tell my people that I love them and that they should continue the struggle for Chivas Regal, Mercs and kickbacks.”

Of course, Mahlangu didn’t say exactly that — who stares into the abyss before death and remembers a Mercedes-Benz? The work is a parody of Mahlangu’s final words: “Tell my people that I love them and that they should continue the struggle.”

Mahlangu, charged with murder and terrorism in 1977, was hanged two years later at the age of 23. He is resurrected in Aubrey Sekhabi’s new production, Kalushi: The Story of Solomon Mahlangu, at the State Theatre in Pretoria.

Kalushi is the latest instalment in Sekhabi’s work on milestones in the struggle. It follows Mantolo: The Tenth Step, about another MK guerrilla, Sibusiso Sanele Masuku, staged last year. Later this year Sekhabi will direct Silverton Siege, which is about MK combatants who were confronted on their way to a mission and took refuge in a bank where they took hostages. In the ensuing shoot-out with the police some of the combatants and hostages were killed. Another work to come will be Rivonia Trial (no need for an explanatory note here).

Mahlangu as a subject can be an irritant to those betraying his legacy. As we rush to acquire this and show off that, Mahlangu serves as a stern rebuke.

Sekhabi’s project at the State Theatre serves another function — the venue is staging the kind of plays that normally wouldn’t find a place in commercial theatre. It’s not that these are bad productions but they just don’t serve the commercial imperatives that drive the entertainment industry.

We have to remember that Sekhabi is, after all, the artistic director of the State Theatre, a government-funded institution.

The two-hour play was co-written with Mandla Dube.

Mahlangu joined the ANC in 1976 and skipped the country a year later to be trained as an MK combatant in Angola and Mozambique. On his return, he and his companions ran into the police in Johannesburg. In the ensuing battle two civilians were killed and another two were wounded. Lucky Mahlangu (no relation) escaped, but Solomon Mahlangu and Motloung weren’t so lucky.

Mahlangu was charged with murder and terrorism but Motloung, who was badly beaten up by the police, was declared unfit to stand trial. Solomon was convicted and sentenced to death. He was refused leave to appeal by both the Rand Supreme Court and the Bloemfontein Appeal Court and was executed on April 6 1979.

Zenzo Ngqobe, in a stirring performance, plays Mahlangu. The play has poignant moments and the audience broke into spontaneous applause several times at the end of scenes. This was in no small part owed to dancer Dada Masilo’s evocative choreography and Noluthando Lobese’s costumes, which recall the essence of the 1960s and 1970s.

The play’s graphic portrayal of the sardine-like conditions on the trains and the brushes vendors have had with brutal cops are memorable.

The protagonist’s circumcision, complete with melodic singing, colourful traditional garb and a rich use of language, is a high point of the play. But there was a funereal air hanging over the event, given the knowledge that, soon after, he would be dead.

The play is driven by the recollections of Mahlangu’s peers and friends — played by actors. In this way the nationalist figure, living on the outer edges of our memory, is brought back to centre stage, where he belongs.

One feels that some of the scenes — the court scene, for instance — could have been shortened or even removed. I felt it was overlong and infused with loads of legal sophistry and could have been cut — we know that Mahlangu won’t get justice and certainly not from apartheid judicial officers whose minds are already made up. It doesn’t add much to the play. There’s no taut moment and no tingling nerve. We know his fate.

A member of the audience I spoke to afterwards suggested that perhaps Sekhabi should have written a play that began with Mahlangu’s execution and moved to the present. That would suggest a history of the future instead of a history of the past.

There is an episode at the start of the play in which a character wonders whether some of today’s squalor is what freedom is all about.

Sekhabi’s project is laudable but it’s fraught with the contradictions that have bedevilled all repositories and racounteurs of struggle memories. One is not always sure where such commendable projects end (those intended to prevent South Africa’s heroes from falling into some amnesiac hole) and where they begin to provide succour to self-serving politicians.

Kalushi: The Story of Solomon Mahlangu runs at the Arena Theatre at the South African State Theatre until May 23