Die Jogger is Andre P Brink’s first play in 20 years. ADAM HAUPT saw it, and was suitably depressed
Andre P Brink’s Die Jogger, takes us into the psyche of Colonel Killian (Chris van Niekerk), a security policeman. We meet the colonel in a mental hospital shortly after he dreams of torturing Vusi Manyin during a traditional apartheid-style interrogation.
The detainee (Tony Kgoroge), who was subsequently found guilty of a capital crime, returns to haunt the colonel in a manner that is reminiscent of Banquo’s appearance before Macbeth in Macbeth by William Shakespeare. In fact, the ward sister (Nandi Nyembe) has much difficulty getting him to keep calm and go to bed. But, alas, “Macbeth hath murdered sleep and Macbeth shall sleep no more.”
The colonel’s paranoia about being murdered by “them” is heightened by the fact that Vusi, who is mute, keeps trailing him imploringly. During his interaction with the ward sister it becomes clear that he has no interest in acknowledging the pain which she, as a black woman, experienced during the apartheid years.
Instead, he chooses to revel in the story of the Afrikaners’ dispossession under colonial rule and dismisses the narrative of her ties to the rural landscape of his childhood. This dismissal is indicative of his refusal to atone for his crimes against humanity as well as his determination to cling to a history which, as he later discovers, has betrayed him.
Apart from the existential metaphor of the jogger which is threaded throughout the play, director Ilse van Hemert explores a variety of metaphors which abound in Brink’s layered and complex creation. One example is the contents of the jar at his bedside. The colonel holds forth to the ward sister that it contains “Napoleon se piel” (Napoleon’s penis). However, it becomes clear that it contains Vusi’s tongue. It is equally clear that Killian needs to possess it.
Later in the play when Vusi eventually catches the colonel off guard by speaking, he asks him why he had removed his tongue. The answer is simply that he had the power to do so. This, Vusi points out, is where Killian’s repetitive defence that he was merely following the minister’s orders falls flat because this act of violence was an expression of his, and not the minister’s power.
Thus the tongue comes to signify the phallus, an expression of the colonel’s power and the detainee’s powerlessness, which he needs to possess at all times.
But the tongue, which doubles up as “Napoleon se piel”, also signifies Napoleon’s eventual defeat and emasculation by dismemberment.
From this perspective the jar’s contents is not the phallus, but an albatross around his neck. In order for Killian to be freed, he needs to return the tongue/phallus to Vusi and atone for what he has done. It is for this reason that Vusi tells him: “That tongue is your limit, not mine.”
Ilse van Hemert makes optimum use of her cast, among whom Chris van Niekerk stands out precisely because he takes pains to avoid letting Killian slip into a two- dimensional figure akin to Eugene Terreblanche.
Subtle metaphoric structures are produced by the way in which Kobus Rossouw’s intuitive lighting exploits the set, which often facilitates brief surreal moments during the performance.
Toward the end of the play, space is also used quite suggestively as Killian’s increasing isolation in the wake of his daughter’s departure and the minister’s denials is alluded to as the minister’s mysterious and largely comical representatives begin to clear the stage. By the end of the performance we are left with a lone figure decorated in medals.
Die Jogger is on at the Nico Theatre in Cape Town before moving to Die Klein Karoo Festival