Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: Hegemony, Identity and a Contested Postcolony (Contemporary Performance InterActions) 3030745937, 9783030745936

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
1 Introduction: Contested Forms, Spaces and the Politics of Representation in Zimbabwean Theatre—A Historical Perspective
Part I: From Colonial to Decolonial Theatre: Contested Forms
Part II: The Politics of Representation
References
Part I From Colonial to De-colonial Theatre: Contested Forms
2 Colonial Zimbabwean Theatre, Cultural Production and the Interplay with Rhodesian Power and Discourse
Introduction: Discourse and Power
Theoretical Moorings and Structures of Rhodesian Discourse
The Future of Rhodesian Discourse
References
3 Negotiating Whitehood: Identity and Resistance in Rhodesian Theatre 1950–1980
Introduction
The Significance of Settler Resistance
Authorised Version and Official Values of Rhodesia
Interculturalism/Contamination as Resistance in Settler Theatre
Conclusion
References
4 Transformative Complexity of Found Objects in Devised Zimbabwean Theatre
Introduction
Brief Background to the Play
Design Approach in the Devising Process: Half Empty, Half Full
Semiotic Transformation of Scenic Elements in Devising Half Empty, Half Full
Performative and Semiotic Dimensions in Three Public Performances
References
5 Amakhosi Theatre Training (1990–2000): An Exercise in Syncretism
Introduction
Theatre Training and Performance in Post-Independence Zimbabwe: A Short Overview
The History of Amakhosi Theatre Productions
Amakhosi Performing Arts Workshop
The APAW Modules
Conclusion
References
6 Contestation in Postcolonial Drama: Residual and Emergent Consciousness in Zimbabwean Theatre at Independence—NTO and ZACT
Introduction
Dominant, Emergent and Residual Consciousness
Theatre and the Policy of National Reconciliation
The National Theatre Organization (NTO) and Residual Consciousness
Community-Based Theatre as Emergent Consciousness
The Question of a National Theatre and the Great Debate
Playing Betwixt and Between
Conclusion
References
7 Creating Counter-Public Sphere(s): Performance in Zimbabwe Between the Influence of Mugabe and Western NGOs
Politics and Theatre in Zimbabwe
Theatre and the Public Sphere
Between the Mugabe Regime and Western NGOs: Theatre and the Public Spheres in Current Zimbabwe
Counter-Public Sphere I: Rooftop Promotions in Harare
Counter-Public Sphere II: Amakhosi Theatre, Bulawayo
References
Part II The Politics of Representation
8 ‘I Was Never a White Girl and I Do Not Want to Be a White Girl’: Albinism, Youth Theatre and Disability Politics in Contemporary Zimbabwe
Introduction
Historical Background to Disability Issues at the University of Zimbabwe
Negotiating Fractures and Tensions Within the Community of Disability
Creating Critical Consciousness via the Rehearsal Process
Negotiating Ableist Spectatorship
Conclusion
References
9 Popular Theatre as a Struggle for Identity and Representation in Matabeleland: 1980 to the Present
Introduction
Popular Art and Hegemonic Struggles in Matabeleland
The Politics of Popular Culture Management in Zimbabwe: The Emergence of New, Dominant Structures
Socio-Political Commentary Through Theatrical Works
Beyond Amakhosi Theatre Production: The Growth of Alternative Theatre in Zimbabwe
Theatre, Music and the Post-independence Zimbabwean Economic Situation
Conclusion
References
10 Harnessing the Whirlwind: Hybridity, Memory and Crisis in Theatre During Zimbabwe’s Operation Murambatsvina
State, Censorship and Chihwerure
Hypocrites
All Systems Out of Order
Conclusion
References
11 Towards a Democratic Protest Theatre in Zimbabwe: Vhitori Entertainment’s Protest Revolutionaries (2012)
Introduction
Protest Revolutionaries—Background
Theoretical Framework
Character Diversity as Empowerment in Protest Revolutionaries
Mother as a Resistive Subaltern
Subaltern Semiotic Resistance: Chikaka and Cde Rebel
The Reversal of Identities of Victimhood
References
12 Who is Indigenous? Freeing Indigeneity from a Time Warp
Introduction
Venda and Shangaan Performance Troupes
Who is Indigenous?
Indigeneity
Performing Culture
Cultural Participation
Cultural Appropriation
Staging Culture
Exhibiting Humans: Reconsidering the GZU Dance Troupes in Performance
References
Index

Citation preview

CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE INTERACTIONS SERIES EDITORS: ELAINE ASTON · BRIAN SINGLETON

Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe Hegemony, Identity and a Contested Postcolony Edited by Samuel Ravengai · Owen Seda

Contemporary Performance InterActions

Series Editors Elaine Aston, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK Brian Singleton, Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Theatre’s performative InterActions with the politics of sex, race and class, with questions of social and political justice, form the focus of the Contemporary Performance InterActions series. Performative InterActions are those that aspire to affect, contest or transform. International in scope, CPI publishes monographs and edited collections dedicated to the InterActions of contemporary practitioners, performances and theatres located in any world context. Advisory Board Khalid Amine (Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco) Bishnupriya Dutt (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) Mark Fleishman (University of Cape Town, South Africa) Janelle Reinelt (University of Warwick, UK) Freddie Rokem (Tel Aviv University, Israel) Joanne Tompkins (University of Queensland, Australia) Harvey Young (Northwestern University, USA)

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14918

Samuel Ravengai · Owen Seda Editors

Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe Hegemony, Identity and a Contested Postcolony

Editors Samuel Ravengai Department of Theatre and Performance Witwatersrand University Johannesburg, South Africa

Owen Seda Department of Performing Arts Tshwane University of Technology Pretoria, South Africa

ISSN 2634-5870 ISSN 2634-5889 (electronic) Contemporary Performance InterActions ISBN 978-3-030-74593-6 ISBN 978-3-030-74594-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Picture by Mariola Biela for Wits Theatre This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my parents, Mkuleko Philemon Nzwura and Grace (Racy) Ravengai for teaching me the value of education and who continue to inspire me in most things (Samuel). To my late parents Jaison and Emetina Seda-Dube, you were the inspiration upon which everything rests (Owen).

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge several people who supported us in realising this collection. We were pleasantly provoked by one of our former students, Dr. Kelvin Chikonzo, who petitioned us to do what other founding professors had done in their respective disciplines. Being the first generation of academics who started the department of Theatre Arts (now the Department of Creative Media and Communication) at the University of Zimbabwe, we felt that we certainly needed to do something. Thank you to Kelvin, who provided the original idea! Many thanks also to the students, professional performers and theatre organisations in Zimbabwe and South Africa who have created work with us and the other theatre makers on whose work our research and that of our contributors is based. These include Cont Mhlanga and Amakhosi Theatre, Daves Guzha and Rooftop Promotions, Daniel Maposa and Savanna Trust, Tafadzwa Muzondo and EDZAI ISU, James Mukwindidza and Vuka Africa, Danai Gurira, Patience Tawengwa and Almasi Collaborative Arts, Silvanos Mudzvova and Vhitori Entertainment, Wits Theatre and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. Our gratitude also goes to our publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, for believing in this project and our erstwhile peer and editorial reviewers who played a prominent role in ensuring that the collection lived up to a high standard of scholarly engagement. Special thanks to Adrienne Pretorius for proofing and indexing this collection.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We appreciate the role of the University of Zimbabwe, Theatre Arts Department and its production house, The Beit Theatre, as well as our current theatre and performance departments at the University of the Witwatersrand and Tshwane University of Technology for providing the space to carry out our intellectual project. The University of Zimbabwe will continue to occupy a special place in our hearts for being the institution, which incubated and nurtured most of the contributors to this collection as students, lecturers, research fellows and visiting scholars. We also wish to thank staff and students at the following universities who all played a role in our academic development by hosting the two of us over the years as staff, students or visiting academics: the University of Arizona, University of Cape Town, California State Polytechnic University Pomona, Africa University, the University of Jos, the University of Botswana and the University of Pretoria. Many thanks to the generous photographers and designers who gave us permission to use their designs and photographs, Mariola Biela, Daniel Maposa, Shadreck Dzingayi, and Joy Wrolson. Finally, our heartfelt gratitude goes out to our respective families whose unconditional love and support helped to sustain us as we worked tirelessly on this collection.

Contents

1

Introduction: Contested Forms, Spaces and the Politics of Representation in Zimbabwean Theatre—A Historical Perspective Samuel Ravengai and Owen Seda

Part I 2

3

4

5

1

From Colonial to De-colonial Theatre: Contested Forms

Colonial Zimbabwean Theatre, Cultural Production and the Interplay with Rhodesian Power and Discourse Samuel Ravengai

25

Negotiating Whitehood: Identity and Resistance in Rhodesian Theatre 1950–1980 Kelvin Chikonzo and Samuel Ravengai

47

Transformative Complexity of Found Objects in Devised Zimbabwean Theatre Tafadzwa Mlenga and Nehemiah Chivandikwa

69

Amakhosi Theatre Training (1990–2000): An Exercise in Syncretism Nkululeko Sibanda and Julia Yule

89

ix

x

6

7

CONTENTS

Contestation in Postcolonial Drama: Residual and Emergent Consciousness in Zimbabwean Theatre at Independence—NTO and ZACT Owen Seda Creating Counter-Public Sphere(s): Performance in Zimbabwe Between the Influence of Mugabe and Western NGOs Julius Heinicke

111

131

Part II The Politics of Representation 8

9

10

11

12

‘I Was Never a White Girl and I Do Not Want to Be a White Girl’: Albinism, Youth Theatre and Disability Politics in Contemporary Zimbabwe Chiedza Adelaide Chinhanu, Nehemiah Chivandikwa, and Owen Seda

151

Popular Theatre as a Struggle for Identity and Representation in Matabeleland: 1980 to the Present Mandlenkosi Mpofu, Cletus Moyo, and Nkululeko Sibanda

169

Harnessing the Whirlwind: Hybridity, Memory and Crisis in Theatre During Zimbabwe’s Operation Murambatsvina Joy L. Wrolson

193

Towards a Democratic Protest Theatre in Zimbabwe: Vhitori Entertainment’s Protest Revolutionaries (2012) Kelvin Chikonzo

221

Who is Indigenous? Freeing Indigeneity from a Time Warp Pedzisai Maedza

237

Index

263

Notes on Contributors

Kelvin Chikonzo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Creative Media and Communication, at the University of Zimbabwe, where he teaches Performance Historiography and Post-dramatic Theatre. He holds a Ph.D. in theatre from the University of Zimbabwe. He is mainly interested in the relationship between theatre and democracy in Zimbabwe and this is evidenced in the following publications: Theatre Research International 41(3) 2016, published by Cambridge Press, Cogent Arts and Humanities 5(1) 2018 and Critical Arts 33(1) 2019, the latter two published by Taylor and Francis. He recently co-edited a book project entitled National Healing, Integration and Reconciliation in Zimbabwe (2019) published by Routledge. Chiedza Adelaide Chinhanu is a Ph.D. researcher in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the creative practices and potentialities of sharing lived experiences with women in prisons. It is fully funded by the University of Leeds Interdisciplinary Faculty Research Council. Chinhanu is an alumna of the Canon Collins Scholarship. She holds an M.A. in Applied Drama and Theatre Studies from the University of Cape Town and a B.A. Honours in Theatre Arts from the University of Zimbabwe. Her research interests lie in participatory performances, cultural criminology, gender and performative citizenship. Recent publication includes Ubuntu in Education: Towards equitable teaching and learning for all in the era of SDG 4 2020, published by NORRAG. xi

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Nehemiah Chivandikwa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Creative Media and Communication at the University of Zimbabwe. He is a former head of the department of Creative Media and Communication. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. from the University of Zimbabwe. His current research focuses on applied media development commutation with a particular emphasis on theatre, television, participatory video and community radio. Chivandikwa has been involved in several projects in applied theatre on gender, political violence, disability and rural and urban development. Chivandikwa has a particular interest in the use of participatory theatre and media technology in the context of impactorientated research on marginalised groups such as women, youths and disabled communities. His most recent publications are in Research in Drama Education (RiDE) 25(4) 2020 published by Taylor and Francis, Journal of Sustainable Development (2020) published by Canadian Centre of Science and Education. Julius Heinicke is Professor of Cultural Policy and holds the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy for the Arts in Development, at the University of Hildesheim since March 2020. He studied Cultural and Theatre Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he completed his doctorate on theatre and politics in Zimbabwe. He went on to conduct research in the Theatre Studies department at the Freie Universität Berlin before accepting a professorship in Applied Cultural Studies at Coburg University. Since 2017 he has headed up the research project “Interfaces between high culture and cultural education”. His thesis on diversity in the theatre, “Sorge um das Offene: Verhandlungen von Vielfalt mit und im Theater” was published by Theater der Zeit in 2019. Julius Heinicke has spent many years working on arts and research projects with colleagues in Southern Africa, particularly South Africa and Zimbabwe. Pedzisai Maedza is a Newton International Fellow at the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures, University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He holds a Ph.D. in Performance, Memory and Genocide Studies from the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the Institute for Anthropology and African Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg UniversityMainz, Germany. He is the author of Performing Asylum: Theatre of Testimony in South Africa (African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, 2017) in addition to numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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in international journals on Performance and Cultural studies some of which include the following: The Drama Review 63(4) 2019 published by Project Muse, African Identities 17(3–4) 2019 and Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies 43(2) 2017, all published by Taylor and Francis. Tafadzwa Mlenga is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Social Work degree at Dalhousie University in Canada and hopes to pursue a career as an Art Therapist. She is formerly a Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe in the Department of Theatre Arts (now Department of Creative Media and Communication). She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Theatre Arts and a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Zimbabwe. She has research interest in the fields of theatre design, child art therapy and child and youth mental health development. Her most recent publications include Studies in Theatre and Performance 33(3) 2015 and a book chapter in National Healing, Integration and Reconciliation in Zimbabwe (2019) published by Routledge. Cletus Moyo is a Lecturer in the Department of Languages, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Lupane State University. He is currently a Canon Collins Ph.D. Scholar at the University of KwaZuluNatal, studying Drama and Performance Studies. Cletus Moyo’s research interests include social drama, theatre as both a product of society and a shaper of society, theatre as a voice of the voiceless and the relationship between practice and research within an applied drama paradigm. His most recent publications are in Journal of Education and Practice 6(6) 2015 published by IISTE, Applied Theatre Research 7(2) 2019 published by Intellect and a book chapter in The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance (2020). Mandlenkosi Mpofu is a Senior Lecturer at Lupane State University, Zimbabwe. He holds a Ph.D. in Media and Communication from the University of Oslo. Mpofu has eight publications covering ICTs and civil society in Zimbabwe, theatre and alternative media and media power amongst ethnic minorities in the age of online communication. His research interests include the impact of new media, political communication, media regulation, community media and alternative media on democracy in Zimbabwe. His most recent publications are in Journal of African Media Studies 9(3) 2017, African Journalism Studies, 37(4) 2016 and Critical Arts 31(1) 2017, all published by Taylor and Francis.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Samuel Ravengai is Associate Professor and Head of Department of Theatre and Performance at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Theatre and Performance, both from the University of Cape Town. He is particularly interested in the interconnection of race, nation, empire, migration and ethnicity with cultural production. Ravengai’s most recent publications are in Sounds of Life (2016) published by Cambridge Scholars, Critical Arts 32(2) 2018, South African Theatre Journal 33(1) 2020, the last two published by Taylor and Francis. He is currently involved in the research project called Afroscenology which seeks to propound and document a theory on African and Diasporic aesthetics based on their practice across several years. Owen Seda is an Associate Professor and acting section head (Theatre Arts & Design: Performer) at Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria in South Africa. He has also taught at the University of Zimbabwe, Africa University, tThe University of Botswana and the University of Pretoria. Seda holds a D.Phil. from the University of Zimbabwe. He has been a Commonwealth Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Theatre and New Dance, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. In 2005 he was recipient of a joint Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Awards grant with the late Professor William H. Morse of the Department of Theatre and New Dance at Cal Poly Pomona. Nkululeko Sibanda is a Drama Lecturer at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in Drama and Performance Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The need to develop a formidable, relevant and effective performance theory and practice model within African performance practice sits at the base of his research endeavours. His research interests include African Theatre, alternative scenography, alternative performance and identity, and performance and memory. He has published more than 18 peer-reviewed research papers in theatre design, theatre training, performance and cultural politics in Zimbabwe and South Africa. His most recent publications are in Critical Arts 33(3) 2019, Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research 45(2) 2019 both published by Taylor and Francis and Applied Theatre Research 7(2) 2019 published by Intellect.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xv

Joy L. Wrolson is an independent theatre scholar and artist. Although directing is her primary role, Wrolson also works in sound design, stage management and new play development. She has a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Kansas and is an alumna of the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Programme. Julia Yule is a Lecturer in Performing Arts at the Simon Muzenda School of Arts, Culture and Heritage Studies at Great Zimbabwe University. She is currently reading for her Ph.D. with the University of South Africa (UNISA). She holds a Master of Arts degree in Dramatic Art from Witwatersrand University. Recent publications are in Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies 8(1) 2017published by Scholar link Research Institute, International Journal of Healthcare and Medical Sciences 3(1) 2017 published by Academic Research Publishing Group and International Open and Distance Learning Journal 2(1) 2018 published by Zimbabwe Open University.

List of Figures

Fig. 10.1

Fig. 10.2

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6

Vuka Afrika’s You Have No Right, a play about the freedom of the press. Marita is being questioned (Photo by J. Wrolson) All Systems Out of Order. Chishawasha Mission. Confrontation between AncientMan and ModernMan (Photo by J. Wrolson) GZU Venda dancers GZU Shangaan dancers GZU Venda dancers greeting the crowd GZU Shangaan dancers acknowledging the audience GZU Venda dancers on stage GZU Shangaan dancer in a solo routine

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212 241 241 246 247 256 258

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Contested Forms, Spaces and the Politics of Representation in Zimbabwean Theatre—A Historical Perspective Samuel Ravengai and Owen Seda

This collection surveys the theatre produced in Zimbabwe from the last days of colonialism in the 1970s right up to 2009 when the country’s post-independence political and economic crisis, which had started in November 1997, had slowed down significantly. The slowdown followed the inauguration of a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) brokered Government of National Unity (GNU) that brought together

S. Ravengai (B) Department of Theatre and Performance, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] O. Seda Department of Performing Arts, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_1

1

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S. RAVENGAI AND O. SEDA

the then ruling ZANU PF party (under the late Robert Mugabe) and its chief post-independence political adversary, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under the late Morgan Tsvangirai. We use the establishment of the GNU of 2009 as a cut-off point for this collection not least because the political and economic turmoil that characterised the colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwean state became highly enmeshed with the nature and extent of the country’s theatre and cultural production as alluded to in the title of our edited collection. The collection brings together the work of 13 scholars whose primary interest is located at the intersection of political, cultural and performative discourses and the flow of Zimbabwean history. The collection suggests that performance not only intervenes, but also offers alternative insights into the historical, socio-economic and political trajectories and narratives of its time. The collection not only focuses on the history of performance cultures in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe, but it also extends its critical gaze to include the history of political ideas that gave rise to cultural contestations in the field of theatre and performance. We must hasten to add from the outset that besides our joint editorship of this collection of essays, both of us were not only founding members of the University of Zimbabwe’s Department of Theatre Arts (from where most of the research for this book was conducted) but have also been involved in considerable research on Zimbabwean theatre. As a result, we contribute a chapter each to the collection beside appearing as co-authors in two other chapters in this collection. Over and above this, we do occasionally refer to our previous publications on Zimbabwe theatre in other books and journals in order to provide essential context where necessary. For that reason, while it may sound ‘jarring’ to the reader’s ear, we opt to refer to ourselves in the third person in those instances where we refer to our contributions in the introduction to this collection or in previous journals and book chapters. Zimbabwe is a southern African country bordered on the south by South Africa, in the north by Zambia, to the east by Mozambique and in the west by Botswana and Namibia. Great Britain occupied and colonised the country in 1890 through a company called the British South Africa Company (BSAC) that was owned by Cecil John Rhodes. In a 1922 referendum, company rule or rule of the Southern Rhodesia dominion by Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company as well as plans

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3

to join the Union of South Africa1 were set aside. Rhodes’s company had been granted a charter by the British Queen Victoria to set up an administration for Southern Rhodesia as a British colony and explore and exploit mineral resources in the colony’s regions of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. In its place, a so-called responsible government took over the affairs of Southern Rhodesia (as colonial Zimbabwe was officially called then) from October 1923 up to 1965. Between 1953 and 1963, Southern Rhodesia formed a federation with Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia) and Nyasaland (present-day Malawi), which became known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, or the Central African Federation (CAF). The federation collapsed in 1963 due to several reasons, chief among which were the rise of African nationalism and resistance to the federation, including a call for an end to colonialism by the African inhabitants who were agitating for independence, as well as perceptions of the federation as an arrangement that was primarily benefitting Southern Rhodesia (which happened to house the federal state capital in the then-named Salisbury) at the expense of the two other countries in the pact. A radical white supremacist party called the Rhodesian Front, headed by Ian Douglas Smith assumed power in April 1964 and unilaterally declared independence from Britain in November 1965. It refused to recognise the authority of the British Queen’s representative, GovernorGeneral Humphrey Gibbs, and appointed Clifford Dupont in his place. A constitutional amendment during the first quarter of 1970 proclaimed Rhodesia as a republic with powers to enact its own laws without referring them to the Queen for ratification. Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front ruled the country between 1965 and 1979 (a period commonly referred to as the UDI period). The international community, including the colonial master, Great Britain, did not recognise this political arrangement and reacted by imposing punitive economic sanctions on the country at the behest of Great Britain. Feeling isolated, the Rhodesian Front sought legitimacy by engaging in dialogue with moderate African nationalists, 1 The Union of South Africa was formed on 31 May 1910 unifying different dominions that had emerged out of the Anglo-Boer conflict, namely the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony. It included the territories that were formerly the Orange Free State. It was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire and it seemed logical that another dominion under the same empire, Southern Rhodesia, become part of the Union, but that failed in 1922. The Union was dissolved after the 1961 constitution which formed the Republic of South Africa.

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which resulted in a power-sharing government that brought together Ian Smith’s rebel Rhodesia Front (RF) and the main African political movements that were based within the country namely the United African National Congress (UANC) led by the late Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) led by the late Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole and the Zimbabwe People’s Union (ZUPO) led by the late Chief Jeremiah Chirau. The power-sharing government, which became known as the internal settlement was inaugurated on 3 March 1978 leading to subsequent elections in April 1979 which Bishop Abel Muzorewa ‘won’. Following the sham elections, the country was renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Unfortunately, the international community did not recognise the internal settlement. The liberation war intensified forcing the Rhodesia Front to accept talks with the major liberation parties at the time comprising the Patriotic Front an umbrella body, which brought together the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and the Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF ZAPU). The Commonwealth brokered talks were held at Lancaster House in England leading to a ceasefire agreement and a peace settlement also signed at Lancaster House in London in December 1979. A British Governor-General, Lord Soames, was appointed to administer the colony for a transitional period, effectively nullifying the rebel Rhodesia Front’s unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) of November 1965. The Lancaster House Agreement was followed by UN-supervised elections and on 18 April 1980, Prince Charles officiated at the lowering of the Union Jack in Salisbury, Rhodesia, where after having won the elections, Robert Mugabe was inaugurated as the Prime Minister of the first republic. Robert Mugabe created a coalition government with Joshua Nkomo, who had won 20 parliamentary seats against the 57 won by Mugabe’s ZANU PF with 20 seats reserved for whites in a 100-seat parliament. Sadly, the euphoria of independence was soon to dissipate in less than two years after the attainment of freedom when disturbances flared up between the two main liberation movements (Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and Joshua Nkomo’s PF ZAPU) that had fought side by side during the war of independence. The two protagonists became embroiled in armed conflict after significant arms caches were allegedly discovered at PF ZAPU-owned farms and properties across Matabeleland province, which also happened to be the party’s regional political stronghold. Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF immediately labelled this

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discovery an act of treachery that was tantamount to treason, leading to the dismissal from government of Nkomo and his ministers, confiscation of several ZAPU-owned properties by government and the deployment of a North Korean trained crack army unit (the Fifth Brigade) to the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces to flush out the so-called Nkomo and PF ZAPU affiliated dissidents who had allegedly defected from the newly integrated national army to embark on a militarised orgy of violence in order to stage an insurrection against Robert Mugabe’s popularly elected ZANU PF government. According to some independent reports and records, Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade campaign (which became known by the Shona language term Gukurahundi: meaning ‘the rains that wash away the chaff’) led to the massacre of thousands2 of ethnic Ndebele and their sympathisers (CCJP 1997; Sibanda 2005). The infamous Gukurahundi massacres only ended in November 1987 with the eventual capitulation of Nkomo’s PF ZAPU which agreed to unite with Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and build a government of national unity in order to save lives. Later we will discuss the problems that emerged shortly after the establishment of the new post-independence government as well as how Zimbabwean theatre, especially the type produced from Matabeleland, a PF ZAPU stronghold, chose to represent this political crisis and to respond to it. Given this historical context, we now want to establish the intersection of these colonial forces with Zimbabwean theatre and performance. Although colonialism was experienced in different ways in different African contexts—indirect rule, direct rule, protectorate rule, Lusophone, Anglophone and Francophone colonialism—the African response to colonialism was largely similar throughout the African continent. Frantz Fanon (2003), while theorising on the evolution of the African writer and the different phases of his/her consciousness, has provided a schema that is relevant to the whole of African theatre and performance. The first phase of responding to colonialism in African writing and theatre making was to assimilate into the western culture. The inspiration of the African theatre maker was, according to Fanon (2003, p. 179), ‘European and we can easily link up these works with definite trends in the literature of the mother country. This is the period of unqualified assimilation’. In 2 The exact number of people killed has not been scientifically verified and the estimates depend on which source one is using. According to Eliakim Sibanda (2005), Nkomo put the figure at 3000, church officials at about 1500 and the CCJP report (1997) at 3750. Eliakim Sibanda is content with the average between 3000 and 10,000.

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Zimbabwean theatre, most playwrights and directors applied realism as a creative method and depended on the psycho-technique to transform play texts into performance. While writing on trends in Zimbabwean theatre, Samuel Ravengai3 (2006) called this group of theatre makers ‘conformists’ to describe their assimilation of western aesthetics. This work was produced by the first generation of Zimbabwean theatre makers born between the early part of the twentieth century and 1939. Although some of the work captured local content such as the crowning of Ndebele kings and the life of the Zulu as in Osias Mkosana’s uSikhwili (The grudge) (1957) and Ngiyalunga (I am doing well) (1958), or teaching African morals and culture in Paul Chidyausiku’s Ndakambokuyambira (I warned you) (1968), Davidson Mugabe’s Rugare tange nhamo (Peace comes after trouble) (1972) and Arthur Chipunza’s Svikiro (Spirit Medium) (1978), this local content was presented using western aesthetics. The work was produced and supervised by the colonial Rhodesia Literature Bureau and therefore conformed to the colonial aesthetic preferred by the bureau. A section of the second generation of Zimbabwean theatre makers, born between 1940 and 1959, which collaborated with white liberals such as John Haigh and Karl Dorn also espoused the western aesthetic, for example, Ben Sibenke’s My uncle Grey Bhonzo (1982) and the Athol Fugard plays performed by Walter Muparutsa, John Indi, Friday Mbirimi, Dominic Kanaventi and Stephen Chigorimbo under the direction of John Haigh of Sundown Theatre. Fanon calls the second phase ‘literature of just-before-the-battle’ (2003, p. 179). During this phase, the African cultural producer, recognised that he/she did not belong to the western world. The theatre maker needed to tap from the stories of African people. Haunted by the ghost of western aesthetics, the theatre maker revisited African legends, myths, folklore, stories, history and past happenings, but presented them ‘in the light of borrowed aesthetic and conception of the world which was discovered under other skies’ (Fanon 2003, p. 179). A typical example from South Africa is Herbert Dhlomo, who revisited the life and times of black South African kings and staged plays about them, utilising western staging aesthetics. Dhlomo wrote and produced plays such as Shaka, Cetshwayo, and Moshoeshoe, among others. Dhlomo prefigured many later African playwrights of the twentieth century such as Wole Soyinka and 3 Samuel Ravengai is co-author of this introduction and two other chapters in this collection.

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Welcome Msomi. In Zimbabwe, this kind of theatre was the product of what Samuel Ravengai (2006) has referred to as the ‘first generation of theatre makers’ who were born between the early part of the twentieth century and 1939 as exemplified above. Because of the influence of the white-dominated National Theatre Organisation (NTO), this aesthetic continued to guide theatre creativity even after the attainment of Zimbabwe’s formal independence with typical examples being the works of Stephen Chifunyise, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ben Sibenke and Walter Muparutsa.4 Fanon refers to the third phase as ‘fighting literature’, ‘revolutionary literature’ or ‘literature of combat’ (2003, p. 179). In the field of theatre, this is variously referred to as theatre of resistance, struggle theatre, protest theatre, guerrilla theatre, liberation theatre and so on. In this phase, theatre makers abandoned assimilationist trends and western forms of presenting African issues to focus on African song, dance, mime and content. Past forms and content were used to raise black people’s consciousness. In South Africa, black people produced what they called black theatre under the banner of the Black Consciousness Movement as championed by Steve Biko. Black theatre aimed at addressing African people in order to raise their consciousness about oppression as a psychological phenomenon. This was a characteristic feature of theatre in many African countries with a history of military struggle against colonial armies. In Zimbabwe, this type of theatre was produced in guerrilla training camps in Zambia and Mozambique, where the liberation movements had established rear bases. Guerrillas performed this type of theatre: pungwe (meaning: theatre and cultural performance in aid of the revolution that was produced during war-time all-night vigils) on Zimbabwean territory in combat, and in liberated and semi-liberated zones during mass mobilisation meetings lasting throughout the night (see Ravengai 2016). The main characteristics of this theatre movement were didacticism, bifurcated

4 Some of Stephen Chifunyise’s plays include the following: Not for sale (1984), Medicine for love (1984), When Ben came back (1984), Intimate affairs (2008), Lovers, friends and money (2008). Tsitsi Dangarebga’s only known play is She no longer weeps (1987). Ben Sibenke wrote My uncle Grey Bhonzo (1982) Dr Madzuma and the vipers (n.d) and Chidembo Chanhuwa/The polecat stunk (n.d). Walter Muparutsa did not write any known play, but adapted Shona novels to theatre with Mbare based Chiedza Theatre Company.

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characters (playing more characters than one), minimalism, flat characters (characters that do not develop and more often than not, show only one dimension) or performers playing themselves, use of open/empty spaces, use of the storytelling format, chance arrangement of components (aleatory technique), use of untrained performers and reliance on the body as the main vehicle of performance, while other components were low in hierarchy. We list these characteristics because most of them provided the matrix or the DNA of a new theatre that emerged after the fall of colonialism. Some of the works discussed by scholars in this collection are in fact, strongly influenced by struggle theatre. Struggle theatre has been extensively researched by other scholars, notably Plastow (1996), Kaarsholm (1994) Ravengai (2016) and Viriri (2013) for those who may need more information on the form. For this reason, this collection has not covered this type of theatre. We are, convinced, however, that this background is important in order to fully grasp the intricacies of the contestations that were obtained among the various players in the field of theatre after the fall of colonialism.

Part I: From Colonial to Decolonial Theatre: Contested Forms The framework developed by Fanon on the transformation of African theatre can be expanded further to cover the aesthetic shifts that theatre makers initiated to respond to the politics of decolonisation. In most African countries, African politicians who took over from colonial governments immediately began a process of decolonisation of the economy, the civil service, the academy, the arts and culture, in fact, most facets of life. A robust student movement, as in the case of Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s and South Africa beginning from 2015, supported this. Likewise, in the field of theatre, theatre makers called for the decolonisation of theatre where new forms emerged, as in the case of anansegoro (storytelling theatre) or abibigoro (black theatre) in Ghana, black aesthetics in South Africa and theatre of assimilation or fusion in the Caribbean islands. A new theory has now emerged which provides a language of description for the range of theatre innovations happening in Africa and the African Diaspora which Ravengai (2020) has called Afroscenology. In its current usage, Afroscenology refers to performance practices developed by African practitioners and Africanists who have revolutionised and expanded our understanding of acting/performing and actor/performer training. The

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global theory of the actor can no longer fully explain the developments in African performance. As the work moves forward, Afroscenology seeks to document, conceptualise and theorise the ways in which African practitioners creatively work and perform in order to establish a method of theatre making and performer training that brings together what is currently scattered. Different theatre makers across the African continent theorise the methods of this decolonial theatre in different ways. However, the form that they propose gravitates towards a single identity—a theatre that is generated from an African matrix (one of its many rituals) with several other texts grafted into it, dominated by a presentational style, with the body as the dominant sign of performance (see Ukala 2001; Asiedu 2011). Ukala has called this contestation ‘the politics of aesthetics’ (2001, p. 30). The chapters in this part deal with the phenomenon of contesting Rhodesian discourse through form and episteme. In this collection, we allude to the notion of a contested post-colony as a way of acknowledging the long history of the development of Zimbabwean theatre as a discourse of concrete instances of contestation in material practices, texts and narratives. The two chapters by Tafadzwa Mlenga and Nehemiah Chivandikwa, Nkululeko Sibanda and Julia Yule seek to negate Eurocentric discourses that often propagate the inferiorisation or denigration of African theatre and its related cultural formations as inherently weak and at the mercy of superior, marauding and all-conquering Eurocentric cultural formations. Rather, these chapters view theatre in the Zimbabwean post-colony as an arena in which imported Eurocentric practices were often foiled in their attempt to impose a totalising and homogenising completeness. Further to this, some of the scholars in this collection, such as Sibanda and Yule, acknowledge the intercultural nature of Zimbabwean society as one, which from the onset fostered syncretic cultural rapprochement as a direct result of racial contact in a period spanning over 100 years of the country’s colonial and post-independence history. For us, then, contestation in cultural production in the Zimbabwean post-colony played out in line with Antonio Gramsci’s outlook on hegemonic power as something that is always contested, always historically contingent and always unfinished and in a state of transition. We therefore agree with Michel Foucault (1978) who argues that power is not necessarily always repressive, nor a tool of control wielded by one class or set

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of social institutions over subordinate sections of society. Rather, power flows in multiple directions. We view subordinate classes in Zimbabwe as having played a prominent part in the construction of the country’s cultural identity in the theatre as much as the dominant classes within an overarching framework of cultural contact, resistance and change. Also, in line with Foucault, we conceptualise the development and manifestation of Zimbabwean theatre since 1890 when the country was formally colonised by the British as a terrain in which hegemonic and subordinate discourses simultaneously became mechanisms of social power. In this way, we view hegemony in the practice of Zimbabwean theatre as always contested, with the relative success of hegemonies occurring at particular times but not obtaining a permanent victory along the trajectory of the development of that theatre. These momentary hegemonic victories thus occasioned the development of syncretic forms, which following Laclau and Mouffe (1985), persuades us to adopt a more fluid conception of hegemony as one where a series of hegemonic moments arose within a complex and shifting discursive reality of contestation. According to Laclau and Mouffe, hegemony is never fixed and permanent but rather, a result of discursive subject positions that are constantly shifting. These constant shifts result in a series of nodal hegemonic moments that are enjoyed by certain subjects at specific moments in time. As part of creating a new Zimbabwean theatre identity after the demise of colonialism, some directors turned to workshop/collaborative/devised theatre, the matrix of which can be traced back to Zimbabwean and South African struggle theatre. In fact, the director of the play Half Empty Half Full, Mncedisi Shabangu, was South African. While Mlenga and Chivandikwa agree that the decolonisation of theatre was achieved by valorising the performing body and making it the dominant feature of performance, they argue that this decolonial theatre could not be fully realised without recourse to other design elements such as props and costumes. These visual elements, they argue, are as important as the performing body and cannot be dispensed with in devised theatre. Nkululeko Sibanda and Julia Yule focus on one theatre group, Amakhosi Theatre Productions, to point out the major steps that the group took in an effort to create a different training model from that of colonial theatre, which as they argue, was the main model of tertiary education training. Sibanda and Yule make the case that the mainstream theatre training models at the University of Zimbabwe and Hillside Teachers’

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College were inherently colonial and they argue that Amakhosi’s training programme was a resistive strategy to the residual colonial model at tertiary institutions. What is interesting is that before Amakhosi established its training academy, it had attended training workshops offered by both ZACT and NTO. Sibanda and Yule argue that Amakhosi created a syncretic blend of ZACT, NTO and formal training methods with a strong Ndebele indigenous text. The formative identity of Amakhosi as a karate club also provided a solid physical theatre underpinning. The resultant training model was characterised by karate movements, Ndebele song, games, dance, mime and stunts. From this bricolage of physical theatre, the authors argue that Amakhosi developed a unique physical theatre style that has attracted the attention of formal training institutions. One of the most enduring legacies of colonialism was to construct a compartmentalised world consisting of the coloniser and the colonised. In this binary opposition, the colonised races outside Europe and the west became subject to a systemic racialised hegemony that was at once material and economic as it was also psychological. As members of the ‘inferior’ races in this binary division, colonised people were socialised to view their racial and cultural inferiority through the lens of a superior white race and culture in which the latter was significantly valorised at the expense of the former. It became easy in both the economic and cultural spheres, then, for colonialist values to propagate themselves as superior and dominant through hegemonic discourses of western identity. For over a century, scholars and theorists in the socio-political organisation of societies have sought to understand how subordinate races, classes and groups of people either accede to or resist domination. They have equally sought to explain how those who lack political and economic power consent to hierarchies of social power that privilege some races, classes, cultures and identities over others, in that process perpetuating unequal relations of power. The scholars in this collection seek to interrogate the intersection between hegemony and identity in terms of how the Zimbabwean nation state has been a contested space in both the colonial and the postcolonial phase of its existence dating back from 1890 to the present. The scholars here make a significant departure from traditional conceptions of ideology such as that espoused by Marx and Engels (1970, 1974), which tends to connote ideology as some form of

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closure and a unidirectional flow of power. Owen Seda,5 for example, analyses the contestations between a white-dominated National Theatre Organisation (NTO) and a black-dominated Zimbabwe Association of Community-based Theatre (ZACT). His interest is not on plays produced during the ensuing period, but on the politics of theatre governance in the new Zimbabwean nation. What is interesting about this analysis is Seda’s awareness of colonial discourse, which underpinned practical choices made by the NTO. Seda observes how the counter-colonial narrative espoused by ZACT influenced artistic choices made by the groups affiliated to it. He further observes that neither the colonial discourse nor counter-colonial discourse was an absolute philosophy. He singles out a few post-independence Zimbabwean theatre companies, such as Meridian Theatre, with roots in colonial Zimbabwe, which toed neither the NTO nor the ZACT line. They created what Seda elsewhere calls ‘intercultural theatre’, which appealed to a multiracial audience. Chapters such as this one by Seda, negate the Marxian conception of ideology in favour of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony (1971). Whereas Marx and Engels (1970, 1974) placed a premium on ideology, which to them referred to the ways in which large swathes of society adopt the ideas and interests of the dominant economic class almost as a matter of course, Gramsci’s hegemony places emphasis on inherent and on-going conflicts in the construction and propagation of networks of power through knowledge and discourse. It is in this perspective that the chapters in this collection focus on preoccupations with issues of contestation and the refashioning of identities of the self in the history and development of Zimbabwean theatre from 1890 up to the present. However, contestation must have a force against which its energies are directed. In the case of Zimbabwe, this force was Rhodesian discourse, which was no different from discourses of superiority that other colonial governments had constructed in order to contain supposedly inferior and undesirable African discourse. Samuel Ravengai explicates Rhodesian discourse, thereby providing an overarching framework to the rest of the collection. His chapter sets the background and foundation upon which the other chapters build their various cases. The colonial presence was to subsequently provide reasons for counter-narratives that resisted colonial discourse. It also provided

5 Owen Seda is co-author of this introduction and two chapters in the collection.

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techniques and forms that allowed postcolonial theatre makers to resist the new nationalist and patriotic discourse. Ravengai’s chapter delves deep into the mechanics of colonial discourse, which he refers to as Rhodesian discourse. Rhodesian discourse provided strictures to cultural production and restricted what was written and what was performed. For this reason, a certain type of theatre emerged that was written by both white and black playwrights, which toed the line of non-resistance to the colonial presence. Ravengai makes the interesting observation that Rhodesian discourse is a metanarrative of the past and the present. Its reconstitution in post-independence white cultural production has continued to provide a reason to transform the nature, form and content of alternative Zimbabwean theatre. Following the colonial encounter, writers and critics of African theatre and cultural history have often identified the provenance of three competing discourses in studies of contemporary black theatre (African, African-American and Caribbean). For instance, Olaniyan (1995) and Okgabue (2009) state that our understanding of African theatre ought to be framed against the three competing discourses of a hegemonic or colonialist Eurocentric discourse, a counter-hegemonic, anti-colonialist Afrocentric discourse and an emerging post-Afrocentric discourse ‘which subverts both the Eurocentric and the Afrocentric while refining and advancing the Afrocentric’ (Olaniyan 1995, p. 11). This view on the development of African cultural formations within the creative industries echoes the ideas of Michel Foucault (1978), who argues that the exercise of power always implies the possibility of resistance. Whereas there is a sense in which resistance to Rhodesian discourse could be easily seen solely as an endeavour by Africans, Chikonzo and Ravengai interrogate the very notion of Rhodesian ideologies and proffer the view that there was a section of white liberals who resisted Rhodesian discourse through their artistic practice. Chikonzo and Ravengai focus on white performance from the period 1950 up to 1980. The two scholars demonstrate that the very idea of White-hood was reinvented while at the same time using the same settler theatre as a field of counter-discursive strategies to the dominant discourse. Foucault observes that while domination permeates all social relations (including the cultural and the creative), these relations, as Gane and Haraway (2006, p. 151) elaborate, ‘aren’t all powerful, they are interrupted in a million ways (…) one minute they look like they control the entire planet, the next minute they look like a house of cards’. In the

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early days of the settler colony, Rhodesian whites toed the official colonial line by respecting the notion of separate development, which was upheld by the radical supremacist Rhodesian Front headed by Ian Smith from 1965 onwards. However, the white liberals who inserted themselves in the cultural structures of the settler colony decided to disrupt colonial ideologies by inviting African performers to white performance spaces. Some white liberals also worked with African performers in spaces where racial mixing was allowed, such as in church halls. This was an act of refusal to adhere to the controls of physical mobility dictated by Rhodesian discourse. Some theatre companies such as the Salisbury Repertory Theatre successfully challenged the city by-laws, which prevented African audiences from viewing theatre together with whites. While Chikonzo and Ravengai agree that some white liberals resisted Rhodesian discourse, they concede the fact that they continued to play the dominant roles in multiracial theatre, thereby restricting African upward mobility in cultural production. While white liberals consciously resisted Rhodesian discourse, this resistance was couched in residual dominant ideology. In the second part which follows below, we look at how theatre makers from Matabeleland contested Eurocentric forms as well as ‘Shonacentric’ (meaning forms in which the performance traditions of the country’s majority Shona population are portrayed as normative and majoritarian) identities through performance. In Julius Heinicke’s chapter, the same notions are contested visually through theatre space to create what Mlenga et al. have called ‘post-traditional spaces’ (2015, p. 230). These spaces were also used to advance Ndebele nationalism and consciousness and this is captured in Heinicke’s chapter. Heinicke analyses two theatre spaces in Zimbabwe. He views these two spaces as providing a performance arena that has been able to circumvent the state’s overweening attitude towards dissent. Heinicke uses Habermas’s concept of counter-public spheres to analyse Amakhosi’s Township Square Cultural Centre and Rooftop Promotions’ Theatre-in-the-Park as iconic venues for commenting on the politics of the postcolonial state below the radar of state censorship.

Part II: The Politics of Representation The five chapters in this part grapple with the notion of representation in Zimbabwean popular theatre. The issues that fascinate the scholars’ imagination range from how protest and popular theatre represent disability,

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Ndebele identities, the Zimbabwean crisis and subaltern characters. The scholars in this part present varied and disparate positions in ways that enable the reader to understand the complex nature of Zimbabwean theatre, society and history. We are able to understand various dynamics of Zimbabwean history through theatre. The notion of representation is complex. Stuart Hall (1996, p. 15) defines representation as ‘an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images, which stand for and or represent things’. Hall identifies a number of representational systems that are sites of meaning making. Meanings are produced, constructed, circulated and exchanged in these systems of representation. He identifies a number of signifying systems, which subsume language (discourse), photography, exhibitions of objects and artefacts, film, television and advertising. Given that Hall’s book focuses on the media, the list is not exhaustive and in other disciplines, it may include literature, drama, theatre and performance. In these signifying systems, those with access to power choose to represent reality in a manner that promotes their values. As this part of the collection will demonstrate, those without access to power can use the same systems of representation to create counter-narratives that seek to challenge the dominant metanarratives by privileging the values, feelings and thoughts of the subaltern. Take the chapter by Owen Seda, Chiedza Adelaide Chinhanu and Nehemiah Chivandikwa, for example. Students living with albinism use workshop performance to disrupt meanings proffered by disabled and abled students. The latter’s meanings typify the general perceptions held by most Zimbabweans about albinism. The trio focus on two plays: Visionaries (2011–2012) and The White man from Buhera (2011–2012), both of which were workshopped in collaboration with university students living with disabilities. While the process of play making was taking place, the authors wanted to interrogate the politics of representation for people living with disabilities. During the phase of performance at the University of Zimbabwe, Wits University in South Africa and Amakhosi Theatre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, the authors sought to decipher the responses of their audiences to the performance of disability by disabled performers. The research discovered that this kind of theatre is a strategic site that can be used successfully in re-orientating and sensitising young people with albinism and society on a number of ableist prejudices. The authors

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submit that the results of this action research provided a space to deal with such prejudice. Hall discusses three theories of representation, the reflective,6 the intentional7 and the constructionist approaches. Scholars in this part of the collection deploy the constructionist approach. Hall understands the constructionist approach as suggesting that objects and symbols do not inherently have meaning. People purposefully construct meaning using representational systems such as theatre and performance. Hall argues: Constructionists do not deny the existence of the material world. However, it is the material world, which conveys meaning. It is the language system or whatever system we are using to represent our concepts. It is social actors who use the conceptual systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate about the world meaningfully to others. (1996, p. 25)

In this part of the collection, the authors deal with the politics of representation, which is essentially the effects, and consequences of the representation of albinism, Ndebele, Venda and Shangaan cultural identities, and subaltern characters in Zimbabwean protest theatre. The authors point out that Zimbabwean theatre makers purposefully create work that constructs meaning in ways that favour the marginalised groups in Zimbabwe. The scholars construct meaning by the manner in which they choose to combine various codes available to produce the desired meaning. They are preoccupied with how marginalised groups in Zimbabwe seek to use theatre and performance in its various forms (protest theatre, applied theatre, panic theatre, popular theatre) to contest the meanings that dominant narratives produced by the ruling ZANU PF government have placed on them. The politics of representation that is the focus of part II is framed by two major crises in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The first one was the civil war that broke out between the state militia (the Fifth Brigade), and 6 The reflective approach is sometimes called mimetic for the reason that meaning is assumed to lie in the object, person, idea, or event in the real world. Language, according to this paradigm, works as a mirror to reflect or imitate the truth that already exists (see Hall 1996, p. 24). 7 The intentional approach holds that it is the speaker or author who imposes their meaning on the object, event, idea or person through their choice of language (see Hall 1996, p. 25).

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the so-called dissidents, who belonged to the disbanded ZIPRA forces.8 The second was a political and economic crisis, which began in 1998 and slowed down at the beginning of 2009. The theatre that emerged during these crises was responding to the postcolonial state’s new patriotic narrative, which had labelled oppositional politics, whites and coloureds as sell-outs while those who toed the state discourse were patriots. While theorising on the problems experienced by the national bourgeoisie that takes over from colonial governments in African nations, Fanon (2003, p. 119) popularised the epithet ‘the pitfalls of national consciousness’. By this phrase, he meant the common errors committed by the ruling black elite while pursuing the good intentions of decolonisation. Among several other pitfalls of national consciousness, Fanon expounded on the retrogressive process of misconstruing the nation for the race (only blacks belong) or preferring ethnicity to the state, in this case, only one ethnic group from which the leader comes enjoys the rights of full citizenship. In Zimbabwe, there was a political disagreement between two major liberation movements, PF ZAPU and ZANU PF, after the latter won the popular vote. The coalition government that had been established by the then Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, from the progressive forces of both parties collapsed in the first quarter of 1983. A number of PF ZAPU leaders from the Ndebele-dominated region of Matabeleland were arrested and tortured. Various military forces, the so-called dissidents, foreign-sponsored armies9 and the Zimbabwean government’s counter-insurgency crack unit called the Fifth Brigade occupied Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands province. Depending on which source one uses, between 3000 and 10,000 people (Sibanda 2005; CCJP 1997) were killed between January 1983 and 1987, most of them, by the Fifth Brigade in an operation code-named Gukurahundi.10 8 The dissidents numbered not more than 2000 and by the time of the amnesty in 1988, only 122 dissidents surrendered to the state. 9 Super ZAPU (with no allegiance to ZAPU) was formed by apartheid South Africa from disgruntled elements of ZIPRA and former black Rhodesian soldiers as well as refugees from Dukwe camp in Botswana to fight on behalf of South Africa in Zimbabwe. They were retrained and supplied by South Africa to kill civilians and engage ANC linked uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) soldiers who used Matabeleland as a transit space to fight in South Africa (see Sibanda 2005, p. 261). 10 The first spring rains that wash away the chuff and dirt just before summer begins. Metaphorically, therefore the operation was to clean up the dirt (political malcontents, ‘dissidents’).

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Gukurahundi came to be viewed as a disruption of the civil liberties of Ndebele people by the dominant Shona government. The Matabeleland region remained largely underdeveloped as compared to other provinces in Zimbabwe because of the conflict. The cultural programmes spearheaded by ZACT were subsequently viewed as processes that were meant to dilute Ndebele culture and identity leading to the emergence of counter-narratives in the form of theatre from Matabeleland. Cletus Moyo, Mandlenkosi Mpofu and Nkululeko Sibanda write from a space to which they refer as subaltern—Matabeleland. The trio view popular theatre and performance (including music, song and football games) as channels for mobilisation and resistance against state hegemonic forces. They apply the Gramscian cultural theory of hegemony to demonstrate how the ruling ZANU PF government sought to diminish Ndebele identity through a national cultural programme that was run by ZACT and the Ministry of Education and Culture. This programme seemed to favour the Africanisation of theatre using socialist ideological underpinnings. The people of Matabeleland sought to counter the state-sanctioned hegemonic forces by lobbying for Ndebele representation using popular theatre, music, football games and performance. This was a way to project Ndebele representation and to shape and project Ndebele identity within the national space. Moyo, Mpofu and Sibanda establish that beyond the 1990s, the resistance to ZANU PF’s excesses had spread all over Zimbabwe as evidenced by various theatre performances by cultural groups of diverse ethnic extraction. Ten years after the end of the Gukurahundi disturbances in the Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces as outlined in an earlier part of this introduction, another crisis of national scope emerged. This was the Zimbabwe economic crisis, which lasted roughly between 1997 and 2009. On 14 November 1997, the Zimbabwean dollar collapsed as a result of fiscal indiscipline when about 50,000 veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war were each awarded ZW$50,000 (US$5000) and a monthly gratuity of ZW$2000 (US$200) for which the government had not budgeted. The government had simply resorted to printing the money. By 2003, 72 percent of the population was living below the poverty line, a significant slump for a country that had enjoyed a middle-income status in the 1980s. By July 2008, official inflation had risen to 231 million percent and by the end of that year, the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had declined by 54 percent. Steve Hanke and Alex Kwok (2009, p. 354) put the monthly rate of inflation by mid-November of 2008 at 79.6

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billion percent. The local currency became worthless and by October of 2008, businesses no longer accepted it as legal tender. The major opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)11 organised a number of public strikes, demonstrations and ‘stay-aways’ to protest against the declining standards of living, the collapse of basic infrastructure and the erosion of civil liberties. The state responded by enacting punitive legislation and coming down heavily on the opposition. Protest theatre emerged in response to this national challenge. Pedzisai Maedza critiques the tendency in post-independence African countries to reify what he refers to as pre-contact identities. Maedza is concerned that this process of reification is propagated at a newly established university in post-independence Zimbabwe. In his chapter, Maedza analyses the work of two traditional dance troupes at the Great Zimbabwe University. He bemoans the erroneous equation of indigeneity with essentialist pre-contact identities that are fixed and immutable. In his analysis, the fixed identities of the African past and its present play into the hands of colonialist divisions and time-trapped conceptions of African culture and tradition. Two chapters by Joy Wrolson and Kelvin Chikonzo devote attention to the practice of protest theatre. Chikonzo focuses on the politics of representation of subaltern characters in Zimbabwe’s protest theatre. He observes that there are three kinds of intellectuals: state intellectuals, antistate intellectuals and organic intellectuals who are essentially an offshoot of the latter. These different categories of intellectual wrestle with each other in an effort to influence the production of meaning. Chikonzo observes that much of Zimbabwean protest theatre produced during the crisis period was dominated by the discourse of anti-state intellectuals, which seemed to sideline organic intellectuals. According to Chikonzo, mere opposition to a system of oppression does not necessarily produce democratic practices. He is of the view that the subaltern characters created by oppositional discourses played the victimhood motif, which did not give them the resistive agency to challenge, strategise and to inflict harm on the state. Chikonzo demonstrates the existence of a type of

11 Since its founding in 1999, the MDC party has broken into several factions that have maintained the same name with the leader’s initial at the end. The party referred to in this collection is the main one formerly headed by Morgan Tsvangirai while he was alive and Nelson Chamisa after the former’s death.

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protest theatre, which gave transformative agency to the subaltern characters. He considers that protest theatre can be a space, which if left unchecked can erode democracy by performing the discourse of anti-state intellectuals while neglecting the discourse of organic12 intellectuals. During the same crisis period, the government of Zimbabwe began to label shantytowns as potential spaces for harbouring criminals and concealing arms of war. The government proceeded to carry out a cleanup operation that was code-named Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order). The operation displaced an estimated 700,000 people in the country’s urban and peri-urban areas within the space of six weeks in May 2005. Joy Wrolson, who was in Zimbabwe at the time, analyses the theatre that emerged during this period. She refers to this theatre as panic theatre. She relies on Marvin Carlson’s theoretical twin concepts of ‘ghosting’ and ‘haunting’ to argue that panic theatre relied on recycling narrative techniques from indigenous Zimbabwean texts, notably the communal labour practice of nhimbe where participants indulged in socially sanctioned criticism of authority through work songs. The songs were often bawdy and graphic as they critiqued participants who had overstepped socially acceptable behaviour using ‘hidden transcripts’. Wrolson borrows the concept of hidden transcripts from James Scott (1990). Wrolson sees ghosting taking place in three productions where the audience was aware of the characters that were being satirised. Satire, Wrolson argues, becomes a hidden transcript synonymous with nhimbe: or traditional collective or co-operative work parties among the Shona people, where the audience laughed at those who were being lampooned in order to make them feel ashamed and hopefully change their ways. Wrolson argues that hidden transcripts and ghosting became ways of evading Zimbabwean state censorship during the crisis of Operation Murambatsvina.

12 A Gramscian term which he uses to distinguish a group of intellectuals produced by the education system of the dominant polity. The group grows organically within the dominant ruling class and when fully formed performs the intellectual work of the ruling class.

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References Asiedu, Awo. 2011. Mohamed Ben Abdallah’s search for an African aesthetic in the theatre. In Trends in twenty-first century African theatre and performance, ed. Kene Igweonu, 367–384. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). 1997. Breaking silence: Building true peace—A report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the midlands 1980–1988. Harare: CCJP/LRF. Fanon, Frantz. 2003. The wretched of the earth, trans. R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Foucault, Michel. 1978. The history of sexuality, volume I: An introduction, trans. R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books. Gane, Nicholas, and Jane Haraway. 2006. When we have never been human, what is to be done? Interview with Donna Haraway. Theory, Culture and Society 23: 135–158. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci: Volume II , trans. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith. New York: International Publishers. Hall, Stuart. 1996. Gramsci’s relevance for the study of race and ethnicity. In Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies, ed. Stuart Hall, David Morley, and Kuan-Hsing Chen, 411–440. London: Routledge. Hanke, Steve H., and Alex K.F. Kwok. 2009. On the measurement of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation. Cato Journal 29 (2): 353–364. Kaarsholm, Preben. 1994. Mental colonization or catharsis? Theatre, democracy and cultural struggle from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. In Politics and performance: Theatre, poetry and song in southern Africa, ed. Liz Gunner, 225–251. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1970. A contribution to the critique of political economy. New York: International Publishers. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1974. The German ideology. London: Wishart. Mlenga, Tafadzwa, et al. 2015. Contemporary theatre spaces: Politico-ideological constructions in Zimbabwe: A dialectical approach. Studies in Theatre and Performance 35 (3): 221–236. Okgabue, Osita. 2009. Culture and identity in African and Caribbean theatre. London: Adonis and Abbey Publishers. Olaniyan, Tejumola. 1995. Scars of conquest masks of resistance: The invention of cultural identities in African, African American and Caribbean drama. New York: Oxford University Press. Plastow, Jane. 1996. African theatre and politics: The evolution of theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe—A comparative study. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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Ravengai, Samuel. 2006. An Investigation into the practice of directing and theatre making in post-independence Zimbabwe up to 1990: Some urban theatre makers and directors as case Studies. Zambezia Journal of Humanities 33 (I/II): 67–94. Ravengai, Samuel. 2016. Chimurenga liberation songs and dances as sites of struggle to counter Rhodesian discourse: A postcolonial perspective. In Sounds of life: Music, identity and politics, ed. Fainos Mangena, Ezra Chitando, and Itai Muwati, 165–181. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Ravengai, Samuel. 2020. Artistic research in Africa with specific reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe: Formulating the theory of Afroscenology. Arts Research Africa (ARA). https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/k8v5r. Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sibanda, Eliakim. 2005. The Zimbabwe African People’s Union 1961–87: A political history of insurgency in Southern Rhodesia. Asmara: Africa World Press. Ukala, Sam. 2001. Politics of aesthetics. In African theatre: Playwrights and politics, ed. Martin Banham, James Gibbs, and Femi Osofisani, 29–41. Oxford: James Currey. Viriri, Advice. 2013. ‘Seiko Musina Morari?’: The carnivalesque modes of the Pungwe institution in selected Shona novels. Pretoria: Doctoral Thesis, University of South Africa Institutional Repository.

PART I

From Colonial to De-colonial Theatre: Contested Forms

CHAPTER 2

Colonial Zimbabwean Theatre, Cultural Production and the Interplay with Rhodesian Power and Discourse Samuel Ravengai

Introduction: Discourse and Power White Rhodesian cultural players developed Rhodesian discourse.1 They appropriated ideas and theories, indeed, a collection of ‘truths’ proffered by European scholars (such as Hegel, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, De Gobineau, Linnaeus and Blumenbach) who formulated cultural frames that were applied by various European empires. Their ideas are often grouped together in postcolonial criticism as colonial discourse. 1 Anthony Chennells (1996) first used the epithet Rhodesian discourse to refer to white Rhodesian myths about blacks. He investigated a number of novels written by white Rhodesians and saw common disparaging views about Zimbabwean blacks expressed through these works.

S. Ravengai (B) Department of Theatre and Performance, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_2

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Being the subjects of Rhodesian discourse, Rhodesians drew on the philosophical and (pseudo)-scientific theories propagated by such scholars in their dealings with Africans. The whole vision of colonialism in Rhodesia was summed up by Cecil John Rhodes, the proprietor of the Chartered Company (British South Africa Company) that ran the country from 1890 until 1922, who declared ‘[e]qual rights for all civilised men’ (Mamdani 1996, p. 17). The ‘uncivilised’ African would be subjected to a process of tutelage in order to enjoy the privileges of citizenship. It covered a whole spectrum of intellectual activity including the field of cultural production (theatre, drama, film, music, dance and fine art). The struggle in the Rhodesian cultural field over the imposition of legitimate public imagery is inseparable from the struggle between white Rhodesians and African cultural producers to impose principles or definitions of human accomplishment. Bourdieu offers an explanation that is applicable to the Rhodesian field of cultural production: The field of cultural production is the site of struggles in which what is at stake is the power to impose the dominant definitions of the writer (artist ) and therefore to delimit the population of those entitled to take part in the struggle to define the writer (artist )… In short, the fundamental stake in literary struggles is the monopoly of power to say with authority who are authorised to call themselves writers; […] it is the monopoly of the power to consecrate producers or products. (1993, p. 42; emphasis is mine)

The struggle to impose a dominant discourse is explicable in terms of what Foucault calls ‘power’, which resonates with Gramsci’s (1971) ‘rule’.2 In order for the colonised to be effectively dominated, the coloniser must produce a ‘discourse’ that aspires to what Gramsci calls ‘hegemony’. Rule constitutes the coercive apparatus of the state established according to law in order to exclude, block and repress those groups who do not consent to domination by the coloniser. Even where there is no evidence of non-compliance, Gramsci (1971) argues that

2 The term power has various dimensions. When used to mean the exercise of force or control over individuals or particular social groups by dominant groups (Edgar and Sedgwick 2008), it tallies with rule. However, when legislative power is exercised to limit the behaviour of individuals, it is executed without coercion and in some instances with ‘justifiable force’ exercised within the limits of legality. The other dimension of power has little to do with coercion. Foucault defines power as imbedded in knowledge. Discourses of knowledge are in fact an expression and embodiment of power.

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this apparatus is proactively put in place in anticipation of moments of crisis. However, power would be a fragile phenomenon if it worked on the level of force, or to put it in Foucauldian terms, ‘exercis[ed] itself only in a negative way’ (1980, p. 59). Hegemony, which operates as the persuasive front of power, supplements it. Gramsci defines hegemony as ‘the spontaneous consent given by the great masses of the population to the general directions imposed on social life by the dominant group’ (1971, p. 12). In Rhodesia, this consent followed ‘naturally’ as a result of the perceived accumulated prestige of white cultural producers. They managed to persuade Africans to see whites and their culture as the ‘right’ race and culture. Power produces knowledge—the ‘right’ knowledge. In order to achieve that spontaneous consent, Rhodesians produced knowledge that justified the domination of Africans. According to Foucault (1980, pp. 93–94), power cannot be maintained and strengthened without the manufacture of a discourse, which is then archived and circulated through various conduits of power such as the media, the academy and cultural production. It seems to me that power cannot exist without the knowledge that justifies it. Power therefore orders the production of discourses of truth, which it forces cultural producers to speak and write about. Power continually renews, recreates and modifies itself until it is capable of institutionalising and professionalising every field including rewarding producers who help to further its pursuits. In a way, power produces the knowledge that serves it. Power and knowledge support and imply one another.

Theoretical Moorings and Structures of Rhodesian Discourse It is useful to contextualise Rhodesian discourse by looking at systems of knowledge that supplied it with substance at that time. Rhodesian discourse drew on a synthesis of race science, culturalism and biological conceptions of sex and hygiene. In pre-colonial Zimbabwe, differences which existed between people were not biologically defined. However, with Charles Darwin’s contribution to the field of science through the publication of On the Origins of Species (1859), science took on the task of defining and ordering the world. Darwin problematised biblical truth when he introduced the theory that our species evolved from one form to

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another until the finest and purest form had emerged through a process of natural selection. He postulated that humans had evolved from apes. Scientists such as De Gobineau (1855) developed an interest in discovering intellectual and physical differences between human species and apes. They argued that the missing link between apes and humans was the Negroid races (that is, sub-Saharan Africans). These were placed right at the bottom of the human evolutionary hierarchy with the Caucasoid races (that is, the Europeans) at the top and other races such as Mongoloids, American Indians and Malayans being placed somewhere in the middle. If the shape, colour and culture of a group were closer to European conceptions of development and civilisation, the better group was appreciated by Europeans. Zimbabwean cultural productions were nowhere close to European standards of performance and they were either to be closed out as a hostile discourse or Rhodesians would teach Africans how to perform according to ‘civilised’ standards. Robert Kavanagh concurs: It is important to realise this because theatre, as it was established by the settlers and colonial administrators during the colonial period, tended to take one form – naturalistic performances on raised stages in rectangular halls. As the colonial education system taught the colonised that African indigenous forms of theatre were not theatre, people came to see the form of the theatre established by the colonial master as the one and only form. (1997, pp. 36–37)

Colonial theatre, indeed, played a part in the discourse of ‘civilised standards’. Taylor (1968), writing a history of Rhodesian entertainment up to 1930, dismisses African performances as ‘infrequent amusement’. Riding on the wave of Darwinian terms, he argued that the first white settlers came from environments which had all the ‘sophistication of the nineteenth century, environments which for their relaxation, required entertainment of the standard civilised type’ (1968, p. 13). In Rhodesia, the direct involvement of the highest imperial office (the Governor) gave legitimacy to the type of theatre the colony had to practise. The dominant elite class established the standards of theatre through the involvement of Lady Rodwell, the wife of the Governor of

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Southern Rhodesia, Sir Cecil Rodwell. Salisbury (Harare) was a classconscious society in the 1930s.3 According to Robert Cary (1975), the elite lived north of an imaginary line estimated to be passing through Baines Avenue or Montagu gardens, stretching infinitely east and west. Godwin and Hancock (1993) have extended the line to the railway line coming from Chegutu and passing through the southern portion of the central business district on its way to Mutare. South of this line lived lower-class white settlers ‘such as shop assistants, junior clerks, office workers – whose lack of adequate birth and income ruled them out as “people one ought to know”’ (Cary 1975, p. 12). Lady Rodwell had originally come to South Africa as a member of a touring company playing Miss Hook of Holland before marrying Governor Sir Cecil Rodwell. Like all other spouses of the elite, Lady Rodwell was particularly fond of morning tea parties (something that was to be appropriated by blacks in the townships later) and bridge. She did not give up on theatre and in January 1930, according to Robert Cary (1975), she produced Alice in Wonderland, and four of the Rodwells appeared in the cast. She preferred musicals to dialogue theatre. When the first European theatre company (Salisbury Repertory Players) was formed in February 1931, Sir Cecil and Lady Rodwell agreed to become patrons. In this way, a theatre aesthetic with the blessing of the Imperial Office was established in Rhodesia. Studies carried out by Wortham (1969), Plastow (1996) and Godwin and Hancock (1993) revealed that the aesthetic had not significantly shifted from the pioneering days. The involvement of the Imperial Office throughout the history of colonisation in Rhodesia was a constant reminder of the official theatre standards to be bequeathed to later generations and Africans. For example, the opening of the new theatre space located at Second Street extension (now Sam Nujoma Street) for Salisbury Repertory Players in 1960 was attended by Lady and Lord Dalhousie, who was the Governor-General during the Federation years.4

3 The class nature of white Rhodesia began to change after the Second World War. European continentals, Afrikaners from South Africa, Jews and whites retreating from decolonisation in Asia and elsewhere in Africa, started pouring into Rhodesia and eventually outnumbered Britons by a third (see Alexander 2004). Class distinctions disappeared as being white was enough to have access to government and private capital. 4 Between 1953 and 1963 Malawi (Nyasaland), Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) became one country called the Federation of Rhodesia

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Rhodesian discourse also drew from the belief that all cultures are not equal (culturalist theories) and that some cultures are inferior to others. In South Africa cultural theories underpinned the ideology of apartheid or separate development. This is sometimes referred to as social Darwinism as an indication of its debt to evolution theories. After the Jewish Holocaust, which ended in 1945, driven largely by a combination of race science and culturalism, challenges to race science took centre stage. Zimitri Erasmus argues that ‘mainstream scientific conceptions of race were turned upside down: race was demoted from being a biological fact or truth to a meaningless falsity’ (2008, p. 171). Britain, the colonial master, pushed for reforms in Rhodesia and hoped that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which had begun in 1953 would introduce reforms towards partnerships with black people. However, contrary to the process of decolonisation taking place in Asia and most of Africa, after the collapse of the Federation in 1963, Rhodesian whites refused to budge. A radical white supremacist party, the Rhodesia Front, came to power in 1964 and immediately demanded independence from Britain. When Britain refused, Ian Douglas Smith proclaimed Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 and continued with race and culturalist theories, which the whole world had rubbished, at least theoretically. If racism as a science cannot be irreproachably used, then culturalism, which emphasises difference, can be used to achieve the same racist objectives. Difference can be nurtured but separated in ‘reserves’ (Tribal Trust Lands—TTLs), ‘locations’ (townships) and ‘compounds’. Race was sanitised and relegated to the unconscious using culturalism, which prescribed whites as having the most advanced culture. Culturalism allowed for ‘racism without races’ (Alexander 2004, p. 198). Culturalism created separate spaces for each cultural and/or ethnic group. White Rhodesians created a white world, which could not be inhabited by blacks. Rhodesian discourse as the dominant discourse was open to everybody who wanted to be like whites, although carefully controlled in many ways. Black discourse5 was closed to every white person apart from missionaries and Native Commissioners who stayed in TTLs. Their job and Nyasaland or the Central African Federation (CAF) under the premiership of Godfrey Huggins. 5 Black discourse refers to counter-narratives created by blacks in the form of ideologies such as Ethiopianism (African syncretic Christian doctrines created by African independent churches), black power and nationalism, as well as orality in the form of songs, dances,

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description involved knowing what was happening in TTLs in order to repress cultural practices which threatened Judeo-Christian values. Apart from race science and culturalism, Rhodesian discourse also relied on ‘constructed panic’—the fear of Black peril, disease and rebellion. Such instances of constructed panic were powerful psychological systems to construct a white identity, which depended on demeaning and segregating black people on the basis of unsubstantiated fears of disease, rebellion and rape.6 In talking about the construction of white identity in Rhodesia, Alexander (2004) explains the link between identity and moral panic: Identity, then, as a function of culture, had to be consciously and fastidiously constructed through the creation and propagation of a series of myths which ensured insularity. Antjie Krog defines myths as ‘unit(s) of imagination which make it possible for a human being to accommodate two worlds’ […] If such myths are sustained long enough to become entrenched in the social reality of a populace, they take on a power such that a whole host of images, consequences and reasoning can be summed up in a single word. In settler Rhodesia, the two most effective myths were the constant threat of rebellion and the fear of ‘black peril’. Rebellion was a threat to life and ‘black peril’ a threat to racial purity in the form of rape by black men. (2004, p. 197)

myths, legends and cultural performances such as celebrations, rituals, drills and social drama. 6 In 1900, for example, a global outbreak of bubonic plague reached Salisbury from Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. In 1902, rabies broke out in Matabeleland and was followed by typhoid fever in 1904. Syphilis also continued to be used to spread the panics until about 1929, when cures (salvarsan and penicillin) were discovered. In 1918 soldiers returning from the First World War brought back with them Spanish influenza which ‘within two weeks (…) spread throughout the territory’ (McCulloch 2000, p. 58). What is interesting is that for all these diseases, the white community blamed blacks for their spread. Rhodesians used bubonic plague to justify the first separation of blacks from whites by building the first black location (Harari, now Mbare). Spanish influenza led to the banning of black people from travelling by train, which later led to segregated travelling. White men had a fear of sex from black men (the black peril) and protected their women. Whether the issue was fear of disease or fear of black men, the components of fear were similar. The white body was at risk and the cause was the vice of black bodies because a racial boundary had been crossed. If the white family was at risk, then the solution was to draw ‘a cordon sanitaire between the white and black communities’ (McCulloch 2000, p. 83).

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These real or perceived threats to the internal cohesion of white communities caused panic. It was mostly white men who spoke vehemently about the black peril and the constructed panic was a means of constructing a white identity. The fears were manipulated for political mileage and for enforcing solidarity (Alexander 2004; McCulloch 2000). As identity needs to be constantly reasserted, the constructed panic—rebellion, disease and black peril—were constantly repeated, sometimes one after another and at other times, all of them simultaneously. The fears were blown out of proportion and the constructed panic that ensued took shape in many publicised trials, public rallies, petitions, media reports, letters to the press and deputations to the resident commissioner. What can be observed from these examples of constructed panic is that dominance was established by hiding behind disease, sex, hygiene and culturalism. The white subject was incorruptible, superior and dominant, while the black subject was always defined, seen and portrayed as inferior and degenerate, needing to be led and to be dominated. In cultural production, black discourse was either practised under supervision by colonial authorities or banned in urban locations and mining compounds. In the rural areas, black discourse was practised but ignored as an irrelevant or hostile discourse. Apart from missionaries and Native Commissioners, this discourse was unavailable to any other white people. The depiction of black people in white writing followed the same trend. Anthony Chennells (1996) enumerates a number of myths and negative portrayals of black characters in white-authored Rhodesian novels: White Rhodesia, because it is progressive, refuses closure and at the end of a characteristic novel whites are looking forward to a future in a highly developed country, black Rhodesia because it is primitive is closed and the narratives write of blacks as denizens of stasis. If novelists choose to show progressive blacks, they are shown not as entering into white space but into limbo of false appearances, immorality, debauchery and brutality. (1996, p. 104)

Between 1890 and 1930 Rhodesians produced 871 plays all over the country (Taylor 1968). Between 1931 and 1975 another 267 were produced by the Salisbury Repertory Players (Cary 1975) and the national figure is even higher, but records are not available to state the figure with certainty. All of the plays were imports from Britain,

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Europe and North America. In the few Rhodesian-authored plays, a black character created through the agency of a white playwright was always presented as a buffoon with no will of his own. Jane Plastow (1996) carried out a study of Zimbabwean theatre including whiteauthored Rhodesian plays. From the thirteen white-authored plays officially recorded, Plastow observes that all of them deal with the themes of white heroism, fear of black uprising, and hatred and mockery of white outsiders. Where black characters show agency by fighting white people such as in Wilfred Bussy’s Rung Up, they are presented as ‘barbarians’ with ‘no motive for [their] attack’ (Plastow 1996, p. 78). Having looked at all thirteen plays, Plastow comes to the conclusion that. The mass of blacks is portrayed as little more than child-like savages – a white man’s burden, easily manipulated against their own interests [...]. The philosophy behind these plays is one of racist paternalism with a strong underlying streak of sentimentality. The heroes are tough, no nonsense whites who labour in the untamed bush to develop Rhodesia. Their virtues are the pioneering ones of hard work; bluff loyalty, non-intellectual dedication to carving a nation out of virgin black minds and dusty bush. The attitude of blacks is appallingly unconsidered [...] these plays are frightening because they so clearly demonstrate the prevailing white Rhodesian view, both of themselves and of the black majority. (1996, pp. 79–80)

Where Africans produced their own plays and performed them in the various towns and cities they lived, the white press turned its back on them (Cary 1975, p. 20). Stephen Chifunyise (1997) concurs with Cary about the silence of the colonial press on African theatre activities even when they imitated Western theatre. He attributes this to what he calls racist policies of the government which continued to repress traditional arts and culture. The press sometimes reported on black cultural productions, but it did not forget to cut them down to size. In 1904 a Herald editor was invited to cover a tea meeting for Africans of the town and surrounding districts by the organiser, Tom Loiswayo. The editor did not take kindly to the decorum and discourse that was produced during this cultural event. The organiser had used salutation terms like ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’ while referring to black guests. Before 1953, the terms were reserved for whites, while blacks were called ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ or African Male (AM) or African Female (AF). Garfield Todd, the first white liberal Prime Minister

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of Rhodesia, dropped these appellations. The Herald editor warned his readers: The black must remain the servant of the white and if such gatherings as these are permitted, the Tom Loiswayos and the rest of his race will erelong refuse to submit to the white, the dire consequences of which cannot be foreshadowed. (Cited in McCulloch 2000, p. 58)

The dominant discourse preferred to see Africans as having no capacity for organisation. The discourse assumed that African discourse was incapable of dynamism to produce new cultural products that responded to the immediate environment. Where there was evidence of order and complexity in African cultural productions, Rhodesian discourse was quick to attribute such complexity to foreign influence (O’Callaghan 1977; Chennells 1996). The monotheistic nature of the Shona religion and the architectural complexity of the Great Zimbabwe monument were attributed to foreign models, as was the rise of nationalism in the 1960s. Rhodesian discourse assumed that the African mind was uncreative, whatever it had created was or could be a result of foreign influence. In an early Rhodesian novel, Rhodesian Philosophy or The Dam Farm (1910), by Jill Getrude, one of the main characters describes the qualities most valued in an African servant which confirms the theory of progression from primitivism to civilisation: A very stupid boy will often end by making a good servant, because his head, being entirely empty of ideas, becomes imbued with those you put into it, and he will therefore, with parrot-like rigidity, perform regularly whatever you have taught him. (1910, p. 177)

The controlled and guided development motif of an African by an outsider is a myth that was constantly repeated in the media and Rhodesian novels in order to reinforce the ‘role model’ position of white Rhodesians. Apart from the negative portrayal of African images in Rhodesian cultural productions, Rhodesian discourse also defined the very idea of theatre—what was to be considered theatre and what was not. It would be interesting to take a snapshot of the colonial idea of theatre and the constructions of black cultural production. Colonial ideas of theatre may look absurd now, taking into consideration the avant-garde, modernist

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and postmodernist trends that have spread across Europe and the rest of the world, most of which have relied more or less on the formerly subjugated knowledge for their style (for example, Brecht, Brook and Artaud). In general, the judgements associated with African theatre are based on logico-theatrical viewpoints; theatre must exhibit a definite minimal structure—exposition, rising action, complication, climax and resolution. It must also have linguistic content, specialised scenery and plot (Finnegan 1970). In short, it must be a realist play. This is to say that the elements intrinsic to the Euro-American model, and which constitute what is called drama, are interpreted as precisely those attributes, which African theatre lacks in order to achieve the same artistic success as the West. Finnegan dismissed the existence of theatre in Africa in the pre-colonial epoch. She saw oral African performances as ‘quasi-dramatic phenomena’ (1970, p. 500). She said this because the various elements which tend to come together, in the European sense, and were normally regarded as drama, were ‘missing’ or seldom occur in a single performance in African performance forms. Finnegan (1970, p. 501) listed these elements of drama as the idea of enactment; representation through characters who imitate persons and events; linguistic content; plot; the represented interaction of several characters; and specialised scenery. Thus she came to the conclusion that: With a few possible exceptions, there is no tradition in Africa of artistic performances which include[s] all the elements which might be demanded in a strict definition of drama – or at least with the emphases to which we are accustomed. (1970, p. 516)

The other deficiency in the African theatre, according to Warren (1975), was the lack of enactment of reality. Most African performances, he argued, were reality itself and not an imitation of reality. He argued that ‘[…] a literal chronicling of daily routine scarcely qualifies as drama. Neither does a ritual ceremony which merely makes a request to the gods and spirits’ (1975, p. 21). Likewise, Hartnoll (1968, p. 18) also said of African theatre ‘the event is firmly rooted in reality: and according to Aristotle a play is an imitation of an action, and not the action itself’. The fact of alterity and even ‘difference’ as espoused by culturalism was not taken into consideration, as this did not fit the evolutionary framework which was the hallmark of colonial discourse.

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African dances were perhaps the most expressive of all performing arts. However, colonial discourse was quick to confer on such pieces a stamp of obscurity. Michael Etherton (1982), for example, argued that the same performance forms were dense, coded and impenetrable. Though his contribution to African performance analysis is undeniable, the meanings of African performance escaped him, and he charged: It is very difficult for someone outside the specific culture to know what he or she is looking at and listening to during a particular performance: the very style of performance is a shorthand of actual meaning which has been established jointly by artists (composers and performers) and their audience over a period of time. (1982, p. 36)

The bottom line here is that a work of art must be universal. Etherton (1982) agreed with Michael Kirby (1974), who saw theatre as an art form that tended to be international, and then advocated for the same standard to be applied all over the world. Like painting, sculpture and music, theatre as an art form tends to be international. The same standards apply all over the world. We have a single global audience with common taste and common ideas about performance […] Forms and techniques of the Living Theatre and the Open Theatre were taken up by groups all over the world, developing an international style that is hardly distinguishable from country to country. Contemporary art is not regional or nationalistic. (1974, p. 3)

In many ways, these notions of theatre look absurd now where discourses of ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘intercultural dialogue’ permeate daily language and have been challenged by a number of scholars (Hauptfleisch 1997; Ravengai 1995; Fischer-Lichte 1992; Farfan and Knowles 2011; Lei and McIvor 2020). For a discourse to achieve its goal, the positions of ‘dominant’ and ‘dominated’ have to be maintained, both in lived experience and public imagery, especially as it is expressed through artistic productions. Censorship and publishing were some of the instruments of domination used by Rhodesians to make sure that African written drama did not upset the status quo. In this regard, book publishers, the Rhodesia Literature Bureau and the National Board of Censors, cooperated. Between 1966 and 1969, the National Board of Censors, using some provisions of the Obscene Publications Act (1911), Cinematograph Ordinance (1912)

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and Entertainments Control and Censorship Act (1932),7 had recommended the banning of 708 cultural productions comprising films, books, magazines and periodicals. Curiously enough, only a single collection of plays by black American playwrights Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones and Lorraine Hansberry entitled Three Negro Plays (1969) was on the list of banned books on the 1972 catalogue. There was a chance that those plays could end up being performed by black people or even read and serve as an example of writing. Rhodesian discourse peddled the myth that Rhodesia had the best race relations in the world and that black Rhodesians were the happiest in the world.8 Such politically charged plays could upset that myth of racial harmony. O’Callaghan provides clues to the importance of information to bolster Rhodesian discourse: The system of minority government in Rhodesia makes it inevitable that information is vital to assure the minority’s continued self-conviction of the validity and strength of its policies; and, even more so, to reduce the possibility of the majority becoming convinced of the invalidity and vulnerability of minority rule. This entails considerable governmental control, exercised positively and negatively. (1977, p. 275)

The Rhodesia Literature Bureau played a pivotal role in controlling the flow of information through creative writing. Even though after 1965, Rhodesian discourse emphasised virulent forms of Anglophobia, this ended on a political level. Rhodesians, even those not born in England, performed English, lived a ‘Rhodesian way of life’ and referred to England for public cultural values. Culturally, the Rhodesia Literature Bureau depended on European mentors who were occasionally invited to run workshops for aspiring African writers on the art of writing plays, poetry and novels. These courses were run ‘following conventional British models of writing from nineteenth century Europe’ (Veit-Wild and Chennells 1999, p. 9). Most plays written between 1968 and 1979 in Zimbabwe ape the Euro-American Aristotelian structure. While the Bureau did a good job in developing reading habits and writing skills, these skills, however, were taught within the discourse of compliance

7 All three of these Acts and their diverse strands were combined to form the Censorship and Entertainments Control Act of 1967. 8 The Pearce Commission of 1972 was actually set up to find out the truth of this claim and the result was a survey which revealed an overwhelming ‘no’ to the claim.

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which according to Veit-Wild ‘obstructed the emergence of uninhibited and authentic literary expression’ (1993, p. 23). In many ways, the publishers cooperated with the Rhodesia Literature Bureau by publishing only those artistic works which the latter recommended. O’Callaghan (1977) notes that the bulk of Rhodesian publishing was done by government departments, local authorities and semigovernmental bodies. Commercial publishing, O’Callaghan continues, was relatively small and mostly made up of Rhodesian subsidiaries of British firms—Longman Rhodesia, Oliver and Boyd, E and S Livingstone and J and A Churchill. These firms cooperated with the Rhodesian government and did not have an independent editorial policy. Even if some publishers claimed to have autonomy, published books would be subjected to censorship. There were also small local firms such as Galaxie Press, Books of Rhodesia Publishing Company and M.O. Collins Ltd. What is known about white Rhodesian theatre was published by these local firms. Censorship and publishing cooperated in controlling the writing, distribution and publicity of African creative works. There were independent, mostly church-operated publishing houses such as the Dutch Reformed Church’s Morgenster Press and the Catholic Church-controlled Mambo Press. Mambo Press published books and magazines such as Moto that were critical of the government, but it had also to operate profitably by producing books that were going to be allowed in the public school system. For this reason ‘if a manuscript was submitted directly it would always be referred to the Bureau for approval because in the end the Bureau promoted and marketed published works’9 (Chiwome 2002, p. 37). The important thing here is to illuminate the production of Rhodesian discourse and the ways through which it attempted to contain and curtail other competing discourses in lived experience and the artistic portrayal of such lived experience. Its aim was to project a superior white race and a degenerate black race. Colonial discourse constructs the notion of whiteness as infallible. Whiteness is transparent and cannot be an issue for discussion in an 9 Of the twenty-nine novels and stories published in Shona and Ndebele, the Rhodesia Literature Bureau sponsored twenty-seven. The Bureau sponsored all four novels in English. Of the twelve books on the Shona language, customs and literature, the Rhodesia Literature Bureau sponsored five and two were textbooks. Of the sixteen handbooks on family, health and recreation, Rhodesia Literature Bureau sponsored eleven and two were textbooks. The Bureau sponsored the nine books on animal husbandry for Africans. All the others, in Shona and Ndebele, were religious (O’Callaghan 1977, p. 271).

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African play unless it is done through the agency of a white writer or producer. Chiwome (2002) has carried out an extensive study on censorship and the following are some of the things not allowed to be said about white people in a work of art. It was unacceptable to project the image of a white person beating a black person, although in reality, this happened, or being mocked or criticised by Africans, though Africans did it in their own space. Chiwome goes on to say that a white persona could not be presented in an African work hanging or implying that he hanged black people. It is the law of the land that executes convicts and not white people. The white character could not be presented negatively. Descriptive epithets that were ambiguous, for example, mhuru yomuchena [offspring of a white person], vasina mabvi [those without knees]—as a pejorative reference to tight-fitting Victorian military garb, which made white males appear as if they had no knees—could not be used by playwrights. In short, a white person could not be written about in fiction through the agency of the black writer. In terms of content, the plays had to deal with social issues that glorified rural life and projected the city as a white person’s world which corrupts African values. Many creative works revealed Africans running away from rural areas to the city and finding it difficult and then ending up going back home. This suited the national programme of ‘provincialisation’ of Rhodesia, which was probably inspired by the Bantustan system in Apartheid South Africa. Writers could not venture into political themes and this was so entrenched in their psyche that even today some artists feel that their work has been degraded if it is read as political. Themes that were acceptable were those that ventured into cultural and metaphysical issues such as spiritism, witchcraft and magic, traditional healers, love, traditional court proceedings and other social issues. For close to a century of colonisation, the Rhodesia Literature Bureau allowed only nine plays to be published, eight of which were in Shona and only one in Ndebele. Of this total, none of these plays took on the Rhodesian government thematically and all of them deal with some of the issues that I have mentioned above. It seems to me most branches of the Rhodesian superstructure spoke and produced the ‘truth’ that the state required in order to project a superior image of the dominant white. In the case of Rhodesia, the structure of the field of cultural production and legal systems combined to govern both access to expression and the form of expression. Bourdieu (1993) uses the term ‘structural censorship’ to refer to how the structure

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of the field of cultural production rewards excellence and has the sole responsibility of defining what is excellent. Structural censorship is exercised by consecrators (publishers, academics, critics) who decide which goods should get which price. Prices of different kinds of expression are then imposed on all producers of symbolic goods. However, to obtain the highest cultural and symbolic capital for the African playwright is to accept taking up Euro-American models of drama.

The Future of Rhodesian Discourse There are conflicting observations about the persistence of Rhodesian discourse after independence in Zimbabwe. Chennells thinks that ‘with Mugabe’s victory at the polls both discourse and the Rhodesia which had produced it were simultaneously swept away’ (1996, p. 129). While Alexander (2004) partially concurs that the Rhodesian system of political, economic and social segregation did not survive the War of Independence, she observes, however, that the Rhodesian ‘ideological underpinnings have remained and are resurfacing with renewed strength’ (2004, p. 207). Ranka Primorac (2010, pp. 202–227) argues that Rhodesian discourse at independence was sidelined, even if it continued in spaces controlled by unrepentant whites and gave way to the dominant nationalism and patriotic narratives, but has since been redeployed to respond to the Zimbabwean crisis. The sidelining of Rhodesian discourse created space for white liberals to criticise it openly as in Angus Shaw’s Kandaya (1993), Tim McLoughlin’s Karima (1985) and Nancy Partridge’s To Breathe and Wait (1986). Rhodesian discourse continued, albeit not in the mainstream media, for example, in Peter Armstrong’s novels such as Hawks of Peace (1979), Cataclysm (1980), The Pegasus Man (1983) and Tobacco Spiced with Ginger (1987). However, since the fast-track land redistribution programme began in 2000 with its attendant violence and nationalist cultural repertoires, Primorac argues that white Zimbabweans writing from exile have revisited and revived Rhodesian discourse. Their texts oppose the violent social practices of the Mugabe administration but go beyond that to suggest the old infantilism, laziness and weakness of Africans. Primorac examines among other texts, Peter Godwin’s When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (2006) and Alexandra Fuller’s Scribbling the Cat (2004). Primorac argues that these texts modify and reproduce Rhodesian discourse, using it as a tool of political critique. The texts replicate what

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Primorac calls a ‘deep and colonially rooted ambivalence towards notions of Africa, home and belonging’ (2010, p. 202). Foucault (1980) argues that power does not weaken and vanish. It can retreat, but it has the propensity to re-organise its forces and reinvent itself in another form, but pursuing the same objectives such as neo-colonialism. As such, Rhodesian discourse took different forms after independence in 1980. Contrary to Chennells’s (1996) position that Rhodesian discourse had been swept away with Mugabe’s victory, cultural productions of the post-independence era have continued to be shaped by the same discourse in its more recent forms. It would be important to look at the new political field, which, as I have argued above, subsumes and controls the field of cultural production. When Ian Smith’s internal settlement failed, he agreed to the 1979 Lancaster House talks, which produced the Lancaster House Constitution. This constitution in its original form had a number of articles, which guaranteed the continued dominance of Rhodesians. It imposed on the new regime the burden of inheriting all white Rhodesians, including mercenaries who did not have proper papers, by giving them Zimbabwean citizenship and above all providing for dual citizenship. White Rhodesians were offered an automatic twenty seats in parliament without going to the polls. There was to be no compulsory acquisition of land from white landowners for ten years. This guaranteed the whites economic security and power. The Lancaster House Constitution, accepted by the Patriotic Front, entrenched the old status quo and prevented any wholesale attempt at change for ten years.10 With the coming to political power of a black government in 1980, the laws that prevented equal competition between blacks and whites were removed, somewhat shaking some of the privileges that whites had previously enjoyed. An alternative discourse could no longer be prevented. This time it had the blessings of the new government which also reconfigured available institutions to support its preferred discourse—socialist realism. A number of alternative plays were performed and published while at the same time white theatre companies continued to produce and practice the same type of theatre they had been producing since 1890.

10 This privilege of white people continued well into the late 1990s, well after the lapse of the ten-year grace period. Robert Mugabe was knighted in 1994 by the British with the Order of the Knight of Bath. He got several honorary degrees, some of which have now been withdrawn, from American and British Universities (Michigan, Massachusetts and Edinburgh) as a sign of approval of his leadership.

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Since the white–black relationship had been characterised largely by inequalities, the whites continued to play a dominant role. Even after the right to twenty parliament seats was taken away and the economic base of white farmers was shaken through land invasions from 2000, the current stock of white Zimbabweans enjoys a privileged status historically acquired as explained by Alexander: The historical and cultural heritage that white participants ascribed to themselves has allowed them to redefine their role in the nation. Ideologically, they shifted the logic that necessitates their presence from one of outright domination to one of themselves as a role model to guide and shape the future of the country. It is no less an ideology of dominance, just one that is easier to reconcile with the social world that they now inhabit. (2004, p. 203)

In the field of culture, the same dominance permeates almost all practices. English is still the official language in Zimbabwe which is used in schools, parliamentary debates and to conduct business. Even if in public politicians denounce whites, they tend to measure success by adopting a utopian white culture. Their children mostly attend historically white schools and white commonwealth universities. Zimbabwean whites realise their dominant position and easily withdraw themselves if they are dominated in the field of culture as Robert McLaren observes: But in terms of blacks and whites working together, looking at Zimbabwe, it is interesting to note that there is very little interracial cooperation here. Generally speaking, whites are very uncomfortable when participating in anything in which they are not numerically superior or predominant, and culturally dominant. So they don’t mind doing a play which is their play, based in their culture, and bringing in a few black actors, etc. But ask them to actually participate in something which is rooted perhaps in a black view of history or in black life! Very difficult. They won’t! Even ask them to participate in a situation where they are three whites and fifteen blacks! – That is this country. (Interview with Solberg 1999, p. 106)

The other dimension of dominance is what Kwame Nkrumah (1965) has called neo-colonialism. Nkrumah made this point when he was still the first independent president of Ghana. Nkrumah developed the term originally within a Marxist theoretical framework, to mean tactics and attempts by the USA and other former colonial masters ‘to accomplish objectives

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formerly achieved by naked colonialism’ (Nkrumah 1965, p. webpage). It is a broad term covering politics, economy, information and culture. From a cultural perspective, Nkrumah’s term may be taken to mean the tactics employed by wealthy nations to control values and perceptions of former colonies through cultural means that include, but are not limited to, the media, language, education, art and culture. However, there are other approaches to understanding the concept of neo-colonialism. Postcolonial critics, within the ambit of cultural theory, view the same phenomenon as either forced acculturation or voluntary appropriation of a culture considered superior by individuals who exercise that option out of their own volition. Depending on the relations between the dominant culture and the receiving culture, this process of appropriation can be seen to be either a threat to the national identity of a receiving people or as a form of vitalisation and enrichment of that culture. The artists who receive and appropriate such values do so almost unconsciously and thus the epithet ‘soft power’ is used to describe the new force of neo-colonialism. This passive dimension of neo-colonialism implicates the dominated people because they are complicit in the erosion of their own culture. This is ordinarily termed ‘colonial mentality’. Paulo Freire (1972), writing on the same concept or condition of the oppressed, used the term ‘duality’. It is a positivist approach to social analysis where social structure, and in our case, the culture of the coloniser, exerts so much pressure on the oppressed that the oppressed loses identity and internalises the image of the oppressor. The oppressed cannot think beyond the cultural structure established by the coloniser. The oppressed is helplessly caught in the confines of structure: The very structure of their (oppressed) thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men, but to them, to be ‘men’ is to be an oppressor. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of ‘adherence’ to the oppressor. (1972, p. 22)

A condition of duality develops when the colonised superimposes the coloniser on him/herself in a relationship characterised by what Paulo Freire calls ‘prescription’. The culture of the coloniser prescribes and

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imposes its choices upon the colonised whose consciousness is transformed to conform to that of the person prescribing it. The oppressed ‘are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalised’ (Freire 1972, p. 24). There is a degree of tension embedded in the oppressed; a tension that arises from the conflict of being oneself and playing another person. Freire’s positivist analysis is also problematic in the sense that it takes away the agency from the dominated by making them passive. Some may agree to be shaped by structure while others may reject the limits imposed by structure, depending on their subjectivity. Whereas some scholars (even Freire himself) call for the ejection of the image of the oppressor who has inhibited authentic creativity in the mind of the oppressed, others (Balme 1999; Hauptfleisch 1997) see it as enriching the culture of the former colonised. Inasmuch as Rhodesian discourse limited or provoked alternative theatre during colonial times, its legacy and now its reconstitution in post-independence Zimbabwe has continued to influence the nature, form and content of alternative Zimbabwean theatre. Indeed, the interplay of Rhodesian discourse and post-independence nationalist discourse gave alternative Zimbabwean theatre its identity between 1980 and 1996. Despite its enormous power, Rhodesian discourse was not an absolute ideology that went uncontested. Indeed, many of the following chapters demonstrate the various ways in which African theatre makers and some white liberals chose to challenge its power through incendiary forms, themes and counter-representations.

References Alexander, Karin. 2004. Orphans of the empire: An analysis of elements of white identity and ideology construction in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe: Injustice and political reconciliation, ed. Brian Raftopoulos and Tyrone Savage, 193–212. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. Armstrong, Peter. 1979. Hawks of peace. Harare: Welston Press. Armstrong, Peter. 1980. Cataclysm. Harare: Welston Press. Armstrong, Peter. 1983. The Pegasus man. Harare: Welston Press. Armstrong, Peter. 1987. Tobacco spiced with ginger. Harare: Welston Press. Balme, Christopher. 1999. Decolonizing the stage: Theatrical syncretism and postcolonial drama. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Cary, Robert. 1975. The story of Reps: The history of Salisbury Repertory Players 1931–1975. Salisbury: Galaxie Press. Chennells, Anthony. 1996. Rhodesian discourse, Rhodesian novels and the Zimbabwean liberation war. In Society in Zimbabwe’s liberation war, ed. Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger, 102–129. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Chifunyise, Stephen. 1997. Zimbabwean theatre. In The world encyclopaedia of contemporary theatre, vol. 3, Africa, ed. Rubin Don, 355–370. London: Routledge. Chiwome, Emmanuel, M. 2002. A Social history of the Shona novel. Gweru: Mambo Press. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the origins of species. London: John Murray. De Gobineau, Arthur. 1855. The inequality of human races. PA: H. Fertig. Edgar, Andrew, and Peter Sedgwick. 2008. Cultural theory: The key concepts. London: Routledge. Erasmus, Zimitri. 2008. Race. In New South African key words, eds. Nick Shepherd and Steven Robins, 169–181. Jacana: Ohio University Press. Etherton, Michael. 1982. The development of African drama. New York: Africana Publishing Company. Farfan, Penny, and Ric Knowles, eds. 2011. Special issue: Rethinking intercultural performance. Theater Journal 16: 4. Finnegan, Ruth. 1970. Oral literature in Africa. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 1992. The semiotics of theatre. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 . New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Books. Fuller, Alexander. 2004. Scribbling the cat. London: Picador. Getrude, Jill. 1910. Rhodesian philosophy or The dam farm. London: Hurst and Blackett. Godwin, Peter. 2006. When the crocodile eats the sun. Johannesburg: Picador Africa. Godwin, Peter, and Ian Hancock. 1993. Rhodesians never die: The impact of war and political change on white Rhodesians c. 1970–1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Hartnoll, Phyllis. 1968. The theatre: A Concise history. London: Thames and Hudson. Hauptfleisch, Temple. 1997. Theatre and society in South Africa. Pretoria: J. L van Schaik Publishers.

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Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu. 1997. Making people’s theatre. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Kirby, E.T. 1974. Indigenous African theatre. The Drama Review 18 (4): 22–35. Lei, Daphnei, and Charlotte Mclvor. 2020. The Methuen drama handbook on interculturalism and performance. London: Bloomsbury Methuen. Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Press. McCulloch, Jock. 2000. Black peril, white virtue: Sexual crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McLoughlin, Tim. 1985. Karima. Gweru: Mambo Press. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1965. Neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism. https:// www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/ch01.htm. Accessed 10 May 2020. O’Callaghan, Marion. 1977. Southern Rhodesia: The effects of a conquest society on education, culture and information. Dorset: UNESCO. Partridge, Nancy. 1986. To breathe and wait. Gweru: Mambo Press. Plastow, Jane. 1996. African theatre and politics: The evolution of theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe – A comparative study. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Primorac, Ranka. 2010. Rhodesians never die? The Zimbabwean crisis and the revival of Rhodesian discourse. In Zimbabwe’s new diaspora: Displacement and the cultural politics of survival, ed. Joan McGregor and Ranka Primorac, 202– 227. New York: Berghahn Books. Ravengai, Samuel. 1995. Towards a redefinition of African theatre: An analysis of traditional dramatic forms with specific reference to Zimbabwe. Unpublished BA Honours dissertation. Harare: University of Zimbabwe. Shaw, Angus. 1993. Kandaya. Harare: Baobab Books. Solberg, Rolf. 1999. Alternative theatre in South Africa: Talks with prime movers since the 1970s. Durban: Hadeda Books. Taylor, Charles T. C. 1968. The history of Rhodesian entertainment 1890–1930. Salisbury: M.O Collins. Veit-Wild, Flora. 1993. Teachers, preachers, non-believers: A social history of Zimbabwean literature. Harare: Baobab Books. Veit-Wild, Flora, and Anthony Chennells, eds. 1999. Emerging perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera. Asmara: Africa World Press. Warren, Lee. 1975. The theatre of Africa: An introduction. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Wortham, Christopher J. 1969. The state of theatre in Rhodesia. Zambezia 1, 1: 47–54.

CHAPTER 3

Negotiating Whitehood: Identity and Resistance in Rhodesian Theatre 1950–1980 Kelvin Chikonzo and Samuel Ravengai

Introduction This chapter interrogates how settler theatre in Rhodesia created a platform for contesting and resisting dominant colonial ideologies. It seeks to investigate how some white settlers negotiated notions of ‘Whiteness’ 1 We locate this study in this period because at this time Rhodesia witnessed the development of a white liberal community that was opposed to the hard-core racial and separatist policies of the state. Moreover, most dramatic associations became autonomous, relying on their own theatre houses which gave them the liberty to violate discriminatory policies.

K. Chikonzo Department of Creative Media and Communication, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe S. Ravengai (B) Department of Theatre and Performance, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_3

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through dramatic practice between 1950 and 1980.1 We will devote specific attention to processes of disruption, displacement and defiance of colonial values by white Rhodesians2 through the practice of theatre. The chapter will also investigate control mechanisms that the state put in place to ensure that settler dramatic practice did not disrupt the core values of the dominant colonial ideology. We will focus on measures that the state engendered in order to sustain official policies of separate development and exclusion. This gives impetus to this chapter to analyse how white theatre practitioners responded to such forms of control, and the precise strategies that some white Rhodesians implemented in order to defy and resist control through theatre practice. Borrowing from postcolonial theory, owing to its emphasis on heterogeneity in the analysis of resistance, this chapter seeks to revisit the discourse of colonial resistance. We argue that there were subtle forms of settler dramatic engagement that did not entirely conform to colonial ideologies. Colonial discourses are characterised by, among other things, exclusive and homogenising vectors, rhetoric of seamless discursive unity and narrative purity, and claims to a monolithic body of cultural practice. To ensure that unity and purity, the state put in place control mechanisms to ensure that settler dramatic practice did not disrupt the core values of dominant ideology. And so this chapter seeks to examine the extent to which the so-called ‘colonial citizens’ were, in some way, subjects of colonial power who were also struggling to subvert the material and discursive effects of colonialism. Examining settler engagement in fields of cultural production such as theatre will help in interrogating the limits of the citizen/subject binary in the context of colonial resistance. It is, indeed, an attempt ‘to circumnavigate the monolithic and homogeneous interpretations of There is a lot of evidence of such from this period. It precedes and incorporates the era of the liberation struggle, which makes it interesting to investigate resistance in a period that was politically charged. 2 Anyone, whether black or white, who was a citizen of Rhodesia between 1890 and 1980 was referred to as a Rhodesian. However, ‘Rhodesian’ is used in this chapter in the way that it is now commonly used in Zimbabwe as a descriptor for any white person who had Rhodesian citizenship. Rhodesianness is not a singular category which accommodates only English white people. ‘Rhodesian’ is broad enough to include Jewish, Afrikaner, continental European immigrants and whites retreating from decolonisation elsewhere in Africa and Asia, who came to reside in Rhodesia. Rhodesian is still used to describe a white person who lived in Rhodesia during the colonial period and still believes in a discourse that sustained Rhodesia (i.e., an unrepentant white person). The colloquialism ‘Rhodie’ is still used for the same purpose.

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cultural empowerment that dominates current discourse (of colonial resistance)’ (Suleri 1995, p. 112). Based on an understanding that colonial society was neither monolithic nor homogeneous (Ravengai 2011), this study will analyse the tensions inherent within colonial Rhodesia from a variety of vantage points. We will draw examples from men and women who were involved in multiracial dramatic engagements, including Adrian Stanley, Ken Marshal, Monica Marsden, Ruth Barbara Tredgold, Dawn Patterson and Father Daniel Pearce.

The Significance of Settler Resistance Existing literature on colonial resistance has emphasised Black African resistance (Seda 2011; Plastow 1996; Kaarsholm 1990b). These scholars view white Rhodesian theatre as a purveyor of official and authorised versions of imperial ideology. For them, white Rhodesians effortlessly reproduced official ideology. Rarely has this scholarship construed settler theatre as a site of resistance from within. It has hardly been constructed as a field of counter-discursive strategies to the dominant discourse. There is a need to analyse how settler theatre disrupted and displaced the dominant discourses of the day, and to capture strategies of resistance from within in order to unveil the misconceptions of colonial resistance. This approach allows us to look at the colonial project not from official eyes alone, but through the lens of colonial citizens. Even as revisionist scholarship premised on the theory of postcolonialism came into play (see Ravengai 2011; Seda 2011), the idea of colonial resistance was not accorded to white settlers. It was customary to assert that ‘the most important forms of resistance to any form of social power will be produced from within the communities that are most immediately and visibly subordinated by that power structure’ (Slemon 1995, p. 106). Thus, even post-colonialism as a theory that sought to analyse how colonial people sought to subvert the material and discursive effects of colonialism did not see the possibility of resistance in categories of people whom history perceived as the victors of the colonial encounter. Slemon adds that the idea of contestation was not conceivable in second-world settler societies. He points out that this is an oversight: The jettisoning of second world literary writing from the domain of postcolonial, remains a ‘misreading’ and one which seems to be setting in train

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a concept of the ‘post-colonial’ which is remarkably purist and absolutist in tenor. (1995, p. 106)

Slemon adds that most scholars on colonial resistance did not eagerly embrace settler resistance: [b]ecause it (was) not sufficiently pure in its anti-colonialism, because it (did) not offer up an experimental grounding in a common ‘third world’ aesthetics, because its modalities of post-colony are too ambivalent, too occasional and uncommon for inclusion in the field of resistance. (1995, p. 107)

The allusion to post-colonial theory as being synonymous with the socalled ‘third world’, or blacks, created binaries and polarities in a discourse that sought to subvert academic polarisations and binarisms. In the words of Sarah Suleri, this created a need. [t]o break down the incipient/inherent schizophrenia (binaries) of a critical discourse that seeks to represent domination and subordination as though they were mutually exclusive. (1995, p. 112)

In addition to black resistance, there was also white resistance that happened simultaneously in the field of cultural and dramatic production. Bill Ashcroft concurs: The study of settler colony cultures (will) be especially useful in addressing the problem of complicity in all oppositional discourse, since they point to the difficulties involved in escaping from dominant discursive practices, which limit and define the possibility of opposition. Settler colonies, precisely because of their affiliative metaphors of connection problematise the idea of resistance as a simple binarism; articulate the ambivalent, complex and processual nature of all imperial relations. (1995, p. 3)

In this regard, one appreciates the fact that resistance also comes from within certain sections of white colonials to subvert dominant ideology propagated and enforced by the same colonial subjects. The year 1950 is crucial because Rhodesia witnessed the onset of liberal thought, which significantly ruptured the official values of the colonial state. Secondly, settler dramatic associations were able to build their own theatre houses, which enabled them to engage in acts of resistance

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against official values. Coupled with this, settler theatre had reached a high level of development, witnessing the formation of a theatre league and the staging of the colony’s first theatre festival. Moreover, by 1950, the Rhodesian nation was sixty years old. It was, therefore, not too young to be justified as an experiment surrounded by the racial scepticism of a new nation.

Authorised Version and Official Values of Rhodesia The terms ‘authorise’ and ‘official’ are central to our discussion of Rhodesian policy on cultural production in the sense that the values white theatre practitioners used to defy and resist from within, were those values that the state and Rhodesian elites attempted to engender across the whole social fabric of white Rhodesia. As in many parts of British Africa, Rhodesia officially embraced notions of social Darwinism which emphasised the superiority of certain races over others, as captured in Chapter 2. These notions permitted the exercise of cultural and intellectual leadership over categories of people that the colonialists deemed to be inferior. They always felt a need to reveal and justify social distancing and segregation based on racial differentiation, which led to the development of discriminatory and separatist policies in all spheres of life. Discriminatory policies had implications towards cultural production. Ideally, white Rhodesians had to have separate spaces of entertainment. The idea of separate development has been well illustrated by Kaarsholm and Plastow who, in elaborating conformity in settler theatre, state that whites had what were known as ‘little theatres’ which did not accommodate black drama or other alternative forms of theatre. In the early days of the British South Africa Company rule, such places included the Masonic Hotel (Salisbury), Royal Hotel (Umtali), Market Hall, Volunteer Drill Hall, Palace Theatre and Grand Theatre, all in Salisbury, as Harare was called then. Even as various dramatic societies built their own theatres, official understanding insisted on these being whites-only venues. These included the Charles Austin Theatre in Fort Victoria, the Cortauld Theatre in Umtali and the Ayrshire Theatre in Lomagundi. Blacks initially staged their shows in church halls. The state reserved the Magaba Methodist Church Hall and Kauffman Centre in Magaba for blacks. In Bulawayo, Stanley Hall in Makokoba was reserved for blacks.

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Later on, more public halls and social amenities were built in black residential neighbourhoods. These included Mai Musodzi Hall in Mbare, Cyril Jennings Hall in Highfield, Sakubva Beit Hall and Moffat Hall in Umtali and Mucheke Hall in Fort Victoria. The level of racial differentiation is evident in the nature of the theatre architecture of these halls. Theatre halls built by, and for, whites had a proscenium stage and had lighting systems properly suited to the theatre. Glass and wooden tiles usually surrounded theatres built for whites. In contrast, theatres built for blacks were made of concrete benches; the front of house was usually surrounded with iron bars. Sakubva Beit Hall is particularly striking because in the main auditorium there are wood-framed windows, which are placed at a height of four metres, virtually out of the reach of supposedly ‘mischievous’ natives. The hall has a general-purpose stage and the environment is quite cold because of the concrete surroundings and bare concrete floors. The discourse of separate development was perhaps more evident during the days of the Rhodesian Front (1964–1979), a political party formed for whites. This party was composed of hardliners who had staged a coup against Garfield Todd, whose liberal policies of interracialism were too ‘progressive’ for blacks. Godwin and Hancock note that the founding principles of the Rhodesia Front stated that: [t]he R.F. promises to preserve each community’s right to maintain its own identity, to preserve proper standards by ensuring that advancement must be on merit, to uphold the principle of the Land Apportionment Act, to oppose compulsory integration, to support [the] government right to provide separate amenities for different races. (1993, p. 57)

This was a clear affirmation of separate development and culturalism espoused in official party documents that was then followed in practice by separating different races in towns and tribal trust lands. Rhodesia subscribed to Victorian notions of male chauvinism (Schmidt 1992; Barnes 1992). In the first meeting of the Salisbury Amateur Musical and Dramatic Society on 21 April 1897,3 men constituted

3 We deliberately give examples from the 1890s to illustrate the keenness of the state to control fields of cultural production in the formative years of Rhodesia. This allows us to demonstrate the changes that took place in the 1950s when settler theatre was reasonably well established.

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the whole committee. These were Messrs Smith-Wright, Lugard, Stevens, Money, Sir Edward Martin (president), H. Marshal Hole and A.H.F. Duncan. Ladies attended as honorary members. This committee comprised some of the most powerful people in the colony. A.H.F. Duncan was the British South Africa Company’s Surveyor-General, while Marshal Hole was the B.S.A. Company’s acting secretary and magistrate (Taylor 1968, p. 39). Therefore, early dramatic societies had in their ranks company loyalists. Similarly, the Bulawayo Dramatic Society was, in its early days, entirely a male venture. The president was Colonel Francis Rhodes; its vice presidents were Lt Colonel Ramsay, Captain R.H. Griffiths, Justice Vincent, Mr. R.H. Powys Jones and the Mayor of the City. In 1906, when the presidency changed hands, Mr. N.H. Chataway became the president (Taylor 1968, p. 69). It seems that women who were interested in acting obtained such roles by being associated with men. In fact, the colonial city had far less white and black women than men. Married white men were reluctant to see their wives on the stage (Ravengai 2010). Women who did perform onstage were supposed to stick to strict Victorian dressing etiquette. Largely those who made it to the stage were usually wives of renowned actors or came from rich families. For example, at a show held at the Volunteer Drill Hall in 1905 in Salisbury, George Kipland staged a play called His Excellency, The Governor-General which featured Mr. and Mrs. O.P. Wheeler, Colonel Patterson (BSAP) and Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Parsons—wife to W.R. Parsons, who was the owner of the Palace Hotel (Taylor 1968, p. 73). It is not surprising that the history of Rhodesian performance was written by men like Charles Taylor, Robert Cary, Tony Weare and historians such as Peter Godwin, Ian Hancock and Robin Palmer. Names that capture the spirit of white dramatic thought are usually those of William Fleming King, Adrian Stanley, Ken Marshal and George Barnes. Settler theatre was supposed to be apolitical based on the dictates of the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act of 1967, elements of which have existed since 1911. It was not supposed to reveal inequalities of power and relations of production. At a workshop organised by the Rhodesia Literature Bureau in 1964 on writing skills in prose and drama, Paul Chidyausiku reiterated the importance of apolitical themes. Although Chidyausiku had made this remark concerning black literature, it shows the apolitical regime into which theatre of all sorts had to fit. On

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the workshop, Wilbur Smith, without doubt a great novelist to come out of Rhodesia, remarked that: We have a few local plays based, supposedly on the political situation, which I think have been inept, because they have oversimplified our problems completely. (cited in Kaarsholm 1990a, p. 228)

Eric Hobsbawm (1987) notes that imperialism dramatised the triumph of the ruling and middle classes of Europe. Historians have largely explained the imperial project through economic factors. Stoler and Cooper (1997) contend that the title ‘Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeoisie World’ does not necessarily imply that ‘bourgeois norms became the aspirations of the people of the colonies’ (1997, p. 16), it indicates, however, the overwhelming bourgeois input in the making of the colonial project. The elite bourgeoisie—Rhodes, Barnato and Beit—not only brought the economic thought of their class, but also its cultural and ideological practice. It follows then that the aesthetic of culture had to be bourgeois, reinforcing notions of realism and Greco-Roman tragedies upon which western elitist dramatic thought rested. Rich settlers who belonged to the elite bourgeoisie of Rhodesia owned hotels, which housed theatre venues. L. Susman owned the Masonic Hotel, Messrs Snodgrass and Mitchell jointly owned Hatfield Hotel, while W.E. Hacker owned the Royal Hotel in Umtali. E.A. Maud had built the Market Hall in Salisbury at a cost of five thousand pounds (Taylor 1968, p. 18). This ownership of theatre venues ensured that productions had to be in keeping with mainstream elite values and social norms of England. It is not a coincidence that these hotels staged productions from London’s West End. Theatre companies such as Fleming and Friedna’s London Comedy Company brought West End productions such as Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), and Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt (1892). Other companies that staged shows in these hotels included the Arthur Neilstone Company, Bob Bolders Company, Leigh Pierce Company, Harry Miller’s Comedy Company and Joseph Ashman’s Sketch Company (Taylor 1968, p. 44). Another form of control lay in the fact that dramatic societies were not supposed to run on a commercial basis, otherwise they were not eligible for funding from the Southern Rhodesia Dramatic Association. The state did not allow professionals to participate in the annual theatre festivals convened by the association. The Federal Theatre League of Rhodesia, formed in 1961, made it clear that ‘[n]o society which operates on a

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commercial basis or for purposes of distributing profits to members shall be eligible for entry in a Federal Theatre League Festival’ (Taylor 1968, p. 180). State control of sponsorship curtailed the freedoms that could come with financial independence. It was a strategy of arresting practices that disrupted official policy. The Rhodesian political establishment was as highly afraid of revolt from within settler society as it was of revolt from the subjugated peoples. This is because not every settler valorised Victorian and elitist standards. Colonialism also brought to Africa the poor peoples of Europe who, although they were white, were subject to the oppression of the dominant classes, or in the words of Comaroff, ‘the ruled among the ruled’ (1997, p. 166). Terry Eagleton (1976) argues that the greatest threat to any status quo is not necessarily the enemy from without, but the enemy from within. Ideological persuasion is administered not only to members of opposing races or cultures, but also to other members of the dominant social group to ensure that they continue to believe in the intellectual and moral leadership of the state. Gramsci argues ‘that all men are intellectual (…) but not all mean have the function of intellectuals’ (1999, p. 140). This implies that within the dominant social groups there are intellectuals responsible for the manufacture of an acceptable hegemony, to which all members of that culture adhere. It is important to observe that not every white was at the helm of the colonial superstructure or its mode of economic production. Not every white person believed in notions of separate development. Thus ideological engineering, as Terry Eagleton (1976) points out, conceals the reality of subordination to the vanquished, but also the reality of domination to the victors.

Interculturalism/Contamination as Resistance in Settler Theatre Given the emphasis that the state placed on separate development and racial discrimination, there can be little doubt that while the arsenal of settler resistance contained various weapons, the most effective and

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evident weapon was that of hybridity or contamination.4 There is substantial evidence offered through the activities of practitioners such as Adrian Stanley, Ken Marshal, Dawn Patterson, Monica Marsden and Daniel Pearce who were white practitioners involved in ‘contaminating’ practices that caused some unrest among the colonial elites. The Rhodesian bohemia (used here not in relation to geography, but artistically to mean creating in socially unconventional ways) certainly did create skirmishes of its own. Adrian Stanley and Ken Marshal’s initiatives at Reps Theatre are a case in point. In 1961, Stanley adapted Macbeth into an African Macbeth. He staged it with an African cast comprising Ruth Mpisaunga Muchawaya as Nowawa (Lady Macbeth) and Joseph Chaza as Noluju (Macbeth) (Ravengai 2006; Holland 1981). Of great interest was the admission that the play had great parallels between Europe and Africa. Through Adrian Stanley, Reps was able to stage multiracial productions. These included Godspell (1972), The Door (1975) and Julius Caesar (1978) with Charles Mungoshi acting in the part of Trebonius. Ruth Barbara Tredgold was also involved in interracial dramatic projects at Runyararo Hall in Mbare, which belonged to the Anglican Church. She provided rehearsal space and acted as producer and promoter for township groups. She helped artists such as George Mambo, Faith Dauti and Mabel Bingwa. Monica Marsden also operated at Runyararo Hall, where she helped the Gay Greaties Drama Club that had some of the most renowned artists of the fifties. These include Sam Matambo, Sonny Sondo, Pat Travers, Steven Mtunyani and Victoria Chingate (Makwenda 2005). It is important to note that this club included coloureds, whites and blacks. Ken Marshal also participated in interracial theatre. The most notable project was the staging of Jack Watson’s play Poison in the Sun at Reps Theatre in 1964. The cast included Pat Travers (coloured) and Steven Mtunyani, among others. Dawn Patterson also contributed to the interracial cause by staging Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead in 1978 with Ben Musoni and Arthur Chipunza in the cast. If ‘denying certain groups of people access to certain spaces was a cornerstone of policy’ (Barnes 1992, p. 18), then the refusal by white dramatists to adhere to controls of physical mobility was an act of defiance.

4 ‘Contamination’ is a term we borrow from Diana Brydon (1995). It is a strategy of disrupting the purity of the ‘self’ as a cultural entity.

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Father Daniel Pearce’s involvement with black actors is a case in point. As a principal at St Augustine’s Mission in Penhalonga, he created a platform by which blacks could participate in modern drama. His most remarkable productions were Generation Gap, performed in 1972 at the mission, and Credit to the Family, performed at the University College of Rhodesia’s Beit Hall in 1973. The cast of Generation Gap included Simon Nyamunda, who acted as Stuart Chiremba, Joel Mukwedeya as Mr. Murambi, Vernon Mwamuka as Patrick Kabiki, Godwin Punungwe as Mr. Mandega, Rodgers Musiyarira as Mr. Chiremba, Willard Duri as Mr. Samatomba and Holward Sibanda as Moyo (Pearce 1972, p. 3). The cast of Credit To The Family included Evison Kamuti as Moses Chiridzo, Annie-Louis Ruredzo as Lena Chiridzo, Joseph Matowanyika as Sebastian Chiridzo, John Gamiwa as The Man, Charles Mungoshi as Ishmael Chiridzo, Rosemary Nyamasve as Jo-Anne Harris, Margaret Makore as Lillian Tambiro, Rosemary Kazembe as Demetrius Tambiro, Bonus Zimunya as the Cab Driver, Lovejoy Kadungure as the Postman, Phillipa Mundangepfupfu as Mrs. Matinga and Godfrey Muredzi as Photographer. Bonus Zimunya, formerly a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Zimbabwe, and an actor in the 1973 rendition of Credit to the Family, confided to this researcher that these plays were in some sense nationalistic (Zimunya 2011). He noted that these were plays that reflected the common struggles of blacks, thus it was a theatre that reflected the black man as a subject of drama. For him and indeed other students, Credit to the Family revealed the new face of black theatre under changing times of modernity. Zimunya indicated that he had failed to secure a role in auditions for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, which had an all-white cast. Therefore, when a call for auditions on a Credit to the Family came, he saw it as an opportunity to show white students that blacks could participate well in theatre. Zimunya says that the acting was quite natural because the story was part of his life.5 These nationalistic sentiments are not a figment of his imagination. It must be remembered that at this time, most black students were involved in nationalist politics and they were also involved in their own struggles against authority. 5 Pearce (1972, p. vii) notes that the storyline was based on the real-life story of Evison Muti, who starred as the lead actor in 1973. The generational conflict between Sebastian Chiridzo and his parents, Moses Chiridzo and Lena Chiridzo, over the control of his future after educating him is a story or theme with which most students could identify.

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It is not a coincidence that Father Pearce created a platform for nationalistic theatre. He was a white liberal who championed the African cause. He belonged to The Community of Resurrection, an organisation of Anglican Fathers, which sought to undermine unjustified discrimination and the ill-treatment of blacks. Pearce was keen on disrupting the separate development and spatial controls that the state engendered more firmly as from the mid-1960s. His liberal background reinforced his conviction to fight against the radical racist discourse of the Rhodesian Front, which ruled Rhodesia from the early sixties. His involvement in theatre was therefore a mission of resistance against the state. Pearce concentrated on set plays for the Cambridge Advanced Level examinations and produced The Rainmaker, The Browning Version and The Crucible. Pearce (1977) argues that the dramatic oeuvre in an African school must emphasise African values and settings while at the same time include material from other cultures. To this end, he wrote and produced Generation Gap (1972). Pearce also recorded his involvement with about forty African drama students whom he coached at the annual Ecumenical Arts Workshop lasting over a week, usually at Waddilove Institute. Clearly, by working with African students in a racially and spatially divided country was a smack in the face of official colonial policy. The creative activities of the above white theatre practitioners violated racial mixing and space demarcation of the colonial establishment. The violation of spatial boundaries was a way of revealing the hybrid realities of Rhodesia. It was a way of asserting hyphenated identities, fluid cultural identities that displaced official notions of cultural purity and homogeneity. If one were in doubt that this bohemia ruffled the feathers of the political establishment, one should follow developments of the famous ‘Battle of the Toilets’. The ‘Battle of the Toilets’ is the nickname for a saga that started when the Reps Theatre committee decided in 1960 to hold a secret ballot to determine whether the new Salisbury Repertory Theatre, which was due to open in a few months, should be open to all races. An overwhelming majority voted in favour of a non-racial policy. However, the Salisbury city council did not embrace this multicultural policy and indicated that city by-laws dictated that blacks and whites could not use the same toilets. Reps Theatre engaged the services of a lawyer, whereafter a protracted struggle ensued; council conceded that Reps Theatre had the right to allow whites and blacks to use the same ablution facilities (Cary 1975, pp. 137–140).

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The battle paved the way for multiracial activities at Reps and indicated that exclusionary notions of what constituted Rhodesia in terms of theatrical practice did not go unchallenged among the whites. Whites seemed to have redefined official values from within in this instance. Disruption, as witnessed in the ‘Battle of the Toilets’ is therefore a strategy of resistance from within which has produced not the good white self, but the dissident white self who also disrupted colonial authority from within. This dissident self, like the dissident other, makes visible the lie of seamlessness and monolithic cultural practices, which was supposed to be the cornerstone of colonial social relations. It is significant to note that the construction of theatre houses by various dramatic societies was a way of asserting some kind of autonomy in theatrical production. It is not a coincidence that dramatic societies built theatres along the lines of liberal thought which characterised the nineteen fifties. Reps Theatre was able to debate issues of multiracial theatre in the late fifties such that in 1959 they voted in favour of a multiracial theatre house. This was because they had their own building where the municipality of Salisbury could not exercise jurisdiction. Other theatre houses built in the late fifties include Cortauld Theatre in Umtali (1955), Ayrshire Theatre in Lomagundi (1956), Campbell Theatre in Gatooma (1960) and Charles Austin Theatre in Fort Victoria. After the opening of its own theatre house, Reps Theatre staged Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, which was politically controversial for projecting a socialist ethos and a tradition of critically engaged spectatorship. At the time, socialism, associated with the Eastern European Soviet bloc, was like a swear word in colonial Rhodesia. After 1960, Ken Marshal staged Reps Theatre’s ‘first’ theatre-in-the-round show against the customary proscenium staging. Indeed, most of the evidence that has been used to demonstrate resistance comes in and around the sixties and theatre houses play an important role in explaining this resistance. It must be remembered that clubs, societies and municipalities owned most theatre houses. As already pointed out, such ownership had a bearing on the practice of theatre by these dramatic associations. Interracial theatre helped to undo the claim that settler theatre was always seamless, exclusive and cordoned off against blacks. It problematises Kaarsholm’s assertion when he says:

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Amateur dramatics were a common amusement for expatriates and colonists, usually producing a variety of operetta, music hall and WestEnd favourites in an effort to recreate the ambience of home in what was considered to be an African cultural desert. […] In the main, theatre in Rhodesia was a playground which allowed whites to conform themselves communally in a sense of cultural pseudo-aristocracy as well as to have fun, momentarily, in a sealed off non-African way. (1990, p. 249 [emphasis is ours])

Official ideology preferred racial separation in cultural production, but white dramatists did defy colonial authorities through interracial engagements. One question that underlies these processes of resistance is whether these whites were clearly aware that they were participating in acts of resistance. During the 1950s, some segments of white society made a concerted effort to fight the colour bar. White liberals who voiced dissenting views on interracial cooperation surged in the fifties. In the mid-fifties Hardwicke Holderness formed the Inter-Racial Association of Southern Rhodesia which rejected both South African apartheid and African nationalism as being racist. Bertram and Cedric Paver were progressive whites who offered blacks the opportunity to air their concerns in The Daily News, which Bertram and Cedric owned. Eileen Haddon was a founder member of the Interracial Association: which sought to unite people of different races […] [She] would visit the ‘Whites only’ hotels as a protest, accompanied by Blacks, Indians and Coloureds. Quite often, they would be thrown out of such premises. (Jenje-Makwenda 2005, p. 60)

White liberals encouraged blacks to perform in white areas and to bring white performers to black areas. Pat Travers saw performing arts as a weapon of fighting official policies. He used to perform with the City Quads at Mai Musodzi Hall in Mbare. Makwenda notes that this did not augur well with the then racist regime (Makwenda 2005). They were therefore clearly aware that they were revolting against the system. Mackenzie, as cited by Mtisi et al., observes that: [w]hile in the 1960s, the dominant social pressures among the whites were for political conformity (and) racial solidarity […], it would be a mistake

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to stress the unity of opinion too strongly. Not all White Rhodesians were the same. (2009, p. 122)

Mtisi, Nyakudya and Barnes concur with this view and submit that although race was used for demarcating lines of exclusion, it: [w]as not powerful in inspiring loyalty to ‘the nation’, however defined, nor in determining the actions of different groups involved in the contests of the period. (2009, p. 122)

This is clearly indicative of the fact that white dramatists also redefined dominant ideology from within. In so doing, whites were contesting official notions of whitehood. Godwin and Hancock note that there were conflicts between supremacists/segregationists who did not believe in the black cause, liberals who supported African independence and a section of whites, which did not oppose African advancement, but hoped to delay its passage to majority rule for as long as possible. This liberal section was opposed to the rule of the Rhodesia Front. In a demonstration against Ian Smith in Salisbury, the placards had the following messages: R.F. DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ALL WHITES MR SMITH, ITS TIME TO GO GRACEFULLY. (Mtisi et al. 2009, p. 122)

As Godwin and Hancock observe, this is indicative of the fact that Rhodesia did not possess: the relatively monolithic character which was the image popularised by its critics and supporters alike. Although race was a factor in identifying Rhodesian-ness, it did not beget uniformity in political behaviour. (1993, p. 7)

It can be remarked, in this vein, that race equally did not beget uniformity in cultural practice. Interracial productions such as Daniel Pearce’s Generation Gap (1972), John Haig’s staging of Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead in 1974, the same Fugard play directed by Dawn Patterson in 1978, Adrian Stanley’s African Macbeth in 1961 and Ken Marshal’s staging of Jack Watson’s Poison in the Sun in 1964 demonstrate that the idea of settler

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engagement in theatre did not exist in a non-African vacuum. In our view, cultural and ideological behaviour is not a function of official decrees or policy. Some white dramatists formulated their cultural and ideological behaviour with some degree of disapproval of authoritarian control. Colonial subjects certainly had agency in the mediation of their nation and their identities. In this regard, Stoler and Cooper observe that: Europe’s colonies were never empty spaces to be made over in Europe’s image or fashioned in its interest […] Colonial projects also showed up the fundamental contradictions of bourgeoisie projects and the way universal claims were bound up in particularistic assertions. (1997, p. 3)

Rhodesian whites did not, therefore, replicate dominant ideology without some measure of resistance. Moreover, whites provided an opportunity by which they could disrupt ideological constructions of race. By engaging Africans in multiracial productions or even enabling Africans to perform in European plays, whites revealed that given the same access to resources and exposure, Manichean differences of superiority and inferiority were largely ideological rather than real. Consequently, the disruption of racial idealisations by black performers also became a form of defiance by the white practitioners who facilitated such disruption. Inter-racialism became a means of de-anglicising the stage. It demonstrated that there was no one way of doing theatre. Indeed, it became an acknowledgment of the fact that black Rhodesians had a theatrical heritage worth recognising if a sense of nationhood was to be cultivated through dramatic practice. The staging of Arthur Chipunza’s Svikiro: My Spirit Sings, a play about Shona spirit mediums at Reps Theatre in 1978, can be viewed in the context of an accommodating cultural behaviour, which gave space to other cultures. Commenting on African Macbeth, Adrian Stanley reveals that: [t]here were local white people who were anti-African; they said they weren’t going to see a lot of blacks trying to speak Shakespeare. Then there were the pro-African whites who said, ‘this is the greatest show on earth’. (cited in Holland 1981, p. 21)

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Stanley’s statement quoted above demonstrates the necessity not to treat whites as a culturally homogeneous entity in the analysis of colonial resistance. Kerr admits that European reaction to indigenous performing arts was not one of monolithic denigration. Such contamination reversed notions of Africa as a tabula rasa without any theatrical tradition or as a site of primitive, atavistically obscene rituals, which indicated its inferiority to the supposed rationalism of European culture. (Kerr 1995, p. 18)

Contamination proved the impossibility of maintaining cultural closure and negation. Dominant ideology was, indeed, under siege from within and from without. The performance of African Macbeth at Reps Theatre was an act of resistance not only through racial synergy, but also because of its being an adaptation. Adaptation is an act of appropriation because it makes the exotic fit the local context. It is not myopic mimicry, which replicates a foreign culture with fidelity. Giving Macbeth an African costume and providing local alternatives for the ghost of Banquo was a way of showing that there was no difference between Europe and Africa on matters of the supernatural. Adaptation clearly showed that Africa was not culturally inferior and that blacks had just the same capability of staging Shakespeare as whites did, and in so doing, the performance disrupted the conception of blacks as an inferior breed of people. Adaptation was therefore an act of resistance. Interculturalism also brought with it political themes as white and black dramatists also staged burning issues of the day. The fact that white Rhodesians wrote and staged plays rooted in colonial realities was in itself an act of resistance. In the grand scheme of official ideology, productions were either European classics or middle-class domestic dramas. In this respect, plays like Jack Watson’s Poison in the Sun and Judith Todd’s A Guide to the Thoughts of Ian Smith (n.d.) created a platform by which theatre ceased to be strictly a site of escapist entertainment. Theatre acquired immediate social relevance, revealing the disapproval of colonial authority by some sections of settler community. Poison in the Sun attacked imperial capital and mobilised Africans against the construction of Kariba Dam. By including the character of Ndabaningi Sithole, a prominent African nationalist of the time who was played by Pat Travers, the play gave space to the cause of Black Nationalism. Theatre became insurrection. When Judith Todd ridiculed Ian Smith in A Guide to the

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Thoughts of Ian Smith,6 she was pointing out the inherent tensions within the white Rhodesian self. It is significant to note that dramatic space paved the way for women to disrupt some male chauvinistic values of Rhodesia. Performing arts gave agency to women as a significant entity of the social fabric. Women were able to participate in politics in the guise of performing artists. It is no surprise therefore that plays such as Monica Marsden’s adaptation of Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country 7 in 1954 and Dawn Patterson’s direction of Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead in 1978 reveal the agency of women in colonial times. This is because, like blacks, colonial women were victims of the male colonial project, albeit with varying degrees of intensity. The energies of these women in undermining authority reveals the gendered construction of settler resistance. Women climbed the colonial cultural social ladder by assuming the roles of director, producer and designer which were traditionally male dominated. Patterson and Marsden certainly put themselves on the same platform with legendary male directors such as Ken Marshal and Adrian Stanley. However, it should be noted that although resistance and defiance took place, it did not totally shift the prevailing psyche of domination and subordination. While contamination, bohemia and hybridity disrupted lines of authority, whites retained overall positions of control in this interracial engagement. Whites served as directors, producers and designers, while blacks served only in the role of actors and performers. Interracial productions ushered in industrial ethnicity in the practice of theatre. This limitation is highly indicative of the fact that white resistance, to some degree, was contaminated by residues of the colonial dominant ideology. Resistance is therefore never total or pure. It is always ambivalent. Diana Brydon (1995) argues that such ambivalence must not necessarily be viewed as resistance because it leaves dominant perspectives in a position of dominance. Rather, she argues that ambivalence works to maintain the status quo. Jenny Sharpe shares a similar view and submits that:

6 The play was openly political as it quoted verbatim Prime Minister Smith, Minister of Information Pieter Kenyon Flemming, Minister of Justice Pieter van der Byl and Minister of Law and Order Desmond Lardner. 7 Adapted from an anti-apartheid novel written By Alan Paton. The play highlights colonial oppression and the need of blacks to liberate themselves.

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[i]n the absence of critical awareness of colonialism ideological effects, readings of counter-discourses can all too easily serve an institutional function of securing the dominant narratives. (1995, p. 99)

Such sentiments emanate from the fact that most discourses of resistance are radical, threatening to obliterate the status quo. The most popular form of resistance is resistance from without. The understanding of resistance from within has so far not gained much currency. Brydon mistakenly associates colonial resistance with blacks and the colonised. Her approach fails to capture subtle forms of resistance, which were not necessarily radical but also constituted forms of revolt and dissent. Resistance is not always radical. It may not be adequate to effect a complete change in the balance of the hegemonic equation, but it certainly causes dominant ideologies to retreat their lines of control. The aforementioned ‘battle of the toilets’ at Reps allowed Reps to stage productions that disrupted white colonialist control. The history of productions at Reps demonstrates that Reps Theatre was able to stage multiracial productions after 1960 without any interference from the state. These productions included African Macbeth (1961), Godspell, The Door, Julius Caesar8 and the highly subversive anti-apartheid play Sizwe Bansi is Dead at the height of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation. The production of African Macbeth also allowed the black voice to make a significant spatial transition from the found space of Glamis Stadium in 1961, to the proscenium at Reps Theatre in the mid-1970s. Other black plays that shared the proscenium in white theatres include Arthur Chipunza’s Svikiro: My Spirit Sings (1978) at Reps Theatre and Wole Soyinka’s Kongi’s Harvest (1978) at Sundown Theatre (Holland 1981). Clearly, then, interracial synergies were repositioning black theatre as another way of doing theatre in a colonial setting. This synergy certainly helped the cultural recuperation of black theatre as it also paved the way for the massive black cultural rejuvenation that was witnessed at independence in 1980. Resistance is, therefore, a process of negotiating space and accepting compromise in the march towards desired goals.

8 Bill Louw (2011) indicates that after the staging of Julius Caesar in which Charles Mungoshi acted as Trebonius, Adrian Stanley was asked to come and explain himself to Prime Minister Smith as to why he had allowed Africans to see and act in a play that talked about insurrection against the political establishment.

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Conclusion It is undeniable that settler theatre complied with the requirements of the state. However, it would be unfair to discuss this theatre as simply one of containment and collaboration with official cultural values. The fact that whites benefited the most from state policies must not lead to the assumption that whites did not have the agency to mitigate the effects of official colonial cultural agendas. The chapter has focused on the subtle forms of resistance by whites that produced the ‘dissident self’, and which disrupted the ideological constructions of the colonial self as a monolithic entity that espoused homogeneous cultural and ideological behaviour. Because the nature of resistance is self against self, it cannot be radical or diametrical in its opposition to dominant ideology. Resistance from within is therefore accommodating and Janus-faced as it reveals the need to reform the self while simultaneously retaining it. Contradiction is therefore the dialectic of this type of resistance.

References Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 1995. Post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge. Barnes, Teresa A. 1992. The fight for control of African women’s mobility in colonial Zimbabwe 1900–1939. Signs 17 (3): 586–608. Brydon, Diana. 1995. The white Inuits speak: Contamination as literary strategy. In Post-colonial studies reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Griffiths Gareth, and Helen Tiffin, 136–141. London: Routledge. Cary, Robert. 1975. The story of Reps—The history of Salisbury Repertory Players: 1931–1975. Salisbury: Galaxie Press. Comaroff, John L. 1997. Images of empire, contest and conscience: Models of domination in South Africa. In Tensions of empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, ed. A.N. Stoler and F. Cooper, 163–197. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Eagleton, Terry. 1976. Criticism and ideology: A study in Marxist literary theory. London: Verso. Godwin, Peter, and Ian Hancock. 1993. ‘Rhodesians never die’: The impact of war and political change on white Rhodesia, c 1970–1980. Harare: Baobab Books. Gramsci, Antonio. 1999. Essential classics in politics. London: Electric Books. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1987. The age of empire, 1875–1914. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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Holland, Roy. 1981. A black future for theatre, interview with Adrian Stanley. Arts Zimbabwe 2: 18–26. Kaarsholm, Prebren. 1990a. Cultural struggle and development in southern Africa. London: James Currey. Kaarsholm, Prebren. 1990b. Mental colonisation or catharsis? Theatre, democracy and cultural struggle from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies 16 (2): 248–260. Kerr, David. 1995. African popular theatre: From pre-colonial times to the present day. Oxford: James Currey. Louw, Bill. 2011. Interview with Kelvin Chikonzo. University of Zimbabwe. Makwenda, Joyce. 2005. Zimbabwe township music. Harare: Storytime Promotions. Mtisi, Joseph, Munyaradzi Nyakudya, and Teresa Barnes. 2009. Social and economic developments during the UDI period. In Becoming Zimbabwe: A history from the pre-colonial period to 2008, ed. Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo, 115–140. Harare: Weaver Press. Pearce, Daniel. 1972. Generation gap: Two plays. Gweru: Mambo Press. Pearce, Daniel. 1977. Who is John Moyo? Thoughts on black theatre in Zimbabwe. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 11 (3): 54–58. Plastow, Jane. 1996. African Theatre and Politics: The evolution of theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe: A comparative study. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Ravengai, Samuel. 2006. An investigation into the practice of directing and theatre making in post-independence Zimbabwe up to 1990: Some urban theatre directors and/or theatre makers as case studies. Zambezia 33 (2): 67–94. Ravengai, Samuel. 2010. ‘Unhappily, we are afraid of it’: Modernism as deracination on the Rhodesian/Zimbabwean stage. African Identities 8 (2): 101–118. Ravengai, Samuel. 2011. Subalternity and the negotiation of a theatre identity: Performing the postcolony in alternative Zimbabwean theatre. Doctor of Philosophy thesis. University of Cape Town. Schmidt, Elizabeth. 1992. Peasants, traders and wives: Shona women in the history of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Seda, Owen. 2011. Interculturalism in post-colonial Zimbabwean drama: Projections of an alternative theatre at the onset of the new millennium. Doctor of Philosophy thesis. Harare: University of Zimbabwe. Sharpe, Jenny. 1995. Figures of colonial resistance. In Post-colonial studies reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 99–103. London: Routledge. Slemon, Stephen. 1995. Unsettling the empire: Resistance theory for the second world. In Post-colonial studies reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 104–110. London: Routledge.

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Stoler, Anny N., and Frederick Cooper. 1997. Between metropole and colony: Rethinking a research agenda. In Tensions of empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, ed. Frederick Cooper and Anny Stoler, 1–56. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Suleri, Sarah. 1995. The rhetoric of English India. In Post-colonial studies reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 111–113. London: Routledge. Taylor, Charles. 1968. The history of Rhodesian entertainment 1890–1930. Salisbury: M. O. Collins Press. Zimunya, Musaemura B. 2011. Interview with Kelvin Chikonzo, University of Zimbabwe, August 18.

CHAPTER 4

Transformative Complexity of Found Objects in Devised Zimbabwean Theatre Tafadzwa Mlenga and Nehemiah Chivandikwa

Introduction Deploying the close interplay between semiotic and performative dimensions of a theatre performance (Fischer-Lichte 2008), as the analytical framework, this chapter interrogates the transformative complexity of found objects in design, in relation to devised theatre in Africa, more broadly, and specifically Zimbabwe. Semiotic dimensions refer to possible or polyvalent meanings that a performance generates, while performative dimensions refer to immediate physical/affective, energetic emotional and cognitive effects or impact of performance (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 2008). These effects arise from the reality that objects and bodies of performers appear in their phenomenality (immediate everyday meanings and functions known through the senses), and audiences initially

T. Mlenga Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada N. Chivandikwa (B) Department of Creative Media and Communication, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_4

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perceive them as they are in real life (phenomenal bodies and objects)— a concept which is known as order of presence (Fischer-Lichte 2008, p. 75). As the performance or scene proceeds, the audience will eventually interpret the bodies and scenic objects as dramatic figures/signs (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 2008), which is the order of representation or semiotic dimension (Fischer-Lichte 2008, p. 75). Broadly, the transformative complexity refers to how design, together with the body and other aspects of the performance dynamically co-determine the interaction of spectators and performers. The analysis is undertaken with reference to the devising processes and selected five performances of Half Empty, Half Full (2013) that the authors watched in 2013. Half Empty Half Full was directed by Mncedisi Shabangu, a theatre director of South African extraction. We chose to analyse Half Empty, Half Full, because the play adopted found objects on stage and we managed to travel with the cast to numerous venues around Zimbabwe, including the University of Zimbabwe Beit Hall Theatre, Reps Theatre, Midlands State University Great Hall, Charles Austin Theatre in Masvingo and Bulawayo Theatre. This analysis is a response to African/Zimbabwean scholars (e.g. Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988; Chifunyise 1997; Irobi 2007) of indigenous/traditional theatre aesthetics, who rightly seek to defend African theatre aesthetics from biased colonial scholars of the past, such as Ruth Finnegan (1970), who denigrate African theatre, because they perceive that among other ‘shortcomings’, it lacks sophisticated design aspects. It is, therefore, partly the use of found objects in African theatre, which caused colonial scholars to think that before colonialism there was no tradition of theatre in Africa (Abubakar 2009; Mlenga et al. 2015). Colonial scholarship overlooks both the centrality of the body and complexity of design in African theatre (Irobi 2007; Kavanagh 1997). Yet there seems to be a danger among African scholars who challenge colonial biases to undervalue unwittingly the sophistication of African theatre, by separating the body from its scenic environment. Post-colonial scholars such as Kavanagh (1997), Chifunyise and Kavanagh (1988), Zenenga (2015) and Irobi (2007), seek to decolonise African theatre scholarship by emphasising that the body is the primary spectacle and site of signification in Zimbabwean theatre. Primarily these scholars challenge extravagant and monumental designs that are extraneous to the performer (see Mlenga et al. 2015; Kavanagh 1997). Yet, in privileging the body as a strategy in decolonising Zimbabwean theatre, there is a danger of unwittingly relegating design, which is another critical co-determinant of the materiality

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(corporeality and spatiality) of performance (Fischer-Lichte 2008). That is to say the body (corporeality) and found objects (spatiality) play a significant role in the transformation from ordinary interaction to an aesthetic experience. In other words, in trying to distinguish African/Zimbabwean theatre from what critics refer to as ‘dead’ Western colonial theatre, (Kavanagh 1997; Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988; Irobi 2007; Abubakar 2009), African scholarship may unwittingly devalue the complexity of devised performances. In this regard, post-colonial African scholars risk reducing the materiality of performance, by separating corporeality from spatiality (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 2008). Gillette (1997) defines found objects as any pre-existing objects that are retrieved from homes, garbage cans or even salvage yards and adopted for use on stage. Iverson (2004) also defines found objects as ready-made objects created for other purposes in everyday life which are easily recognised for their utilitarian function and adopted for use on stage. In this chapter, the term ‘found objects’ refers to physical everyday objects used in everyday life such as personal clothes, properties and furniture that performers find and bring from homes for use as stage costume, scenery and props. By transformative and aesthetic implications of found objects, we refer to the effectiveness of found objects in heightening the image of reality to an image which is life-like, but not an imitation of real life (Wilson 2002). We therefore explore the possibilities and limitations of found objects in complex transformations that affectively and perceptually provoke and enchant the audience.

Brief Background to the Play The idea to devise Half Empty, Half Full came to Tafadzwa Hananda (who acts as Taffy) and his co-actor Teddy Mangawa (who acts as Teddy) after they heard of the Musho Festival (Hananda 2014, personal interview). The festival, hosted in Durban, South Africa, by the Catalina Theatre, features plays performed by not more than two actors. Tafadzwa noted that since he and Teddy were working together at Savanna Trust (a prominent arts organisation that produces mainstream and applied theatre productions), they could handle a two-man show, so they produced a synopsis which they submitted to the festival organisers. When the synopsis was accepted, Savanna Trust engaged Mncedisi Shabangu, a prominent South African director to direct the play. In devising Half Empty, Half Full, both the story and design ideas constantly changed.

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The submitted synopsis told the story of two politicians who get trapped in a building when there is an uprising against them. However, the idea shifted when the play went into rehearsal because of the interests of the Savanna Trust. The Savanna Trust mainly deals with the socio-political issues that affect the community at grassroots level. As such, the play had to shift to incorporate characters from the grassroots. Throughout the workshopping process, the greatest challenge was to confine the story to the socio-economic themes being raised in the play. Numerous ideas were constantly introduced. However, the director was always guiding the process to ensure that actors would not deviate from the focus on grassroots politics (Mangawa 2014, personal interview). Eventually, the play became a comedy featuring two villagers, Taffy and Teddy, who are migrating to the city in search of jobs. The two meet on the road, and they wait for a while for no transport is available. This transport challenge frustrates the two, prompting a fierce argument which nearly breaks into a fight. The argument is about whether or not they should continue waiting for the bus or if they should go back home to the village. While they wait, they begin sharing details about their lives and discover how their lives are intertwined. As the two characters talk, the action shifts from the past, to the future and then the present. They discuss personal issues from past occurrences and their future aspirations. In the end, the play becomes a self-reflective platform where two familiar ‘strangers’ re-examine their past and dreams of having a better life. The performers used their real names in the play, with Tafadzwa Hananda playing the part of Taffy and Teddy Mangawa playing the part of Teddy. The design concept for Half Empty, Half Full was to present a metaphorically rich performance that moved away from realistic presentations. The production’s design was characterised by an almost bare set, two crates that were used as scenic elements, and everyday clothes taken from the personal wardrobes of the actors. The choice of design concept was influenced by two major factors. The first was to put together a performance that could be showcased at the Musho Festival in Durban with low production costs. Tafadzwa Hananda highlighted that: [o]ur vision was, we wanted something that is affordable, (and) to go every place wherever we can. However we needed to cut the costs and push the product. Like, if we have a two-man show, with very little props, it could travel as much as it could. That means we could have three guys. There are two actors, who could double in as the stage managers as they could

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account for everything before and after the show. And then the sound guy who would then become the light guy. (Hananda 2014, personal interview)

In addition to the above, the design concept was influenced by the spatial considerations of all the possible spaces that the play could be showcased. Hananda highlighted that: [o]ur play was made for the conventional theatre space. We had the dimensions and set up of the Natalia theatre. But bear in mind that the performance was going to South Africa for one festival. Our vision was to make it a hit out there so it can be bigger when we come back to Zimbabwe. So we decided to use an empty space so that the play can easily adapt itself to any space. The director pushed us to explore the empty space so as to create a believable world. Based on his background and his experimental value, he is the kind of guy who doesn’t go for the really realistic big sets. But he is more passionate in having a conventional stage there, being manipulated to give it a total illusion of a new space. (Hananda 2014, personal interview)

The ‘empty’ stage, then, was a conscious decision in conceptualising the design for the play. An almost bare stage was also strategically motivated by the anticipation of performing the play at any given space after the Musho Festival in Durban. More so, the design was deliberately intended to enable processes of transformability of objects as signs to occur. This will be examined in the sections to follow.

Design Approach in the Devising Process: Half Empty, Half Full Unlike scripted plays which sometimes specify design requirements prior to rehearsals, the design needs in the devising process, emerge at the same time the play is being made. The process of devising differs greatly from one theatre Company to another (Govan et al. 2007). Weber (2010) identifies three approaches used in the practice of devising, namely, collective collaboration, guided collaboration and specialised collaboration. Of interest to us is collective collaboration and guided collaboration. Weber (2010) emphasises that collective collaboration involves all members sharing equal responsibilities in the process of creation from the initial brainstorming sessions, researching, scripting, to the final performance.

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Thus, the conventional theatre roles, such as director, designer and playwright, do not apply, since every member is involved in all these processes. Guided collaboration, according to Weber (2010, p. 8) involves a director who guides the rest of the members. He or she therefore ‘determines the source material, provides exercises and activities for research, training, and rehearsal as well as determines how the performance will be presented to an audience’. In certain instances, however, theatre companies are flexible and use a combination of different approaches (Milling and Heddon 2015). Half Empty, Half Full used a combination of the collective approach and the guided approach. We attended the rehearsals at the Savanna Trust offices and observed that performers were involved in the devising process, from the brainstorming sessions, research, scripting, designing and performance. However, the director worked, to a larger extent, as the ‘teacher’, who constantly guided the design process and made sure that the thematic concerns were being addressed. The devising approach in Half Empty, Half Full facilitated the adoption of the ‘outside in’ approach to design. It is ‘synonymous with the process of workshopping and improvisation’ (Sibanda 2017, p. 50). The ‘outside in’ approach does not follow a sequential method, but allows for improvisation where different objects are brought in and experimented on until the necessary and appropriate ones are adopted. The ‘outside in’ approach to design in Half Empty, Half Full was done collectively, with the performers working in conjunction with the director. In the initial stages of rehearsals, the director instructed performers to bring in objects from home which they could relate to the ideas of the play that had been brainstormed, or anything that brought inspiration for experimentation in the rehearsal space. The performers brought a travelling bag, stool, pillow, umbrella and two crates of tomatoes, among other things. These found objects were placed on stage right and the director asked performers to work on a bare stage, making use of their bodies, picking any everyday object of choice, and using dialogue as they brainstormed the story. Schirle (2005, p. 94) highlights that ‘in devising, there is always the possibility that you end up with a piece very different from what you started to make’. This is true, and it applies to both the storyline and the design ideas. Like any other artistic process, the devising process is risky and messy (Govan et al. 2007; Milling and Heddon 2015; Maclaurin 2002). It has its complexities and does not guarantee the best ideas for

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creating visually striking image (Schirle 2005, p. 99). The major challenge in devising the design in Half Empty, Half Full was for the two performers to eventually agree on which objects to adopt for specific scenes. For instance, Teddy picked up a travelling bag in scene one since he was about to embark on the journey to the city. However, Tafadzwa felt that a bag was not necessary and that they could mime through body gestures instead of showing that they were travelling. Neither of them was willing to compromise on their design suggestions, and each performer had ideas which worked for him. This demonstrates the unpredictability and complexity of the devising process in relation to the design and even the story-building process, since there is a ‘blank page’ and a number of opinions on how to fill it (Schirle 2005). However, these shortcomings were overcome by the intervention of the director, Shabangu, as the ‘teacher’, who provided guidance on how best to manipulate the found objects. During one of the rehearsals that the first author attended, Shabangu advised the performers to: choose one everyday object. Think outside the box. Manipulate it to suit all the scenes. Do not restrict to its daily functions. Use it as a visual metaphor. Let it and your body tell your story without you having to say much. (Tafadzwa Mlenga, personal journal 2014)

Evidently, from the above intervention, the director understood the importance of both the body and scenic objects. Hence there is a need to contextualise post-colonial defenders of African theatre like Irobi (2007, p. 898), who notes that the body has somatogenic power which is ignored by Western theatre critics, because in Africa the body is ‘…the ultimate source, site, and centre of performance’. We argue that it is possible to assert the somatogenic power of the body without necessarily undermining its co-determinants by analysing it in its performance environment. As Fischer-Lichte (2008) notes, the scenic objects make the presence of the performer emphatic in addition to co-contributing to the meanings that the performance interaction generates. So the director here wanted the found objects to create the atmosphere in which the phenomenal bodies of performers would be absorbed, first, and subsequently interpreted by the audience (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 2008). This is because, it is the phenomenal body of a performer which ‘…works on phenomenal bodies of spectators to evoke affective and motorial states’ (Fischer-Lichte 2008, p. 7). The director was training actors to manipulate found objects

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to achieve this dynamic between the actual and the fictional body. In light of the above, an everyday object exists on two levels; the first level is its daily function and the second level is the metaphorical function. During the devising process for Half Empty, Half Full, therefore, the director was conscious that an everyday object can be magnified for theatrical complexity, and he encouraged the performers to go beyond the everyday functions of objects they were manipulating. To train and motivate the performers into the imaginative realms, warm-ups and imagination games were used. For example, before rehearsals, the two performers played an improvisation game, where one had to say ‘yes’ to anything that the other said. From the suggested scenarios, the performers were constantly transforming themselves and the space, time and objects around them. If one said ‘no’ or failed to transform himself as the other suggested, the game ended. Such games assisted in broadening the performers’ ability to see beyond the obvious. The above approach is also quite fascinating because it is consistent with the theorisation that performance meanings emerge rather than being pre-determined (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 2008). The director was urging performers to move from the phenomenal body to the semiotic body and from the phenomenal object to the semiotic one, in which process was aided and complicated by the use of everyday objects. The devising process described above shows how the director intended the objects and the body to transform the theatrical experience using the complexity and fluidity between the fictional and the actual that is theorised as the order of presence and the order of representation, respectively (Fischer-Lichte 2008). The devising process we witnessed for Half Empty, Half Full leads us to posit that the emphasis on the body by scholars such as Robert Kavanagh Mshengu, Stephen Chifunyise and Ngugi wa Mirii (see Ravengai 2014) runs the risk of unwittingly insinuating that the body alone is the only source of spectacle in African theatre. It should be emphasised that the director’s background significantly influenced the production style and choice of metaphoric design adopted in Half Empty, Half Full. Mncedisi Shabangu is heavily influenced by the South African township theatre tradition. He acknowledges that he relies on the physicality of the body in performance. However, as is evident from the above, this is not to say design is overlooked in his performances, since he acknowledges that he makes use of found objects that are readily available to him (Shabangu 2013, personal interview).

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Semiotic Transformation of Scenic Elements in Devising Half Empty, Half Full The play is presented on an almost bare stage with only the two performers and two crates, serving as scenic elements, which Teddy Mangawa brought in from home. In everyday life, these crates are used by Teddy’s uncle, who has a vegetable market at Mbare in Harare, to store tomatoes. Minimal modifications were made to the crates for use on stage. Straps made of strong string were tied onto them to assist in their transformation when they represented bags. The straps enabled the performers to carry the crates on their backs. Throughout the theatrical performance, these everyday crates are metaphorically transformed into various objects and serve as visual metaphors to further the plot of the play imaginatively and aesthetically. However, even though ‘theatre poaches on everyday life’ (Read 1993, p. 47), as illustrated by the adoption of crates from home onto the stage in Half Empty, Half Full, this fluidity between art and life is complicated. In as much as art and life borrow from each other, transformation in theatrical performances is somehow different from the everyday performances. To comprehend the transformative power of the crates that were adopted as scenic elements on stage, it is critical to assess the levels of transformation in everyday performance vis-à-vis theatrical performance. Even though humans continuously interact and transform objects in everyday performance, the potential for transformation of objects on stage is heightened. This can be illustrated using interesting observations made by the researchers during the rehearsals for Half Empty, Half Full. During lunchtime breaks, the performers would pick the crates from the rehearsal space and sit on them while having their lunch, since the room they used for rehearsals had no chairs. This was possible because the form and functionality of the crates allowed them to be transformed in this way. What this implies is that in everyday performance objects shift and transform only according to the functional ability of the object. However, the potential for transformation in theatre was ‘heightened’ because of suspension of disbelief. Malva (2012, p. 3) emphasises that an ‘everyday object is multi-layered; it has its everyday design purpose and the possibility of becoming something else through imagination’. Theatrical performances are a heightened version of life, which borrows from the everyday performance. The everyday crates used in Half Empty, Half Full ‘ignored’ their everyday function and transformation was heightened because of

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the suspension of disbelief and acceptance of the imagined by both the performers and audiences, as will be explored in detail later. This demonstrates that the performers were negotiating the micro-telescopic property of the theatrical space by playing around with the dynamic between fiction and reality. Drawing from the above, it is critical, therefore, to examine Elam’s argument on the ‘transformability of the sign’, as this forms the basis on which Half Empty, Half Full is analysed. Relying on Elam’s transformability of the sign, it is also critical to examine Peirce’s (cited in Elam 1980) trichotomy of sign functions which is the icon, index and symbol. An icon represents its object ‘mainly by similarit’ (Elam 1980, p. 21) and is, therefore, a sign of something that is much the same as that which it is representing. Most productions in Zimbabwean theatre adopt iconic costuming, for example, Half Empty, Half Full (2013), Rituals (2012), Election Day (2014) and Diamonds in His Son’s Grave (2013). The everyday clothes used in these plays retained the semblance of real life. Theatre in Zimbabwe deals mainly with socio-economic and political issues and for this reason, the characters depict everyday life situations. An index is a ‘sign that is connected with their object often physically or through contiguity’ (Elam 1980, p. 21). Elam (1980) quotes Pierce (1938) who argues that the index finger relates to the object pointed at through physical contiguity. An example is the play we watched at Mutevedzi Scout Hall in Harare’s Mount Pleasant suburb, The Most Wonderful Thing of All (2010), directed by Robert McLaren, which had two performers, who played more than five characters each. They wore black costumes (leotards) and constantly picked properties or costumes that suggested different locales or personas. For instance, a white cook’s cap indexically stood for a waitress when Thandi was working as a waitress in South Africa after separating from her husband, Tongoona. Because the performers played multiple roles, and it was impossible to change costume, set and properties every time a new character or locale was being introduced, the director chose to use leotards and introduced a few selected costumes and properties that indexically represented the suggested locale or character. A symbol is a ‘sign where the relationship between the sign and the signified is conventional and unmotivated in that there is no similitude or physical connection existing between the two’ (Elam 1980, p. 22). A symbol does not therefore need to have a physical similarity to or relationship with the object it stands for. In Half Empty, Half Full,

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the crates adopted as scenic elements symbolically represented various objects on stage: umbrellas, stools, pillows, among others, as will be discussed later. These found objects were symbolically transformed on an illusionary/imaginary level to represent various objects. In theatrical performances, an object that is brought onto the stage can act symbolically, stripped of all its realness, now existing as an illusion of reality. Devlin (1989, p. 115) posits that ‘the facility to believe in a representative object does not depend on the object being an exact replica of the real thing’. As such, in theatre, symbols can be used to refer to objects without being an imitation of the real object. In light of this theorisation, we examine how the crates were dynamically and complexly implicated in the meaning making (semiotic) and atmospheric (affective or performative) transformations in three performances that we watched.

Performative and Semiotic Dimensions in Three Public Performances Guided by the theoretical contention that the semiotic and performative dimensions of the theatrical experience are intertwined in a way that is difficult to separate them (Fischer-Lichte 2008, p. 77), we make reference to three performances at the Midlands State University, Great Hall, in Gweru, the University of Zimbabwe, Beit Hall, in Harare and Charles Austin Theatre in Masvingo. The University of Zimbabwe performance was held on 15 May 2013 and had about 180 spectators comprising mainly university theatre arts students, lecturers, a few members of the public and theatre practitioners from Harare. The Midlands State University performance was held on 16 September 2013, and had about 50 audience members, who were mainly students and lecturers. The Masvingo performance was held on 10 August 2013 and attended by approximately 130 spectators, most of whom were members of the public. It should be noted that performances at the University of Zimbabwe Beit Hall and Midlands State University Great Hall promote a convivial, informal mood where students bring in food and laugh and comment on action on stage (Mlenga et al. 2015). We observed that the symbolic transformation of crates on stage enhanced the transformation of a theatrical experience from being an ordinary social event to an artistic and aesthetic experience. To reinforce this observation, we examined scene three of the performance held at

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the University of Zimbabwe Beit Hall. This transformation had complications, which will be discussed later in the section. In this scene, a flashback of Taffy’s life in the rural areas, Teddy acts as Taffy’s father, Mr. Hananda. Taffy and his father converse about their daily hardship of having to wake up early and sell vegetables and with little return. Mr. Hananda advises his son to consider going to the city to look for a job as a gardener, since they can no longer make ends meet through selling vegetables. As the scene begins, the performers exchange crates by throwing them at each other to show that this was the beginning of a different scene. The performers manipulate the form of the crates by placing them horizontally on the stage floor and sitting on them. Using their voices, the two performers make loud clicking sounds (nxanxanxa) while moving up and down in a stylised manner as they sit on the crates. As they move up and down while sitting on the crates, the performers are also hitting the crates’ sides, manipulating the sound to appear as if a donkey cart is moving. After a few seconds, Teddy starts hitting the crates and shouting ‘hooooooo’ (stop) in a heightened fashion, while miming an act of pulling the ropes on a donkey. Through highly exaggerated movements, Taffy also mimes climbing down from the cart. Using every day crates, voice and highly stylised movements and gestures, the performers create the image of a donkey-drawn cart. The visual presentation is highly stylised and humorous. Here it is critical to acknowledge the centrality of the body in producing captivating sounds, movements and gestures as rightly observed by erstwhile post-colonial critics such as those who defend the African aesthetic. Yet it is equally evident that this somatogenetic power of the body was aided by its relationship to other elements, and in our focus, the crates enhanced and deepened the somatogenetic power of the body in such a way that the crates were inseparable parts of the body. We submit that it is this complex connection of the body and the crates which provoked a series of energetic and affective responses (Fischer-Lichte 2004) from the audience as described below. After the presentation of the donkey-drawn cart image, the audience began to cheer, with some students standing up whistling and shouting. One student shouted Tarisa ngoro yacho, bambo (Look at the donkeydrawn cart, guys) and the whole auditorium bursts into laughter. The excitement that filled the auditorium showed that the audience had been able to interpret the illusion presented before them. The researchers also observed that as the image was being created on stage, the whole auditorium was intensely quiet, an unlikely phenomenon at the Beit Hall (see

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Mlenga et al. 2015). However, this was possible because the audience’s attention had been captured from the beginning of the play as the crates continually transformed. The audience members watched carefully and eagerly since the performance was mentally captivating. In most instances, they would laugh after having grasped what the images represented. This demonstrates that in as much as spaces are ‘alive’ and influence what happens around them (Mlenga et al. 2015), the performance atmosphere itself has the ability to transform and influence what happens in a space. This observation finds resonance in Fischer-Lichte’s (2004) argument that the performance atmosphere grasps the spectator’s attention and enables him/her to have a specific experience of the space. Boal (2006) also posits that presentation of an ‘unusual object’ in the aesthetic space draws attention, surprise and curiosity. In this case, the crates being the ‘unusual objects’ opened an avenue for attentiveness, imagination and curiosity. In the previous scenes, the crates metaphorically transformed from being a bag to a tree, shade and a stool. As such, despite being found objects, they became objects of curiosity and pleasure. The symbolic transformation of the crates, therefore, enabled the audience to ‘see life more clearly, more perceptively, by sensing it through the recognizable essence of things’ (Hodge and McLain 2005, p. 192). The metaphorical transformation of the crates provoked critical thinking and reflection, since a life-like image had been recreated rather than having an exact copy of life ‘displayed’ before them. The metaphorical transformation of the crate into the image of a donkey-drawn cart was activated by the handling of the crates by the performers, dialogue and imagination, creating a vividly striking image of a life-like donkeydrawn cart, but not an exact replica of life. This shows that the everyday crates worked in cohesion with the body through gestures, movement and dialogue to create visually appealing images. As if acknowledging this theatrical magic, student audiences at the University of Zimbabwe stood up, whistling, ululating and dancing at the end of the performance. Furthermore, during the post-performance discussions, the student audiences applauded the performers and director for the creativity and innovation showcased in the performance. This shows that even the most obvious objects, when simply placed on stage within a representational space, can be decoded outside of its everyday context (Power 2008). Though the crates were found objects, they were able to combine with dialogue, movements, gestures and sounds to

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generate ecstasy in a performance which was so intense that it demanded robust and profound attention from the spectators. Scene three is the saddest one in the play, because this is when the audience gets to know and understand Taffy’s emotional pain and his poor background, which is what motivates him to go to the city to look for a job. The visual image of the donkey-drawn cart described earlier was employed as a strategy to bring comic relief, since critical issues of joblessness, poverty, and political instability, and so on were being exposed by the characters on stage (Mangawa 2014, personal interview). Having established that the symbolic transformation of found objects on stage has the potential to transform a theatrical experience from being an ordinary social event to an artistic and aesthetic experience, we examine how the transformation of the crates transformed movement or corporeality aspects of the performance—further demonstrating the dynamic combination of the corporeal and spatial aspects—the materiality of performance. Our analysis will now demonstrate how the phenomenal bodies and the phenomenal crates produced a heightened atmosphere, which was subsequently interpreted in different ways—thus producing polyvalent or ambiguous meanings (Fischer-Lichte 2008). As the performance begins a pale-faced Teddy enters the bare stage with a crate on his back and he stands still, shouting, ‘Ndichakunyorera kani dhiya (I will write to you, dear)’. The crate on his back represents a bag, and also metaphorically represents the emotional ‘load’, hurt and vulnerability of the character as he embarks on the journey to the city. While watching this scene at Midlands State University, we observed that as Teddy bade farewell to his loved one, some of the female audience members felt sorry for him and shouted; ‘awwwwww’, showing their empathy. However, the moment he took his first few steps, the whole auditorium began to laugh. The audience laughed at the unnatural manner of the performer’s movements. His larger-than-life movements were caused by the crate on his back. As Teddy increased his pace, the crate on his back moved down and sideways, distorting and exaggerating his movement and posture even more. The crate transformed Teddy‘s movement from being ordinary to theatrical, creating stylised comic images. The crate became an extension of his body, creating an unreal image that was larger than life, which resulted in artistic ambiguity. The performer’s movements and posture appeared to have been distorted because of the discomfort of the strings that had been attached onto the crates. Here we note that the phenomenal body was interfering with and

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complicating the meanings that the devisors intended to communicate to the audience. Having established how the transformation of crates contributes to the transformation of movement on stage from ordinary to theatrical, we examine how the crates transformed from being objects to characters that have their ‘mobile life’ on stage. We will use scene five to evaluate object–character transformation. This is an imaginative scene or a fantasy in which Teddy owns a diamond mine and Taffy is one of the many employees at the diamond mine. When the scene begins, the performers mime filling the crates with debris. Once a crate is ‘full’, the performers push and pull the crates round the stage and mime offloading the crates. In this instance, the crates symbolise mine trolleys. Transitions in this scene are very quick. After a few minutes, Taffy shouts ‘a diamond as big as my balls’, and Teddy whistles the sound of a siren using his voice to signal that it is time to go back to the surface. Immediately the performers pull the crates together and jump inside. While sitting inside the crates, they shake them to give an illusion that they are moving. This image symbolically represents an elevator. In less than a minute, the performers jump out of the crates. Each performer picks up his crate. Taffy immediately changes roles to become a Chinese businessman, while Teddy’s role does not change. Teddy then places his crate on the stage floor and kicks it to the Chinese businessman and asks him to check if the diamond is real. Similarly, the Chinese businessman places his crate on the stage floor and kicks it to Teddy, requesting that he count the money. In this instance, the crates represent briefcases, one with the diamond and another with the money. After the exchange, the Chinese man de-roles to become Taffy again. Each performer picks up his crate and they begin to move in a circle shouting, ‘Mangawa is rich, rich, rich’. The two then place the crates horizontally on the stage floor and sit on them. Taffy starts making car sounds, while Teddy mimes driving. In short, the larger-than-life movements that emerged sparked the ecstasy of performance that resulted because apart from telling their ‘own’ story, the crates aided in making the presence of the body emphatic (see Boal 2006; Fischer-Lichte 2008). In as much as the crates were transformed into objects of pleasure, they were subject to diverse interpretations and ‘misinterpretations’. We observed contradictions in terms of audience reception of the symbolic transformation of the crates at the University of Zimbabwe Beit Hall Theatre, Midlands State University Great Hall and Charles Austin Theatre. At Charles Austin Theatre in Masvingo, some of the audience

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members were unable to fully comprehend the intended visual images created during the performance. The first author observed a couple sitting next to her in the auditorium. The couple continuously whispered, asking each other what the crate represented, especially in scene five. This was possibly because the transitions in this scene were very quick and required close attention. During the post-performance discussions, some audience members in the same venue also highlighted how they had missed some transitions, especially in scene five. However, the audience reception was different when the performance was presented at Midlands State University Great Hall and University of Zimbabwe Beit Hall. At the Midlands State University Great Hall, some students were shouting and cheering ‘vhuzhi yacho vaita mari nengoda’ (just look at the car they are rich because of the diamond) while viewing scene five, when the crate metaphorically represented a car. This reaction showed that they had understood the visual metaphors. This could possibly have been because most of the audience members were theatre students who were well versed in experimental presentation styles, whereas in Masvingo most of the audience members had limited background in this kind of theatre. Furthermore, the symbolic transformation of the crates themselves into various objects and locations in the play had its challenges during the devising process. In an interview, Teddy Mangawa highlighted that: Knowing that this is a crate of tomatoes I took from Mbare Musika and having to handle it and present it as something it is not and most importantly for the audience to fully comprehend what you are portraying for me was the greatest challenge in rehearsal. (Mangawa 2014, personal interview)

In light of the above diverse interpretations/‘misinterpretations’, the spectators oscillated between reality and fiction (Fischer-Lichte 2004), in other words, between the order of presence and the order of representation. This resulted in polyvalent meanings, giving credence to the notion that performance is an autopoietic process, in which meanings emerge because a performance is a process and not a predestined event (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 2008). More crucially for our current purposes, the above examples show how the phenomenal body and phenomenal objects (crates) and semiotic bodies and crates were complexly intertwined in ways that made it difficult to separate them (Fischer-Lichte 2008, p. 77).

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Given these intricate interplay between the semiotic and performative dimensions, which resulted in transformative complexities—informed by the interaction between found objects as scenic elements and the body, we reiterate the need for performance analysis in Africa/Zimbabwe to give ‘equal’ attention to the body and the environment in which it assumes its centrality as a site of theatrical signification in Zimbabwe specifically and Africa more broadly. The emphasis on the centrality of the body runs the risk of undermining this connectedness of the body and its coelements in theatrical signification. Take, for instance, Ngugi wa Mirii, an African/Zimbabwean theatre critic and practitioner who is quoted by Martin Rohmer as making the following comment in the context of affirming that African theatre hardly exists as mere verbal performance: It (theatre) must involve dance, music and gestures which are so powerful that colonialism failed to destroy them. Any theatre that ignores these characteristics is abstract and irrelevant to the aspirations of Zimbabwean masses. (Rohmer 1999, p. 55)

The above comments, which almost border on reductionist and legislative tendencies, more or less capture the way in which most post-colonial critics emphasise the corporeality of African theatrical performance at the apparent expense of other elements such as spatiality. In valorising the body as a centre of artistic expression, these scholars run the risk of unwittingly ignoring design aspects such as the use of found objects, which play a significant role in the transformative complexity of Zimbabwean/African theatrical performances. At the risk of appearing to be undermining and simplifying works from erstwhile post-colonial critics, we wish to point out that existing African scholarship runs the risk of undermining the transformative complexity of African/Zimbabwean theatre by not paying sufficient attention to phenomenal and semiotic objects that surround and intricately connect with the body to provoke affective responses from the audience, that are subsequently interpreted as theatrical signs to produce polyvalent meanings.

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References Abubakar, A. 2009. New concept of actor/audience interaction and audience participation in modern African dramatic theatre: An example of Osofisan. Research in African Literatures 40 (3): 174–185. Boal, Augusto. 2006. The aesthetics of the oppressed. New York: Routledge. Chifunyise, Stephen. 1997. Foreword. In Making people’s theatre, ed. Robert Mshengu Kavanagh, i–ii. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Chifunyise, Stephen, and Robert Mshengu Kavanagh, eds. 1988. Zimbabwe theatre report. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications. Devlin, Diana. 1989. Mask and scene. Michigan: Macmillan. Elam, Keir. 1980. The semiotics of theatre and drama. London: Methuen. Finnegan, Ruth. 1970. Oral literature in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2004. Culture as performance: Theatre history as cultural history. In ACTAS/Proceedings. http://ww3.fl.ul.pt/centros_invst/teatro/ pagina/Publicacoes/Actas/erika_def.pdf. Accessed 21 Jan 2019. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008. Sense and sensation: Exploring the interplay between the semiotic and performative dimensions of theatre. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 22 (3): 69–81. Gillette, Michael. 1997. Theatrical design and production: An introduction to scene design and construction, lighting, sound, costume and makeup, 3rd ed. London: Mayfield Publishing. Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson, and Katie Normington. 2007. Making a performance: Devising histories and contemporary practices. London and New York: Routledge. Hananda, Tafadzwa. 2014. Personal interview. 22 June 2014. Hodge, Francis, and Michael McLain. 2005. Play directing, analysis, communication, and style, 6th ed. Austin: University of Texas. Irobi, Esiaba. 2007. What they came with: Carnival and the persistence of African performance. Aesthetics in the Diaspora 37 (6): 896–913. Iverson, Margaret. 2004. Readymade, Found object, Photograph. Art Journal 63 (2): 44–57. Kavanagh, Mshengu Robert. 1997. Making people’s theatre. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Maclaurin, Ali. 2002. A collective approach to designing for devised theatre. Studies in Theatre and Performance 20 (2): 97–104. Malva, Filipa. 2012. A prop’s story: From the everyday to the stage. Dissertation, University of Coimbra, Coimbra. Mangawa,Teddy. 2014. Personal interview, University of Zimbabwe, 22 April 2014. Milling, Jane, and Deirdre Heddon. 2015. Devising performance: A critical history. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Mlenga, Tafadzwa, et al. 2015. Contemporary theatre spaces: Politico-ideological constructions in Zimbabwe: A dialectical approach. Studies in Theatre and Performance 35 (3): 221–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2015. 1070638. Power, Cormac. 2008. Presence in play: A critique of theories of presence in the theatre. New York: Rodopi. Ravengai, Samuel. 2014. The politics of theatre and performance training in Zimbabwe 1980–1996. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 5 (3): 255–326. Read, Allan. 1993. Theatre and everyday life: An ethics of performance. London: Routledge. Rohmer, Martin. 1999. Theatre and performance in Zimbabwe. Bayreuth: Bayreuth University Press. Shabangu‚ Mcedisi. 2013. Personal interview. 30 November 2013. Schirle, Joan. 2005. Potholes in the road to devising. Theatre Topics 15 (1): 91–102. Sibanda, Nkululeko. 2017. The politics of design in community theatre circles. A comparative analysis of the creative design processes employed by Entumba Arts Development in Tear of Death (2013) and Bambelela Arts Ensemble in Just Because (1999; 2013). Doctor of Philosophy thesis, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban. Weber, Jason. 2010. Creating together: Defining approaches to collaborativelygenerated devised theatre. Paper presented at Mid-America Theatre Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Wilson, Edwin. 2002. Theatre: The theatre experience, 8th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill. Zenenga, Praise. 2015. The total aesthetic paradigm in African theatre. In The Oxford handbook of dance and theatre, ed. N. George-Graves, 236–251. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Amakhosi Theatre Training (1990–2000): An Exercise in Syncretism Nkululeko Sibanda and Julia Yule

Introduction In Zimbabwe, just like most post-independence African countries such as Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa, two structures of theatre training and development exist in juxtaposition to one another: formal and informal. This distinction has largely borrowed from the colonial societal and cultural stratification, which categorised performance into ritual and drama (Peterson 1990). The development and training of performance practitioners in precolonial indigenous communities relied hugely on oral tradition, until colonial education domesticated the process within learning institutions, mainly of higher learning. Formal training is characterised, in this chapter, as schooling moderated and certified by

N. Sibanda (B) School of Arts, Drama, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] J. Yule Great Zimbabwe University, Masvingo, Zimbabwe © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_5

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institutions of learning, such as colleges, schools of arts and/or universities, mostly with the support of government. In the context of Zimbabwe, this refers to theatre and performance programmes offered and certified by universities. In independent Zimbabwe, Hillside Teachers’ College was the only dramatic arts or theatre teacher training institution until the programme was stopped in 1983. Interesting to note is that this college-trained drama and theatre teachers and not performers or practitioners. While some of the graduates could have joined the performance industry as practitioners, most of them graduated as certified teachers with a specialisation in theatre. As the Hillside programme was phased out in early 1983, the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) introduced Practical Drama modules in the Departments of English and African Languages and Literature (McLaren 1993). UZ further developed these modules into the Theatre Arts Degree programme during the 1993/1994 academic cycle seeking an ideal balance between theory and performance practice (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988; McLaren 1993). The structure of the UZ Theatre Arts degree programme has had a telling influence on the structures, teaching and learning approaches and packaging of performing arts/creative arts and/or theatre arts programmes at emerging universities. To this end, most theatre programmes currently offered by Zimbabwean universities strive for a balance between theory and practice in training, yet there is a tendency to focus much more on theory (Sibanda 2013). As a result, students that graduate from these colleges and universities understand the creative process primarily on a theoretical level. At the University of Zimbabwe, this theory-practice off balance is a result of senior and experienced staff leaving the Department of Theatre Arts in search of better opportunities in neighbouring countries. Additionally, one hundred percent (100%) of lecturers that teach at the UZ have been trained, from undergraduate studies, by the department. In a globalising world where cross-pollination of ideas is fundamental, a lack of input from other countries and theatre traditions creates a situation whereby ideas circulate unchallenged without any rejuvenation in the training. Notwithstanding these challenges, the UZ Department of Theatre Arts remained the only teaching and training institution in Theatre Arts in Zimbabwe until 2010 when Midlands State University (MSU) introduced its Film and Theatre Arts Studies degree programme. Since 2010, a number of new universities have developed programmes

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under the Creative Arts, Performing Arts and/or Theatre Arts1 banners. Not surprisingly, University of Zimbabwe graduates who followed the same training model that established them have set up most of these departments. Informal training is conceptualised in this chapter as experiential, uncertified training models developed by community colleges, arts centres and theatre groups not affiliated to any official institution of higher learning. This model is built upon a strong practical and experiential approach based on indigenous performing arts such as music, dance and design. The informal training model is inspired by specific cultural performing practices that have been handed down from generation to generation. While the crux of the model remains intact, we observe that globalisation and neocolonialism have necessitated that the approaches and strategies evolve as they respond to emerging issues in the communities such as gender, democracy and urbanisation. As a result, informal institutions that train students in western performance approaches such as dance, acting and music have started to emerge as a response to this global necessity.2 Because formal training institutions operate within set class capacities,3 the majority of theatre practitioners in Zimbabwe are informally trained (Ravengai 2011). These theatre practitioners have gained experience and developed their craft through understudying and long service in the arts and culture industry. Actually, the majority of the pioneer practitioners such as Kenneth Mattaka, Safirio Madzikatire, Ben Sibenke, Walter Muparutsa, Cont Mhlanga and Daves Guzha are self-taught actors 1 Lupane State University, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Creative College of Arts-Africa University and Great Zimbabwe University are some of the institutions that have developed performing arts-focused degree programmes. However, Great Zimbabwe University was mandated by the government to specifically teach arts, culture and heritage undergraduate and postgraduate programmes as their niche. 2 Organisations such as Tumbuka Dance Company, Dance Foundation, Reps Theatre and Theory X Media introduced performance training programmes that leaned towards the western formal approach in terms of theoretical and performance style. In the Zimbabwean context, the difference with formal training is that these programmes were purely practical, and students needed to perform to the desired standards and be certified by the industry that they were now professionals. 3 At the University of Zimbabwe, the Honours Theatre Arts class capacity is between 15 and 20. The Honours class is exposed to in-depth, detailed, focused and balanced theory-practical theatre training. The Bachelor of Arts General class gets introduced to a survey of performance theory and practice only.

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who nurtured and developed their craft through understudying, experimenting and workshop training (Mhlanga 2014, personal interview). In as much as these practitioners are self-taught, workshops organised by the National Theatre Organisation while they were on tour provided them an opportunity to learn something new that they would appropriate and localise when they got back home. The balance between self-teaching, self-discovery and knowledge sharing through workshops was, therefore, a fundamental aspect for the development and growth of first-generation practitioners. The National Theatre Organisation (NTO), Harare Repertory Theatre Players and Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatre (ZACT) were major informal organisations that provided training through practical-oriented workshops in post-independence Zimbabwe as discussed at length by Owen Seda in Chapter 6 of this collection (see also Ravengai 2014). Formal theatre training in Zimbabwe has been well documented (McLaren 1993; Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988) while research into informal training has lagged behind.4 In responding to this research gap this chapter positions Amakhosi Theatre Productions’ APAW training programme as an alternative to the formal education in postindependence Zimbabwe. As an alternative programme, ATP’s APAW positioned itself as a framework for collaboration and engagement with formal education programmes in tertiary institutions. While cultural and political landscapes could be different today, it is our belief that ATP’s APAW training and developmental approach, which will be discussed in detail later, provides possibilities that mainstream formal education can appropriate and contextualise to their specific needs in their curriculum review processes.

Theatre Training and Performance in Post-Independence Zimbabwe: A Short Overview With Zimbabwe gaining political independence from the UK in 1980, there was a need for a new performance approach that would serve the political and propaganda interests of the new state and majority populace (Seda 2004; Chifunyise 1986; Sibanda 2017). Just like the majority

4 To our knowledge, only Ravengai (2006) has explored in-depth informal training models and development programmes used by NTO and ZACT in Zimbabwe.

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of socialist states, the education sector in post-independence Zimbabwe formed the bedrock of the propaganda machinery (Peterson 1990; Kellner, n.d.). In 1983, the University of Zimbabwe appointed Stephen Chifunyise as drama lecturer. He resigned within a few months of taking up the position to go back to government (Ravengai 2011). Robert McLaren succeeded Stephen Chifunyise in 1984, to set up the Practical Drama programme within the English and African Languages and Literature Departments. The Practical Drama programme, as it was called then, sought to achieve a socialist Afrocentric ideological realignment, which was Thiong’o terms ‘the real language of humankind: the language of the struggle’ (1981, p. 108). This Practical Drama programme set to transform the University of Zimbabwe into a ‘people’s university’ (McLaren 1993, p. 35) and put the traditional cultural experiences, learned and lived over the years, at the base of its research, teaching and learning approach. This transformation would cascade towards a regenerative connection and rediscovery of ‘cultural symbols and activities’ (wa Thiong’o 1997, p. 18) that represent or will represent Zimbabwe through performance to the whole world. This formal training of arts practitioners at the University of Zimbabwe further fuelled an explosive scenario in the arts industry. Post-independence, the standoff between the National Theatre Organisation (NTO) and Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatre (ZACT) over style and genre theatre was supposed/ expected to take, was mainly based on training and development frames. The NTO believed the socialist trajectory sponsored by the government-supported ZACT would contaminate theatre performance in Zimbabwe while ZACT believed that the kind of theatre propagated by NTO was archaic, irrelevant and out of touch with the common Zimbabwean (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988). In this continuum of ideological and pedagogical positions, a compromise borrowing from the NTO and ZACT’s positions had to be reached; the Amakhosi Theatre training programme. The transformation of the Practical Drama programme into the Theatre Arts degree programme in 1993 theoretically and practically underpinned it on Eurocentric theories (Sibanda 2013). For example, scenography teaching was modelled on the realist traditional Eurocentric pedagogy that followed a fixed sequential progress: ‘read the play, do research, develop a concept, do sketches and devise the floor plan’ (Isackes 2008, p. 41). This mechanical approach created contradictions between theory–practical application and performance paradigm

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in the implementation and development of the scenographic designs resulting in ‘“make-shift” approaches as students [sought] to satisfy the demands of their practical examination’ (Sibanda 2013, pp. 40–41). In this chapter, we argue that these make-shift approaches that students turn to are synonymous with alternative ways of working devised by self-taught actors within the informal training space. These parallels in approach and creative outputs call for a need to cross-pollinate training methods between formal and informal approaches in order to augment and strengthen the student. One way of cross-pollinating these divergent training approaches could be cross-teaching and industry placement at ATP for formal institutions’ students during vacations. Alternatively research students from the university could do research at ATP just like those from overseas universities that spent a semester at ATP.5 Although the Zimbabwe Council of Higher Education (ZIMCHE) inspired and moderated the new curriculum now demands that graduating students must spend a minimum of eight months on industry placement, unregistered informal theatre training institutions are sometimes not considered as institutions that can contribute to the development of students. While students working on research projects have investigated informal theatre organisations, their contribution to the growth of theatre practice in post-independence Zimbabwe has, to our knowledge, been negligible. This has been necessitated by the fact that informal training systems and approaches have not always been considered developmental by the academy, yet as noted earlier most influential actors are products of this system. As a result, possibilities of collaborations and idea sharing remained a pipe dream. Notwithstanding the frosty relations, especially between the University of Zimbabwe’s Departments of English, African Languages and Literatures and ATP as institutions, at the individual level Cont Mhlanga6 and Robert McLaren remained interested in collaboratively working together in performance and theatre training.

5 It is interesting to note the appreciation complex attached to ATP. Overseas institutions and researchers saw value in the training and performance style developed by ATP yet in Zimbabwe the organisation’s efforts were rubbished and underrated (Chifunyise and McLaren 1988). As a result, ATP training methods and performance approaches have largely interested researchers and students from oversees as opposed to locals. 6 Cont Mhlanga is the founding creative director/writer of ATP. During the period under review Mhlanga was the Artistic Director of ATP.

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NTO established its own non-formal NTO School in Harare at the Institute of Languages, Secretarial and Academic Studies (ILSA) College. While the NTO taught collaborative work, playwriting, directing and staging modules (Ravengai 2014; NTO 1993) as major components of its training framework, APAW was anchored on three integrated modules: Technical Arts, Performing Arts and Arts Administration (Dlodlo 2017, personal interview). As NTO set up its own school, ZACT implemented training through Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP) programme, which located theatre training and performance practice within Zimbabwean communities. Although ATP’s theatre training approach and practice had similarities to that of ZACT, they had differences on the modus operandi. ZACT campaigned for a total break with colonial Rhodesian-inspired theatre tradition while ATP called for a liberal approach; adopting best practices from mainstream theatre and domesticating them to serve the organisation’s best intentions. As such there emerged a syncretic training which we will return to discuss later in this chapter. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, alternative theatre training organisations produced theatre plays that were hosted by formal institutions in their spaces. In 1986 the University of Zimbabwe hosted ATP’s Workshop Negative at the Beit Hall. Workshop Negative (1986) is a political satire that overtly interrogates and caricatures Zimbabwean politics through performance as a means of engaging government and/or exposing politicians. The play situates its satiric subjects (Zimbabweans) within a particular time (post-independence Zimbabwe) and place (Zimbabwe) and within identifiable ideologies (socialism and capitalism) (Sibanda 2017). As a political satire, the play addresses challenges of corruption, nepotism and cronyism and its effects on the Zimbabwean social fabric. In other words, Workshop Negative (1986) was about exposing ‘night-time’ imperialists and capitalists who masqueraded as ‘day-time’ socialists (Mhlanga 1992b). However, McLaren (UZ), wa Mirii (ZACT) and Chifunyise (who worked for the Ministry of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture) argued that ATP’s Workshop Negative was a misrepresentation of postindependent sociopolitical and economic landscape (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988). Actually, Chifunyise and Kavanagh (1988, p. 14) sarcastically referred to the play as a ‘negative workshop’ sponsored by the British Council, Anglo-American, commercial farmers and urban intellectuals to the detriment of the country. These organisations and groups

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were considered by Chifunyise, McLaren and wa Mirii to be working against the government’s socialist programmes. This direct indictment of Workshop Negative as a play for imperialists, industrialists and urban intellectuals, positions Amakhosi Theatre Productions as an enemy of the Zimbabwean socialist state and people’s universities. In this light, any work, innovation and/or methods of working and training were frowned upon, received, analysed and interpreted from a radical oppositional political and ideological perspective.

The History of Amakhosi Theatre Productions Members of the Dragons Karate Club formed Amakhosi Theatre Productions in 1982. This Dragons Karate Club was made up of young people from Makokoba Township in Bulawayo. Among the notable members of the karate club were Cont Mhlanga, Thokozani Masha, Sihlangu Dlodlo and the late Micky Tickays. Mhlanga (2015, personal interview) notes that as a collective of creative young people, the Dragons Karate Club sought to produce their own Kung Fu movies in the mould of those that featured Bruce and Jet Lee. These movies were supposed to be a strategy of identifying creative talent, developing content and growing the Dragons Karate Club. However, this was only achieved only in the late 1990s when the organisation was now called ATP due to a number of reasons. First, Dragons Karate Club failed to raise enough funds to produce the film forcing the club to produce highly physical theatrical productions such as Diamond Warriors I and II (1980). Second, the Club lacked the technical know-how of producing a film. Underlying these failures and success, ATP emerged with a communication strategy to express the dreams, fears, experiences and future plans of Matabeleland communities (Mhlanga 2015, personal interview). This desire to communicate local stories was motivated by two institutions: Radio and Television Mthwakazi and the 1970s liberation struggle. Radio Mthwakazi and Television Mthwakazi7 provided platforms for expression while the liberation struggle provided material that performing groups

7 Radio Mthwakazi and Television Mthwakazi were broadcasting stations dedicated to service Matabeleland region during the colonial and early independence period. These were, however, disbanded by the ZANU-PF government during the first decade of independence and incorporated into the Zimbabwe Broadcasting (ZBC) stable as the Montrose Studies and Radio Two.

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used to develop their productions. However, during this period only a few households had access to radio and television sets. This meant that even though local stories were broadcast, they reached out to a few elite individuals. Until independence, beer halls, community halls and Barbourfields Stadium were the major performance spaces for liberationinspired stories (Mhlanga 2015, personal interview). However, because most of the members of the Dragons Karate Club were very young in the 1970s, they were denied access and entry into these spaces as a result of age restrictions. To this end, these spaces were problematic too. In 1980, Barry Dhaka led a revolutionary process of reclaiming youth centres such as Mthwakazi, Luveve and Mzilikazi Youth Centres (Mhlanga 2014, personal interview). These youth centres had been closed off by the colonial regime for use by youths over the age of 16.8 This revolutionary act of reclaiming cultural spaces led to a change of policy within the Bulawayo City Council. This was in the same year that Cont Mhlanga’s Dragons Karate Club was given space at the Stanley Square and Hall in Makokoba.However, the Club was allowed to use the space from Monday to Friday between 09:00 and 16:00 only. Still, the Hall was sometimes hired out leaving members of the Karate Club with nowhere to practice and rehearse. One of the occasions where Stanley Hall was booked off was for a five-day theatre workshop run by Mbizo Khumalo, then NTO administrator, which, according to Mhlanga, laid the foundation upon which ATP programming and performance culture was built in later years. Mhlanga notes that his motivation to attend this workshop was premised on the club’s desire to learn how to make Kung Fu films. According to Cont Mhlanga, this workshop initially had 35 participants but by the time it finished there were only two participants remaining; Mhlanga and Voti Thebe.9 This high drop-out rate is attributed to the boring content of the workshop which did not address their motivation and concerns: how to make a Kung Fu movie (Mhlanga 2016, personal interview). Secondly, Mhlanga notes that the workshop content was full of

8 According to Mhlanga, the colonial government did not consider youths over the age of 16 young because they contributed a large number to the populace of freedom fighters training in Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. 9 Mr. Voti Thebe is currently Regional Director of the Art Gallery in Bulawayo. After the workshop, he diverted into visual arts production and management.

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western theories which most of the participants considered useless because they did not understand or know how to apply them to their practice. This workshop explored acting and directing approaches, financial management and fundraising strategies for arts-based organisations. The first two days explored the creative processes of developing an artistic work, however, largely leaning more on theory than practice. The third day introduced participants to the theories of composition and picturisation, while the fourth day was dedicated to financial management. The final day was set aside to explore financial sustainability strategies for community-based theatre groups in Zimbabwe. It is these final two days that most participants did not attend which transformed Mhlanga and provided grounding for APAW’s Management Arts module. After the workshop, Mhlanga mobilised his Dragons Karate Club members to take to heart what he had learnt and fundraise for the production of their Kung Fu film. The fundraising strategy involved selling sweets and oranges at Highlanders–Dynamos and other Highlanders home matches at Barbourfields Stadium. Although one of the key things Mhlanga had been taught was writing project proposals to possible funding partners, he notes that as a club, they realised that it was not a sustainable solution to their funding challenges. To them it meant that if they were to get funding from an outside organisation, they were likely to lose their autonomy in the creative process. Thus, instead of looking for funding, they decided to exploit the readily available market in football stadia. Start-up capital came from the club member contributions. This sustainability concept became synonymous with the Dragons Karate Club members and later ATP. It is important to note that while other theatre organisations in Bulawayo and Harare developed funding project proposals and applied to embassies and financing cultural organisatios, ATP was self-funding through this project. As such, ATP was able to attract funding when they started touring Scandinavian countries and sharing their sustainability models. With time this model was developed into the Management Arts module which was taught under the APAW programme. On the performance front, as the popularity of karate waned, community elders within the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) political formation advised Mhlanga and his colleagues to replace karate with music and dance. This transition from karate to music, dance and theatre initiated the transitional and transformational process of Dragons Karate Club into ATP.

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ATP’s interface with Chris Weare, a Rhodes University lecturer, Christopher ‘Ndlovu’ Hurst (now Christopher John) who relocated from Harare to stay in Makokoba and Magwegwe and work with ATP, Micere Mugo and Ngugi wa Mirii, who settled in Harare after fleeing Kenya, consolidated ATP’s commitment towards creating content and a theatre style motivated by the experiences and material conditions of the community; Makokoba. The interaction mainly between Cont Mhlanga and Chris Hurst resulted in the workshopping of Workshop Negative (1986) after the latter had been impressed with the NTO Festival winning ATP’s play, Nansi Le Ndoda! (Here is the Man!) (1985). To this end, Workshop Negative was a culmination of an alternative experimental theatre and performance training model emerging from ATP and Makokoba township. As Christopher Hurst observes, Makokoba presented a unique syncretic cultural space for the development of a new alternative theatre training and performance culture that was cognisant of the socio-economic, political and artistic landscape (Hurst 2015, personal interview), we put it that early ATP plays were a culmination of this syncretic training and developmental strategy initiated and developed by the organisation.

Amakhosi Performing Arts Workshop This section engages the structure of APAW to understand the framework and approach to training and development at ATP. We will also explore how ATP adopted and adapted NTO and mainstream working approaches and practice-based methodologies to create their distinctly syncretic theatre training programme. In 1983, ATP introduced a programme aimed at training female theatre performers in Makokoba through a workshop-based model. This workshop training programme, as it was called, entailed participants meeting in the morning and going through routine experimental and practical processes that led to the development of new material for theatre performances. The training programme was created with two distinct outputs: practically and technically grounded female performers and workshopped new material/content. The initial group became the core cast of one of ATP’s main productions Ngizozula Lawe (1983), Citizen Child (1988), Cry Isililo (1989), Dabulap (1990), and

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Stitsha (1992a)10 among other productions. The ATP performance style was created by infusing Ndebele traditional dances, karate and mime with theatrical stunts (Hurst 2015, personal interview). The interpretation and execution of mime techniques were, according to Mhlanga, translated into locally understood alternatives. For example, mime was understood as ‘ukunyenyeza’ (whispering), and stunts were appreciated as ‘ukuqwaqwazana’ (stick-fighting). This transcription of mainstream established characterisation models to locally and culturally understood alternatives in Bulawayo created a distinct and syncretic ATP performance style. When these trainee performers started performing in Amakhosi Theatre Productions’ plays in 1987 onwards, the organisation stopped recruiting. While this programme proved to have been successful with its first intake, it is not clear why the organisation allowed it to fold. On one hand, this could have been attributed to a sense of achievement and project completion. On the other hand, this was a result of a lack of a clear development and growth plan for APAW and ATP as these operated without written codes and procedures. Although the theatre training programme folded in 1987, the experiments ATP had undertaken during these four years laid a foundation and provided insights into possible alternative training programme structures. Initially, this training programme revolved around karate and the physicality of the performer’s body. Karate was deployed as a strategy of instilling discipline and technical precision at formative training stages of the performer. As a result, the performance style that emerged from this training programme was highly physical and technical. While we categorise ATP’s performance style as physical theatre, at this point it is important to note that, members of the group were not aware that their genre was physical theatre. According to Hurst, ATP’s main objective was to develop a performance style that infused the experiences gained at NTO workshops, Makokoba culture and the karate club. This performance culture as it emerged spoke to the syncretic nature of Zimbabwean cultural experiences in the post-independence era. Interesting, too, is the fact that this training programme had no designated name which could have provided a structure. The organisation’s 10 The plays became banner organisational productions that toured Europe, America and Africa. These plays explored various themes ranging from illegal migration, women’s and children’s rights, regionalism and citizenry.

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over-commitment to training female practitioners overshadowed the need for structure that would have sustained it for a long time. As a result, when the initial group reached its ceiling in terms of learning and development, there was no justification to keep them as students. To this end, the elevation of female trainees into the core ATP group left a big gap in the training and development section which the organisation had not planned for in advance. Consequently, when the trainees started performing with the main ATP group, the training programme folded. In 1992, the training programme was revived and rebranded into Amakhosi Theatre Arts Workshop (APAW). According to Dlodlo (2017, personal interview), APAW initially emerged as a practical theatre training project for General Certificate of Education (GCE): Ordinary Level (which is a subject-based qualification) students who took holiday classes at Amakhosi Theatre Productions. In the rebranded APAW programme, formal education replaced karate as the foundation for theatre training. Ordinarily, performing arts in post-independence Zimbabwe are considered a profession of the uneducated. As such, when ATP demanded that every member of APAW attend morning classes towards attaining ordinary level qualifications, the Bulawayo community began to accept and view creative industry practitioners with respect.11 This necessitated a need for a structure that would guide the chronological development of the trainees. According to Dlodlo (2017, personal interview), APAW had three major modules: Performing Arts, Administrative Arts and Technical Arts. Although structurally APAW was divided into these three modules, the teaching was integrated and experimental. As the name suggests, the programme adopted a workshop approach, which was organic and experimental. This workshop approach came in the form of on-the-job training targeted at widening the skilled personnel resource pool at ATP. In some instances, these students were cast in smaller in-house ATP productions so they could gain experience. It is clear, therefore, that the foundational aim of APAW was to identify, train and develop young, talented, passionate prospective theatre practitioners so as to grow the pool of skilled personnel available to ATP. 11 In 2000, ATP rebranded APAW into Amakhosi Theatre Academy. Amakhosi Theatre Academy set down O-Level standard as the basic entry qualification into the programme. The first year was a Certificate, second year a Diploma and third year a Higher National Diploma.

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The APAW Modules The Performing Arts module covered aspects such as acting, scriptwriting, movement, voice and directing broken down into four major categories: music, dance, drama and communication. Cont Mhlanga was module moderator with Raymond Kasawaya taking the music component, Tongesai Gumbo teaching dance, Herbert Phiri overseeing drama classes and Dlodlo teaching communication. Although ATP’s music teaching focus revolved around experimenting with various African drums and rhythms, the Academy of Music was brought on board to teach technical notation, arrangement and sound engineering of ATP’s African drumming and musical rhythms. This technical knowledge was later experimented within content and play development processes as well as performance. Additionally, and fundamentally important to our argument, the training at ATP was always located in the community’s performing art forms and aesthetics. For example, ATP’s actor training approach was based on indigenous performance styles such as child’s play or role play infused with western actor training theories such as Stanislavsky’s psychotechnique and Boal’s ‘theatre of the oppressed’. Out of child’s play, for example, ATP reframed Stanislavsky’s concepts of make-believe, concentration and given circumstances using local and contextual games that the learners had absorbed from their cultural context. While ATP’s senior members had neither professional nor formal theatre/performance training, they got introduced to western theories while they toured Europe and America. Yet the Afrocentric ideological base of ATP necessitated that they appropriate these theories to locally relevant and applicable ways of working thereby creating syncretic training and performance styles or approaches. It is out of this syncretic approach that ATP engaged the Academy of Music to teach its students music notation and transcription of indigenous Ndebele music which formed the larger part of the Amakhosi performance style. To this end, when these students graduated and joined indigenous musical groups based in Bulawayo, they were able to notate musically and transcribe their songs in programme notes for easy understanding and appreciation by non-Ndebele-speaking audiences. The drama and dance components were taught and practised as creative strategies of theatre content development. While APAW was a training programme, ATP’s growth and heavy touring schedule meant

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that there was a need for new material regularly. APAW provided a perfect opportunity to expose the trainees to the rigours of content/play development while at the same time developing their skills. To this end, APAW’s first intake of 1992/3 formed what became popularly known as Amakhosi Juniors. Amakhosi Juniors served two purposes. First was content development for further refining by the seniors. Second was to perform productions created by Amakhosi Seniors for their peers, especially after 1996 when the organisation moved from Stanley Hall to Amakhosi Township Square Cultural Centre (Dlodlo 2017, personal interview). The drama and dance components exposed students to acting methods, improvisation, scriptwriting, choreography of various African dances and mime12 through workshops, rehearsals and performance processes. The communication component of the module developed basic communication skills of the students. While the students developed their interpersonal skills through workshop exercises, acting and performance, ATP realised that there was a need at improving the post-secondary preparedness of these students by developing their ability to negotiate contracts and effectively communicate. According to Dlodlo (2017, personal interview), the focus areas of the communication component were writing application letters, negotiating contracts, designing posters, writing memos and basic writing. This made APAW graduates very competitive in the market and better prepared to face the challenges of the rigours of an emerging theatre industry in post-independence Zimbabwe. The Administrative Arts module focused on developing financial understanding and creating sustainable economic frameworks for ATP and other community-based theatre groups (Dlodlo 2017, personal interview). This module focused on the different administrative roles in a theatre company such as producing, directing, marketing, tour management, project planning and development. Although ATP members adamantly noted that they singularly created this module, we observe that this model could have been appropriated from the NTO modules and international theatre training companies that hosted touring ATP in Africa, Europe and America. We argue that ATP’s modules were created from adopted best practices, however, appropriated to suit the 12 After Hurst left Amakhosi Theatre Productions in 1986/7, the organisation would invite experts from different Southern African countries. During this time (1993/4) Amakhosi hosted a mime trainer from Tanzania. However, we could not ascertain the name of this trainer from all our informants.

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demands of the Makokoba locality in which ATP operated. This module was taught through practical exercises under the supervision of experienced members of Amakhosi Seniors. Andrew Moyo13 taught producing, Thokozani Masha tour management and directing, while Sihlangu Dlodlo took marketing and project planning. As part of the experiential learning process, students were tasked to organise local tours for the various age groups that toured Bulawayo and Matabeleland provinces. The Technical Arts module was developed to enable ATP students to understand, create and build sets, costumes, lights and properties that captured township performance culture. It is important to note that the Technical Arts module was specifically modelled around ATP’s evolving aesthetic approach. This module was highly organic and experimental, in the sense that it appropriated indigenous processes of making fashionable costumes, architecture and light into theatre performance practice. One such novel experimental process was creating lamp housing for filament bulbs used to illuminate performances at Stanley Hall. In the context of township theatre practice, this was a technological innovation because theatre groups performed either in the afternoon or under the general bright spread of floodlights/fluorescents. As a result, when ATP performed in better-resourced performance spaces, it was easier for its technical teams, which were made up of its graduates, to adapt and use all the technological equipment available to them as they had basic practical grounding in creating, developing and experimenting with technology. The technical teaching team and students under the leadership of Doubt Dube, Pedzisai and Priscillar Sithole played a major role in the architectural conceptualisation and building of Amakhosi Township Square Cultural Centre (ATSCC), now Amakhosi Cultural Centre. When APAW proved to be successful, Amakhosi Theatre Productions formalised it into an institutional banner training programme. APAW was transformed from an afternoon school holiday programme for Ordinary Level students into a three-year full-time theatre training syllabus targeted at producing qualified and practically all-rounded performers. As APAW was rolled out as a full-time training programme, the focus changed from an on-the-job training approach to formal education. The students were now expected to sit written and practical examinations at

13 Andrew Moyo was an entrepreneur and photo-journalist with The Chronicle.

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the end of each term as part of their assessment towards certification.14 The APAW examination process, however, laid more emphasis on practical skills development and exhibition than theory. As a result, in the midto late 1990s, ATP became an influential player in the creative industries as its graduates took up different strategic and leadership roles.15 The beginners’ course, which formed the first level of certification, was a Certificate in Performance lasting one year. The Certificate programme fed into the National Diploma programme, which ran for two years. The graduates of the afternoon school holiday theatre training programme were now the teachers of the ‘new’ institutionalised16 APAW programme. In terms of the Performing Arts module, Thembi Ngwabi was in charge of dance while Lovescent Mhlanga taught music. Herbert Dube was still in charge of drama. This retention of skilled and in-house trained personnel enabled ATP to grow, strengthen and develop its performance culture and training methodologies. However, it is important to note that while APAW was institutionalised, it remained an informal training programme. This is because the Certification that ATP offered was moderated within the organisation. There is no data pointing towards its being recognised by the Higher Education Examinations Council (HEXCO) or the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education. As such, while APAW graduates became influential in the industry and took up teaching and consultancy positions in other informal training institutions, they could not break into the formal education sector. To this end, the influence of ATP on the education sector came largely through holiday workshops for teachers and students as well as touring. The institutionalisation of APAW into a full-time programme, running from 08:00 to 17:00 on weekdays, meant that the students spent the

14 We were not able to determine the written: practical percentage ratio. However, what was clear is that APAW was more practical than theoretical. 15 Among notable APAW graduates include Lewis Ndlovu, Thembi Ngwabi and Lovescent Mhlanga. 16 The term ‘institutionalisation’ is used to refer to the process of transforming the theatre training programme into ATP’s banner training programme. In this case, it became ATP’s institutional identity in as far as training and development was concerned. Institutionalisation also refers to the organisational structuring of the training programme into APAW.

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whole day at Amakhosi Cultural Centre. Once APAW was institutionalised, the training of performers, technical and administrative personnel at Amakhosi Theatre Productions became embedded in the Makokoba cultural context. One of the prominent cultural practices in Makokoba was street ball games. Amakhosi Theatre Productions integrated netball and handball into their training programme as a direct replacement of the karate and ordinary level classes, first as a strategy of identifying talent and second as a team-building exercise. In an interview with Moyo (1994, p. 2), the late Beater Mangethe intimated that she was identified while playing netball: I joined them [ATP] and played netball, ngasengingena emigidweni (I was excited when we started dancing). It was during the dances that the director spotted me. I think wangibona khonapho ukuba ngenza (he saw me playing well ). He saw that I was doing the right thing because after that I started attending lessons every morning.

In light of Mangethe’s reflective observational response, it can be noted that ATP’s strategy of using ball games to audition and identify talent allowed prospective students to creatively express themselves in their most comfortable performance art forms. This auditioning and talent identification strategy challenged mainstream industry practice which dictated that theatre auditions were based on acting technique, skill and characterisation. For the untrained prospective township theatre student, this would have created challenges. Thus, ATP located the auditioning and selection process in the flexible cultural contexts and environments of both the organisation and prospective students. This process of auditioning enabled ATP to identify talented and motivated students, who were not only talented in performance, but showed good interpersonal communication, teamwork and leadership skills. This was important to ATP as the organisation sought to train and develop not only performers, but a whole array of professionals needed by the budding theatre industry in new Zimbabwe. While karate and Ordinary Level classes were used to instil discipline and generate interest in the arts in the early 1980s and 1990s, Mhlanga notes that ball games played an important role in the institutionalisation of APAW. ATP believed that ball games developed a collective spirit, discipline and an identity, which was very important in consolidating a new theatre style. This collectivity was based on the abilities and contributions

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of each member to the success of the team. The collective group discipline and spirit restructured and deconstructed the superior-inferior patriarchyinspired relations between males and females within Amakhosi Theatre Productions. In the same structure as the 1983 training programme, ball games were followed by rehearsal and workshop processes. Prior to 1996, the rehearsals were held at the Stanley Square open auditorium while after 1996 the rehearsals were held in the then Amakhosi Township Square Cultural Centre amphitheatre stage. In both these spaces, the rehearsal, which constituted training, was open to the public. This training model became part of a new performance culture that ATP re-introduced into the Zimbabwean theatre industry. Traditionally in precolonial and colonial Zimbabwe, indigenous performances and rehearsals took place in open spaces. Young boys were trained and performed stick-fighting in open spaces. However, the colonial regime dismantled this performance tradition by banning open-space cultural performances (Sibanda 2017). Thus, when ATP began to rehearse and perform in open spaces, they were reintroducing and reviving a long-suppressed African performance and rehearsal process. As students rehearsed and performed in the open space, they developed content that explored socio-political and economic issues, dreams and frustrations of the township communities. APAW enabled young township people an opportunity to access professional training and simultaneously perform stories from their communities on international stages through touring. This integrated approach to training and development is missing in formal/tertiary arts education in Zimbabwe. This APAW training model, we observe, has become relevant to Zimbabwean higher and tertiary institutions especially as they transform into decolonised institutions. The need to create programmes that respond to industry needs highlights fundamental lessons that can be drawn from the way ATP responded to industry challenges through the APAW programme. We therefore argue that the structure of APAW could have an indelible influence on the current and new degree programmes introduced by universities in Zimbabwe. The heavy technical and practical orientation of the APAW fits well into the scientific approach to higher and tertiary education being adopted by local, regional and international universities.

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Conclusion While the work of ATP detailed in this chapter has an extraordinary contribution to theatre-making, the institution’s influence in theatre training and development has waned for a number of reasons. First, the state security’s attack on ATP for producing oppositional theatre in the new millennium forced Mhlanga into early ‘retirement’ creating a gap in the creative leadership in the organisation. Although Mhlanga had put in place succession mechanisms, the relocation of key ATP personnel such as Pedzisai Sithole to Swaziland and others embarking on solo career journeys, but his ‘retirement’ broke the cycle, as he was the visionary driving, writing, creating and directing most of the productions emerging from ATP. Second, funding challenges constrained most of the ATP’s programming forcing the organisation to take a break from 2007 to 2018, when an attempt to revive Amakhosi Theatre Academy was initiated. In 2019 Mhlanga came out of ‘retirement’ to provide leadership and guidance for the revival of the Academy while they explored collaborations and partnerships with Lupane State University. There has been interest as well from the Ministries of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development, Primary and Secondary Education as well as Climate and Tourism in the revival of ATP and Amakhosi Cultural Centre. The education ministries see ATP as a potential resource centre in light of the introduction of Theatre Arts as an examinable subject at Ordinary Level and Advanced Level, while the historical development of ATP and Amakhosi Centre interests the Tourism ministry in light of township cultural tourism. The revival of ATP and redesigning of the Centre into a modern cultural centre is an endeavour to tap into these promises as well as continue the organisation’s influence on the theatre’s growth, direction and performance style(s).

References Chifunyise, Stephen. 1986. No place for bias in national theatre: Playwright, S. J Chifunyise Replied Eds’ (The Sunday Mail, 21 September 1986). In Zimbabwe theatre report No. 1, ed. Stephen Chifunyise and Robert Kavanagh, 12–21. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Chifunyise, Stephen, and Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu. 1988. Zimbabwe theatre report, No. 2. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Dlodlo, Sihlangu. 2017. Interview, Harare, 15 April. Hurst, Christopher. 2015. Interview, Cape Town, 1 December.

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Isackes, Robert. 2008. On the pedagogy of theatre stage design: A critique of practice. Theatre Topics 18 (1): 41–53. Kellner, Douglas. n.d. Marxian perspectives on educational philosophy: From classical Marxism to critical pedagogy. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ kellner/essays/marxianperspectivesoneducation.pdf. Accessed 21 Jan 2019. McLaren, Robert. 1993. Developing drama at the University of Zimbabwe. Zambezia 2 (1): 35–52. Mhlanga, Cont. 1980. Diamond warriors I . Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1983. Ngizozula lawe. Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1986. Workshop negative. Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1988. Citizen child. Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1989. Cry isililo. Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1990. Dabulap! Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1992a. Stitsha. Unpublished script. Mhlanga, Cont. 1992b. Workshop negative. Gweru: Mambo Press. Mhlanga, Cont. 2014. Interview, Lupane Communal Lands, 23 January. Mhlanga, Cont. 2015. Interview, Lupane Communal Lands, 10 October. Mhlanga, Cont. 2016. Interview, Lupane Communal Lands, 26 February. Moyo, Godfrey. 1994. Nomdlalo Township Theatre News 1 (6):1–12. National Theatre Organisation. 1993. Working with a Group. Unpublished. Harare: NTO. Peterson, Bhekizizwe. 1990. Monarchs, missionaries and African intellectuals: African theatre and the unmaking of colonial marginality. Trenton: Africa World Press. Ravengai, Samuel. 2006. An investigation into the practice of directing and theatre making in post-independence Zimbabwe: Some urban theatre makers and directors as case studies. Zambezia Journal of Humanities 33 (I/II): 67–94. Ravengai, Samuel. 2011. Subalternity and the negotiation of a theatre identity: Performing the postcolony in alternative Zimbabwean theatre. Doctor of Philosophy thesis, University of Cape Town. Ravengai, Samuel. 2014. The politics of theatre and performance training in Zimbabwe 1980–1996. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 5 (3): 255–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2014.944717. Seda, Owen. 2004. Transculturalism in post-independence Zimbabwean drama: Projections of Zimbabwean theatre at the onset of a new millennium. Zambezia Journal of Humanities 31 (I/II): 136–47. Sibanda, Nkululeko. 2013. Deconstructing the University of Zimbabwe theatre legacy: Seeking an alternative approach to teaching scenographic theory and practice in Zimbabwean universities. African Performance Review 7 (2): 35– 53.

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Sibanda, Nkululeko. 2017. The politics of space: An investigation into the practice of scenography in post-independence Zimbabwean theatre. Unpublished Doctoral thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. 1981. Writers in politics: A re-arrangement with issues of literature and society. New York: Cornell University Press. Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. 1997. Enactments of power: The politics of performance space. TDR 4 (3): 11–30.

CHAPTER 6

Contestation in Postcolonial Drama: Residual and Emergent Consciousness in Zimbabwean Theatre at Independence—NTO and ZACT Owen Seda

Introduction This chapter analyses contestation and identity construction in postindependence Zimbabwean theatre which was coordinated by two of the country’s most dominant theatre movements, namely the National Theatre Organization (NTO) and the Zimbabwe Association of Community-based Theatre (ZACT). In order to explore the cultural polarisation that emerged between these two organisations at independence, the chapter adopts New Left criticism (Hutton 2016), with a particular focus on the ideas of Raymond Williams (1977) whose cultural materialist approach led him to coin the twin concepts of residual and emergent consciousness in cultural analysis. The chapter identifies cultural polarisation in post-independence Zimbabwe as having emerged from

O. Seda (B) Department of Performing Arts, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_6

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what was then perceived (rightly or wrongly) by the post-independence government as white settler attempts to continue to use the theatre as a bastion of white racial pride and cultural supremacy on the one hand, and efforts by the newly inaugurated nationalist government to mobilise the African people’s mental and cultural decolonisation on the other. New Left criticism such as that espoused by Raymond Williams emphasises the everyday and the political qualities of culture. Emphasis on the everyday and the political aspects of lived experience led Raymond Williams to develop his influential tripartite model of cultural formations at particular moments in history. According to Williams, culture was in a continuous state of flux, which he described as ‘mobile, discontinuous, and hybrid’ (cited in Newell and Okome 2014). This led him to conceptualise cultural forms as combining ‘residual’, ‘dominant’ and ‘emergent’ elements at any one moment in time (Williams 1977, pp. 40– 49). It is precisely this discontinuous and hybrid nature of cultural formations at any given point in time which persuades me to include in my focus the numerous instances of slippage which occurred in preand post-independence theatre, notwithstanding the apparent dichotomisation of cultural practices and evident polarity with which the colonial era National Theatre Organization (hereafter referred to as the NTO) and the post-independence Zimbabwe Association of Community-based Theatre (hereafter referred to as ZACT) approached Zimbabwean theatre. In this chapter, I use the term ‘slippage’ as a synonym for what Homi K. Bhabha (1998) has famously referred to as the inevitable cross-cultural hybridity or cultural mixing that often occurs whenever two traditions meet and interact as a result of cultural encounters. My focus of analysis is, therefore, on the two dominant national theatre organisations (the NTO and ZACT) through which this cultural polarisation seems to have played out. I argue that the NTO’s perceived apparent reluctance to transform its tenacious hold on colonialist ideologies and discursive practices in the theatre at independence (in spite of evidence to the contrary) may be analysed in terms of a hitherto dominant consciousness that was fast becoming residual, while ZACT’s desire to establish an alternative discursive practice may be viewed as part of an ongoing trajectory towards an emergent consciousness in postcolonial theatre practice. I also view the numerous instances of hybrid slippages which seem to have remained largely under the radar in this cultural polarity as testimony to Williams’s notion of cultural forms as mobile and discontinuous, allowing these slippages to be conveniently and easily overlooked by the two contending national movements.

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Dominant, Emergent and Residual Consciousness The New Left was a broad political movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, which, unlike orthodox Marxism, placed emphasis not solely on labour and economics, but on social and cultural issues, albeit from a Marxist perspective. More specifically, the three terms ‘dominant’, ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ consciousness were coined by Raymond Williams and they are usually read against the political ideas of the Italian Marxist political philosopher, Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci 1957; Williams 1977; Young 2001; Hiddleston 2009). The notion of ‘dominant’, ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ consciousness is often used together with Antonio Gramsci’s political concept of rule and hegemony. Although ‘hegemony’ is a term that was originally used to refer to the dominance of one state over other states within a political alliance, in his writings, Antonio Gramsci expanded the term to refer to the ways in which the ruling class in any given context is able to dominate subordinate classes by convincing them that its interests and worldview (that is, the interests and worldview of the ruling class) are the generally more acceptable ones, working in the best interests of all. According to Gramsci, political domination by one group over another is not always exerted by force, but rather through other subtle and persuasive means such as religion, education, culture and the media. In Gramsci’s writings, hegemony and domination are important tools of political control because of their capacity to influence the thought processes of dominated groups, and also because of their ability to persuade subordinate classes to adopt the worldview of the dominant or ruling class. In other words, the consent of the ruled in respect of their subordination is achieved through the twin processes of domination and hegemony. Put differently, domination and hegemony are a form of interpellation operating on the social consciousness of subordinate subjects through among other things, the propagation and deliberate elevation of certain discourses, thought processes and belief systems above others. It is in that sense, therefore, that western or Eurocentric values, assumptions and belief systems, for instance, come to be accepted by the subordinate classes as the most sensible and most acceptable in the circumstances. Be that as it may, Gramsci also observes that hegemony and domination are not necessarily a ‘one-way street’ where the ruled and/or the dominated accepts his/her condition of subordination without some

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measure of resistance, contradiction or oppositional forms of consciousness. Hegemony and domination can also serve as venerable sites of struggle wherein the subordinate subject can assert his/her multifarious and contradictory forms of social consciousness as a form of resistance. It is here that the source of the cultural slippages, which I contend the two national theatre organisations largely seem to have overlooked in pre- and post-independence Zimbabwe, is to be found. Gramsci’s twin notions of rule and hegemony were later complemented and expanded on through Raymond Williams’s (1977) New Left analysis of the dynamic interrelations between social practices and their institutions in any given social formation. According to Williams, it is necessary to recognise the complex interrelations between movements and tendencies both within and beyond a specific and effective dominance at every stage of social development. Herein too lies the link between Williams’s use of the terms ‘dominant’, ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ consciousness and the notion of cultural slippages and confrontation such as we find in pre and post-independence Zimbabwe. To expand on Williams’s concept further, as a new cultural ethos emerges to assume the mantle of a dominant culture, it too is assailed by, and continues to exist side by side with available elements of past practices, which do not always go away immediately. This is residual consciousness, which, as Williams observes, ‘has been effectively formed in the past, but [it] is still active in the cultural process (…) as an effective element of the present’ (1977, p. 122). Williams thus defines residual consciousness as: [c]ertain experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant culture [but] are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue – cultural as well as social – of some previous social and cultural institution or formation. (1977, p. 122)

Following Williams, I view the continuation of colonialist discursive practices and the perceived reluctance (whether rightly or wrongly) by settler colonial-era theatre clubs to alter these practices in post-colonial Zimbabwe as an example of what may be termed as residual consciousness in post-independence theatre. Given the country’s protracted political contestation, these perceptions seemed to have overlooked the cultural slippages that were part and parcel of actual practices on the ground in a number of instances.

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In addition to ‘dominant’ and ‘residual’, Raymond Williams also introduced the term ‘emergent’ consciousness to refer to new practices, new values and new meanings that are [continuously] created within any given social milieu as it undergoes a process of change and transformation. Williams observes that in any given context, there are always seeds for the germination of alternative or oppositional forms to the dominant elements. In Zimbabwe, this was constituted through the propagation of a new state-driven cultural consciousness or what I refer to in this chapter as ‘emergent’ consciousness. In the next section I foreground the establishment of alternative theatre practices after independence and how this came into confrontation with hitherto dominant colonialist practices, notwithstanding significant instances of slippage or hybridity between the two, which neither the NTO nor ZACT was able or willing to acknowledge in their mutually confrontational approach.

Theatre and the Policy of National Reconciliation The government of Zimbabwe adopted a policy of national reconciliation in April 1980 (Chifunyise 1994; Chifunyise and Kerr 2004). National reconciliation was meant to heal and to transform racial relations, which had been largely characterised by mutual hate, mistrust, prejudice and inequality during the country’s ninety-odd years of colonial rule. The formation of a government of national unity enhanced the said policy, which besides the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) ZANU (PF), also included members of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front (RF) and Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Patriotic Front) or (PF) ZAPU. In the circumstances, the settler-colonial theatre clubs were arguably still at liberty to continue to propagate their usual dominant cultural practices without let or hindrance. As Chifunyise (1994) rightly observes: As the policy of reconciliation had ruled out nationalisation of economic institutions, there was no danger of cultural facilities such as the wellequipped and white-owned theatre facilities being nationalised. Neither did the policy cause any change in the attitudes of city councils and multinational companies, which continued to give the white theatre establishment preferential financial support, in spite of the mass cultural demands of the new social order. (1994, p. 57)

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Against this background, colonial-era theatre clubs continued with their usual tradition, which mainly consisted of the production of play scripts and musicals primarily sourced from overseas publishers and producers as indicated above. These shows and musicals were presented on predominantly proscenium arch stages in the ‘little theatres’ that were dotted across the country’s major towns, cities, agricultural hubs and mining settlements. Activities in these theatres revolved around the production of plays that were entered for competitive annual festivals for which adjudicators were regularly invited from abroad (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988; Hains 1994). Meanwhile, as the colonial-style theatres consolidated their traditional practices, a parallel, but less formalised tradition of Zimbabwean theatre also came forth at independence. This was a form of popular theatre whose roots were located in Zimbabwe’s liberation war movement. It was a form of community theatre which had been used in the countryside and the guerrilla camps to articulate the goals of the war of liberation. During the war this form of community theatre had coalesced around night-time gatherings known as pungwe (Shona for ‘all-night vigil’) during which the freedom fighters engaged villagers politically and culturally. According to Chifunyise: [t]his dynamic use of the diverse and popular forms of indigenous performing arts, for instance traditional dance, ritual dances, poetic recitation, chants, slogans, songs and story-telling, enabled the combatants to mobilise the peasants to articulate their opposition to the settler white minority regime, and to consolidate the peasants’ solidarity with the liberation struggle. […] The pungwe enabled the combatants to concretise the ideology of socialism as an instrument of transferring political and economic power to the indigenous people of Zimbabwe. (1994, p. 55)

At independence in 1980, this form of community theatre came to constitute a nationalist counter-culture which made it very easy for Zimbabwean theatre to slide gradually into some form of confrontation. For a considerable period after independence, community theatre practices deriving from the war continued at a number of schools and vocational training institutions created for war orphans and returning refugees. Notable among these was Chindunduma Secondary School near the town of Bindura, which produced a play entitled Takaitora Neropa (1983) (We took/won it through bloodshed) and Chaminuka Youth Training Centre,

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which produced Rivers of Blood (1985). Both plays were based on Zimbabwean liberation war history and experiences of the war. In the urban townships, pungwe metamorphosed into a developmental or issuesbased theatre that went beyond the aegis of mere entertainment. It was propagated by newly formed community theatre companies scattered across the townships and rural areas (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988; Chifunyise 1994; Kaarsholm 1994). As a nationalist counter-discourse, community-based theatre forms often displayed a strong tendency towards Marxism, all of which was in synch with Raymond Williams’s notion of a society in transition where a confrontation was slowly fomenting between a residual and an emerging consciousness. Unlike the practice found in the colonial-style theatres that were already firmly established in the towns and cities with their orientation towards theatre as entertainment: [t]he objective of this type of theatre [i.e. community theatre] was to conscientise the people of Zimbabwe about the history of the revolution. It aimed also to articulate the resolve of the people of Zimbabwe to defend their independence. (Chifunyise 1994, p. 54)

The National Theatre Organization (NTO) and Residual Consciousness There is strong evidence that after independence, the NTO saw its role as guardian and facilitator of the residual consciousness of colonial theatre practices (Hains 1994). This role is traceable to the organisation’s roots in colonial Rhodesia and the Central African Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (CAF). It is during the latter period that the NTO was launched on 28 April 1957 as the Southern Rhodesia Drama Association (SRDA) with a specific purpose: ‘to develop dramatic art and organize drama festivals in the country’ (Hains 1994, p. 1). According to Hains: Basically, the organization was set up to co-ordinate and regulate the activities of plus/minus 50 European amateur theatre societies scattered all over the then Rhodesia in every little mining/ farming/city/town/village community. (1994, p. 1)

The SRDA teamed up with the Northern Rhodesia Drama Association (NRDA) in 1958 to form the Federal Theatre League of Central Africa

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(FTLCA) (Hains 1994). The aim of FTLCA was to co-ordinate federal theatre activities and run competitive festivals that would draw participants from Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. One of the major achievements of the FTLCA was to establish a 15,000volume library consisting of play scripts, musical scores as well as theatre reference books from a wide variety of western publishers. Located in the then city of Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia, the FTLCA library was subsequently inherited by the SRDA and later the NTO at the break-up of the federation in 1963. Biodun Jeyifo (1984) has written that a characteristic feature of western canonical practices is the fostering and the propagation of a tradition of ‘great’ writers and ‘great’ directors. The SRDA and later the NTO was not entirely different in this regard. In 1959 the SRDA secured exclusive agency rights for Samuel French Ltd (London), Samuel French Inc. (USA), Evans Plays and H.W. Deane Plays (London) on behalf of its member groups. By 1994 the NTO had also included Warner Chappell Plays, Music Theatre International, Heinemann Plays, Methuen Drama Scripts and William Morris publishers on its list of source publishers for play scripts (Hains 1994). The Central African Federation (of Rhodesia and Nyasaland) came to an abrupt end on 31 December 1963 leading to the dissolution of the FTLCA and its replacement with the Association of Rhodesian Theatrical Societies (ARTS). ARTS was later transformed into the NTO on 7 August 1977. Susan Hains, a founding member, who served for many years in the role of chairperson of the NTO, does acknowledge that at independence: NTO was a predominantly Eurocentric organisation. […] Any funds received at this time from the National Arts Foundation (NAF, now the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe [NACZ]) or the private sector were still being channelled to the European theatre societies although in the mid- to late 70s money had been donated specifically for ‘… bringing on and teaching African theatre groups play producing as performed by British and South African companies and to their standard’. (1994, p. 2) [Emphasis added]

Antonio Gramsci has observed that there is no hegemonic practice that is total in its domination. At each given moment in time, there are forms of oppositional consciousness that exist as significant elements in any given cultural formation. By 1982 the NTO executive had begun to realise

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that the organisation’s orientation needed to transform in line with the political dynamics of a new Zimbabwe. According to Hains: 1985 saw the struggle of beginning to democratise NTO and remove its ‘white elitist’ image by a ‘new broom’ in-coming Chairman (me) and a succession of Chief Executives from Kay Breuninger, […] who all passionately espoused the new order and actively sought and encouraged change towards a real, multi-racial National Theatre Organization. (1994, p. 2) [Emphasis in bold and underline is from the original]

In line with this new orientation, the organisation subsequently made some internal adjustments and identified the following as its principal aims and objectives (among others): To give advice, assistance and encouragement with a view to fostering theatre on a national basis To provide theatre, drama skills and playwriting workshops and seminars as and when required. To offer an advisory service to local and international theatre groups. (Hains 1994)

The NTO also identified the Ministry of Education and Culture, the National Arts Council (NAC) and their associated bodies at provincial and district levels, member and non-member theatre groups, and schools and colleges as its main clients. With the above as its founding and guiding principles, the NTO continued to prosper into the post-independence era, widening its membership base across racial lines as it also ushered in sponsored annual competitive festivals such as the CABS annual playwriting competition, the National High Schools Drama Festival and the annual Winterfest, with the latter as its flagship event.

Community-Based Theatre as Emergent Consciousness It has been noted above that at independence community theatre assumed new prominence as a form of counter-discourse in line with Williams’s (1977) notion of an emergent consciousness in Zimbabwean theatre. Community theatre became a cog in the new nation state’s task of

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rethinking and re-engineering the link between politics, society, education and culture. It was viewed as an alternative to the dominance of colonialist theatre practices. Kees Epskamp (1989) has observed that in ‘Third World’ (or developing) countries, the practice of a ‘national culture’ often receives powerful government promotion. This was also the case in post-independence Zimbabwe where, as Epskamp also observes, the anthropological and ideological context of culture came to include traditions, values, institutions, artefacts, sentiments, ideas, worldviews and action all in the name of the propagation of ‘national’ culture. As Epskamp further observes, matters to do with culture [were] overseen by a state-appointed department of culture. In the case of post-independence Zimbabwe, this was through the Ministry of Sport, Recreation and Culture and later the Ministry of Education and Culture. The views of Epskamp are also corroborated by Dale Byam, who writes: It seems that the ideal post-colonialist strategy, necessary for national reconstruction required absolute abrogation of foreign values and interests, pursuit of an African identity and an African culture and subordination of political processes. (1999, p. 7)

Byam (1999) also observes that: [i]n order to be organic, theatre needed to find the relevance of its foundation in popular culture so as to maintain a historical connection to this national majority and to give greater meaning to the independence fervour that prevailed. (1999, p. 9)

It is precisely this orientation towards national culture which made it relatively easy to foment ideological confrontation between state-driven community theatre and colonial theatre practices that were deemed to be largely elitist. The development of community theatre practices in post-independence Zimbabwe is an example of what Anthony Smith (1986, p. 15) has referred to as the ‘core doctrine of nationalism’. In his core doctrine of nationalism, Smith fuses the ideals of collective self-determination, the expression of a national character and the division of the world into unique nations each contributing its special genius to the world. In Zimbabwe, cultural nationalism was but a function of an emergent

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consciousness as part of Smith’s core doctrine of nationalism. The establishment of community theatre in Zimbabwe is itself closely linked to the establishment of the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP). ZIMFEP was formed in January 1981 with the aim of creating a system of education that would address academic needs while underpinning these with cultural competency and hands-on agricultural and industrial skills (Byam 1999). In September 1981, the Ministry of Education and Culture (the parent ministry for ZIMFEP) organised a national conference on education and culture with the assistance of Sweden’s Dag Hammarksjold Foundation (Byam 1999). Key participants at this workshop included Ngugi wa Mirii, a cultural activist, and Kimani Gecau, a university academic, both of whom had played an instrumental role in the establishment of the Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre (KCECC) near the town of Limuru in Kenya in 1976. At the conclusion of the Zimbabwe workshop, Ngugi wa Mirii undertook to bring a group of artists from Kamiriithu to tour Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, however, this was not to be, as the government of Daniel Arap Moi subsequently destroyed KCECC before the promised tour could take place. The destruction and forced closure of KCECC forced Ngugi wa Mirii, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Kimani Gecau to flee into exile, with Kimani Gecau and Ngugi wa Mirii opting to seek refuge in Zimbabwe, where they became instrumental in establishing a community theatre project which, according to Byam (1999, p. 35), was ‘grounded in the African struggle’. To the extent that ZIMFEP and later ZACT were inspired by the Kenyan experiment, KCECC became a structural model for the establishment of state-driven counterculture in post-independence Zimbabwean theatre. Epskamp (1989) has observed that the distinction between learning and being entertained is a typically North Atlantic functional distinction. In Zimbabwe the thrust towards community theatre was in direct contrast to the hitherto dominant practices in colonial theatres, which were modelled along the lines of what Epskamp (1989) refers to as the conscious distinction between work and leisure that is typical of western countries. As the ZIMFEP training workshops expanded, the number of ZIMFEP-inspired community theatre companies grew across the country, leading to a national workshop on 14 February 1986 (Byam 1999; Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988). The purpose of the workshop was to discuss modalities for the formation of a national association of

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community-based theatre companies. It was this workshop that was to lead to the establishment of the Zimbabwe Association of Communitybased Theatre (ZACT), with the following as its key aims and objectives: The creation of a national socialist culture To provide infrastructure for the development of community theatre To promote the community theatre ideal. (ZACT pamphlet, undated)

From the above it is self-evident that ZACT was essentially an organisation in the service of something of a post-independence cultural revolution. Writing on the sociopolitical philosophy of ZACT, Ngugi wa Mirii, explains: In theatre, we are able to expose living contradictions, past historical struggles as well as the ongoing class struggles. It should be noted that depending on the orientation of the content of our theatre and the artistic presentation, we can build or destroy a society, in the same way that colonial theatre, film, literature and other art forms did to us and continue to do. (cited in Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988, p. 40)

Ngugi wa Mirii’s statement as outlined above is redolent with the sentiment of cultural nationalism and reductionist cultural essentialism which became the hallmark of state-driven culture programmes at independence in Zimbabwe. It is precisely this reductionist approach to state-driven culture industries which made it relatively easy for the colonial era NTO and ZACT to come into conflict.

The Question of a National Theatre and the Great Debate In earlier sections I outlined the intensity of the cultural and ideological differences between colonial theatre and the post-independence community theatre movement between 1980 and 1988. The potential for conflict between the two had been hinted at as early as 1982 when Ngugi wa Mirii, a founding member of ZIMFEP and later ZACT, observed: There are two forces that emerged after independence. On the one hand there are those who ally with imperialism against their own people and on the other, those who are determined to continue with the struggle against imperialism, towards the total reconstruction of our culture, economy and peace. (cited in Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988, p. 7)

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This dichotomy was also captured by Chifunyise and Kavanagh when they observed: Before independence […] an expatriate or white minority theatre dominates. After independence indigenous groups initially collaborate with this theatre by performing in its venues and entering its festivals. […] This is the neo-colonialist road. (1988, pp. 1–2)

ZACT’s evidently binary and oppositional approach came to a head when the organisation decided it would not allow its member groups to enjoy dual membership with the NTO. ZACT viewed the latter as a vestige of colonialist practices with the potential to contaminate the supposedly more ‘progressive’ community-based theatre movement (Byam 1999). However, ZACT’s view of colonial theatre as disruptive and ideologically confusing contradicts my initial argument on cultural slippages between the two movements in the sense that the very act of partaking in NTO membership by ZACT groups was itself confirmation that these groups basically perceived certain commonalities and differences in practice which they felt could be mutually beneficial. In due course, the NTO’s competitive festivals were to occasion the first major public confrontation between the two organisations. Since inception as the SRDA way back in 1958, the NTO had always built its activities around competitive festivals, chief among which was the National Winter Festival (or Winterfest). With independence, democratisation and the national policy of reconciliation, a number of community theatres began to enter the NTO’s competitive festivals, especially around 1982. Previously all plays entered in the annual competitions were predominantly sourced from western publishers and presented in the English language. They were also adjudicated by foreign judges specially flown into the country for the event. However, the entry into the competitions by some community theatre groups led to a complication in that some plays were now being presented in local [African] languages. To obviate this problem, in light of the inability by foreign adjudicators to understand plays presented in local languages, it was resolved that they (that is, the foreign adjudicators) would work with the assistance of local co-adjudicators. This development was followed by a considerable increase in the number of entries as more and more community theatre companies became reasonably confident of winning (NTO newsletter 1993–1997).

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Be that as it may, a serious confrontation soon emerged between the previously hegemonic colonial-style theatres and the emergent community theatre tradition. This was after the NTO’s competitive festivals were won consecutively by community theatre companies. The colonial-style theatre clubs reacted to this by boycotting the 1988 festivals altogether. The decision not to participate was reached on the rather simplistic basis that community theatre companies were winning not on artistic merit, but on the basis of local language use and theme. The refusal to accept that their competitive festivals could be won by community groups whose discursive practices were perceived as diametrically different from their own conventions and normative practices can be understood against Olaniyan’s (1995) definition of colonialist discourse. In Olaniyan’s definition, colonialist discourse suffers from a fixation with conceptual purism in which African discursive practices are routinely denigrated. In the eyes of the NTO and its allied groups, African theatre forms were, therefore, incapable of winning significant national prizes. In my argument, however, the mere fact that community theatre clubs such as Amakhosi, who won first prize in the 1987 Winterfest on the basis of adjudication yardsticks set and presided over by NTO-invited judges, is clear testimony to the hybrid nature of theatre forms produced in intercultural contexts. It is also a demonstration of just how the two dominant movements chose a manufactured confrontational path in spite of abundant evidence of convergence in actual practice. The decision by colonial theatre clubs to boycott future competitions naturally elicited sharp and negative reactions in Zimbabwean theatre circles, leading to intense debate in the local press and in other cultural forums (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988). I view the essence of this debate as ample testimony to a clear confrontation between residual and emergent consciousness in post-independence Zimbabwean cultural production as well as a clear denial of the existence of cultural slippage and hybridity within an intercultural context. In this debate the colonial era theatres were labelled as resistant to change and the agenda of national cultural transformation. This perception was exacerbated by the views of Denis Granger, a local theatre critic who wrote to the local press saying: That is why theatre is international (…) but until, and it will take a long time, we can establish work of the calibre of overseas scripts, we must learn from them and we can only learn by seeing and studying them. (cited in Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988, p. 12)

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Granger’s views were not dissimilar to those of Susan Hains, the then national chairperson for the NTO, who had, as early as 1984, commented on the failure of her organisation to award prizes for the CABS Annual Playwriting Competition in the same year: As far as the judging of plays is concerned, there are international standards and parameters in addition to our conditions of entry with which our judges are fully conversant. An effort is made to ensure that Zimbabwean playwrights set their targets at an internationally accepted level. (cited in Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988, p. 13)

The views espoused by Granger and Hains unwittingly play into Olaniyan’s observation about how colonialist discourse ‘rests on a number of settled assumptions, practices, and critical orthodoxies’ (1995, p. 12). These are critical orthodoxies which decidedly viewed African theatre as inherently quasi-dramatic and, therefore, inferior to western forms. It comes as no surprise, then, that Granger would insist on the need for local playwrights to learn their craft from western publications. African theatre practices could learn only through mimicry and a closer and more sustained engagement with western forms. These evidently condescending views elicited a rejoinder from Mthandazo Ndema Ngwenya, a Bulawayo-based cultural activist, playwright and critic who responded as follows: To the likes of Granger, good theatre is an unabashed and spineless imitation and reproduction of European and other foreign theatre forms. In short, good theatre is the reproduction and obeisance to cultural imperialism. Hence his [i.e. Granger’s] references to internationalism without defining what is international and what is not. […] Whites continue to indulge in silly and effete imitations and reproductions of theatre forms of European particularly British American theatre. This inclination of whites is a rather pathetic and ridiculous attempt at reassuring themselves that although they are in Africa, culturally they are not of Africa and they are radically different. (cited in Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988, p. 13)

The ensuing debate also led some cultural activists to begin to question the whole notion of competitive festivals around which the established colonial-style theatres seemed to exist. As Robert Kavanagh observed at the time:

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National cultural goals in Zimbabwe […] call for mass-based indigenous, non-racial, collective, co-operative and socialist cultural action. A number of elements of NTO strategy do not seem suited to such goals, including competition for individualised awards on American Oscar or Tony Award lines and adjudication by a judge who has invariably little knowledge of Zimbabwe’s indigenous cultural forms and languages. (1988, p. 11)

Commenting on the same practice, Chifunyise wrote: It [NTO festivals] is a trend that limits the contribution of white theatre to the development of non-racial culture in Zimbabwe. It also threatens to undermine the significance of the excellent work of black theatre artists in the development of Zimbabwean theatre, as these artists become preoccupied with theatre for competitive festivals which are completely cut away from their own communities and the working class. (1994, p. 59)

I view this debate as one between a previously dominant colonialist discourse and an emergent counter-hegemonic discourse, in regard to which Olaniyan observes: If it is the horizon of hope of every dominant discursive practice to be hegemonic, that is, to achieve the plenitude and immediacy of a fully operational habitus so that it passes itself off as natural […] it is the characteristic feature of counter-discourses to insistently question this eloquent certitude. (1995, p. 19)

Having outlined the confrontation between the two competing national theatre organizations, I proceed to explore instances of Zimbabwean theatre practitioners who defied these ideological straitjackets, choosing to play betwixt and between the two ideologically polarising positions.

Playing Betwixt and Between A closer analysis of the historical manifestations of Zimbabwean theatre indicates that prejudice and the general polarity at independence tended to overlook numerous instances of slippage between the competing traditions. Indeed, the very fact that many community-based theatre companies affiliated with ZACT began to gravitate towards dual membership with the NTO in order to participate in its annual competitive

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festivals as well as to benefit from its theatre skills workshops is clear testimony that there was a significant element of harmony between the two movements. In spite of protestations to the contrary by the executives of the two movements, dual membership, which (as pointed out above) was subsequently banned by ZACT, is an indication that another emergent consciousness of hybridity, playing betwixt and between, was also becoming more and more established in Zimbabwean theatre. It is the profundity and artistic merit of this hybrid form (with traceable roots in the colonial era) which explains the successes of some community-based theatres such as Amakhosi Theatre in previously colonialist-dominated NTO-run festivals. It must be borne in mind here that the communitybased theatres which were able to win the NTO’s competitive festivals between 1985 and 1986 were able to do so in spite of the presence of foreign adjudicators. Whereas the question of a national theatre identity and the great debate, which I outline above, seems to imply a binary approach on the part of the two principal parent movements, evidence on the ground indicates that Zimbabwean theatre is, in fact, replete with significant instances of Raymond Williams’s notion of the discontinuous and hybrid nature of cultural formations. This hybridity easily defies attempts by the two national movements to create that binary relationship which I point out above. Inasmuch as my general focus in this chapter is not on actual play analysis, in this section I trace and summarise a few examples of hybrid forms that seem to have defied the aforementioned dichotomous relationship in Zimbabwean theatre. As far back as the 1970s, John Haig, Walter Muparutsa and Dominic Kanaventi’s Sundown Theatre did acknowledge the rising prominence of postcolonial African theatre when they produced a number of Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard’s plays such as Kongi’s Harvest, Madmen and Specialists, No Good Friday and Nongogo. These productions were presented to multi-racial audiences at alternative venues such as Reps Theatre upstairs. In 1974, Sundown Theatre also produced Shakespeare’s Othello with John Indi, a well-known black actor at the time, playing the lead role (Banham 1996). In 1978 Reps Theatre, colonial Rhodesia’s premier theatre company decided to break with tradition by producing Arthur Chipunza’s Svikiro (Spirit Medium) on their main stage. Svikiro was a musical that was based on the role of spirit mediums in Shona culture. The play was performed in English and its production on the REPS main stage seems to have been

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in line with the country’s then newly enunciated policy of racial harmony during Ian Smith and Abel Muzorewa’s short-lived internal settlement in 1978 (Plastow 1996, p. 117). Collaborative interactions between people of diverse races and traditions in the theatre accelerated after independence in spite of the aforementioned confrontational stance adopted by the NTO and ZACT. In 1984 Sundown Theatre changed its name to Zimbabwe Arts Productions with Andrew Whaley, Ben Sibenke, Dominic Kanaventi and Walter Muparutsa as its core members. The group went on to produce Platform 5, a play about the life of tramps in the city of Harare. In 1985, they produced Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. In 1988, Andrew Whaley and Simon Shumba established Meridian Players and produced The Nyoka Tree and later The Rise and Shine of Comrade Fiasco, a play about the post-independence experience of ex-liberation war combatants in Zimbabwe. What I have outlined here is by no means exhaustive. It is only a small cross-section that serves as testimony to the new synergies in Zimbabwean theatre by theatre practitioners who sought to operate outside the cultural straitjacket that was fomented and propagated by the two national movements as outlined above.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to document and analyse the history and development of theatre in post-independence Zimbabwe. Except in the last section, my focus has been less on play analysis than on the country’s two main national movements, the NTO and ZACT. I have demonstrated the difference in cultural and ideological orientation between the two national organisations using Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams’ related concepts of rule and hegemony, and dominant, residual and emergent consciousness. I have argued that the NTO’s apparent reluctance to let go of its colonialist orientation in spite of evidence of intercultural convergence on the ground before and after independence may be viewed in terms of a hitherto dominant consciousness that was fast becoming residual, while the ZACT’s efforts to establish an alternative discourse may be viewed as part of an ongoing process of emergent consciousness in post-independence theatre practices. Beyond that however, I have also tried to allude to some examples of cultural slippage and hybridity

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between the two polarities that were unfortunately sometimes conveniently overlooked by the two dominant movements, although they go some way to demonstrate the myths and realities of a binary reading of theatre practices within post-colonial contexts such as Zimbabwe.

References Banham, Martin. 1996. The Cambridge guide to world theatre. Cambridge: CUP. Byam, Dale. 1999. Community in motion: Theatre for development in Africa. Westport, CT: Sage Books. Chifunyise, Stephen. 1994. Trends in Zimbabwean theatre since 1980. In Politics and performance: Theatre, poetry & song in Southern Africa, ed. Liz Gunner, 55–74. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Chifunyise, Stephen, and David Kerr. 2004. Southern Africa. In A history of theatre in Africa, ed. Martin Banham, 263–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chifunyise, Stephen, and Robert Mshengu Kavanagh. 1988. The Zimbabwe theatre report 1988 (Retrospective). Unpublished report. Harare: UZ Theatre Arts Department. Epskamp, Kees. 1989. Theatre in search of social change. The Hague: CESO. Gramsci, Antonio. 1957. Modern prince and other writings. London: Lawrence Wishart. Hains, Susan. 1994. The potted history of the National Theatre Organization. Harare: NTO (Unpublished). Hiddleston, Jane. 2009. Understanding postcolonialism. London: Acumen Books. Hutton, Alexander. 2016. Literature, criticism and politics in the early new left 1952–1962. 20th Century British History 27 (1): 51–75. Jeyifo, Biodun. 1984. The truthful lie: Essays in a sociology of African drama. London: New Beacon Books. Kaarsholm, Preben. 1994. Mental colonization or catharsis? Theatre, democracy and cultural struggle from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. In Politics and performance: Theatre, poetry and song in Southern Africa, ed. Liz Gunner, 225–251. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. National Theatre Organization. 1993–1997. Monthly Newsletters. Harare: NTO. Newell, Stephanie, and Onoome Okome. 2014. Popular culture in Africa: The episteme of the everyday. New York and London: Routledge. Olaniyan, Tejumola. 1995. Scars of conquest/masks of resistance: The invention of cultural identities in African, African-American and Caribbean drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plastow, Jane. 1996. African theatre and politics: The evolution of theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe—A comparative study. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The ethnic origins of nations. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, John C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

CHAPTER 7

Creating Counter-Public Sphere(s): Performance in Zimbabwe Between the Influence of Mugabe and Western NGOs Julius Heinicke

In contemporary Zimbabwe, theatre plays an important role in creating counter-public spheres. Festivals—such as the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA)—and theatre venues and cultural centres—such as Theatre-in-the-Park in Harare or Amakhosi Theatre in Bulawayo—often (albeit not always) provide a structural framework for constructing protected spheres in which to question the public domain controlled by the Mugabe regime and also to cast a critical eye upon international arts funding. The plays and mise-en-scène engage with dominant public discourses. In alienating, questioning and counteracting these discourses, artistic examination generates the voices of a counter-public

J. Heinicke (B) University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_7

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sphere. What kind of free space is constructed during these festivals and on these stages? Which artistic tools and traditions are used?1

Politics and Theatre in Zimbabwe In 1980 Zimbabwe achieved independence. At the beginning of his time in office, Robert Mugabe2 (the founding prime minister) was celebrated around the world. Great hopes were placed in him as a figure who could be capable of achieving peaceful cohabitation of all of the country’s races and ethnic groups and turn Zimbabwe into an economic posterchild. In order to support the economy and ease (at least financially) the transition from a dictatorship to democracy, in 1990 Mugabe entered into an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a move that in retrospect was one of the major causes of the country’s economic disaster shortly thereafter. Strained by the constraints of the IMF and the World Bank in the 1990s as well as the haemorrhaging of public finances through massive pension payments to the political and military elites, the government was bankrupt by the beginning of the new millennium. In the year 2008, inflation reached a month-on-month rate of 79.6 billion percent and a year-on-year rate of 89.7 quintillion percent (Hanke and Kwok 2009, p. 354). Mugabe’s dictatorial behaviour peaked with Operation Murambatsvina3 and the violence in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential elections such that the western world reacted by imposing restricted economic sanctions on certain political players and state-controlled entities. Like many other countries south of the Sahara, the Zimbabwean population was dependent not only upon the politics of its own government, but also upon western aid, an ambivalent situation that is also 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007– 2013)/ERC grant agreement No. 295759. 2 Robert Mugabe was Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and President of Zimbabwe from 1987 to November 2017. 3 Operation Murambatsvina (Shona for ‘garbage removal’), also known as Operation

Restore Order, refers to the destruction of illegally constructed houses and market stalls carried out by the Zimbabwean government on 25 September 2005 in the cities of Harare and Bulawayo. Entire townships in which the number of supporters of the political opposition was particularly high were demolished with excavators and bulldozers. Tens of thousands lost their homes and were forcibly driven into the rural areas.

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reflected in the cultural sector. As a result of this bankruptcy, the government could no longer support art or culture, including theatre projects. This task has been taken up in the meantime by international donors— with a few exceptions from the local private sector—and has thus acquired decisive influence over the cultural scene. In contrast, the Zimbabwean government has increasingly drawn upon its executive power in attempting to control the cultural scene through censorship laws, the police and other state organs. In the last fifteen years, as Seda (2004), Ravengai (2010) and Zenenga (2008) have demonstrated, protest and political theatre has become more and more influential. In Bulawayo, Cont Mhlanga and the Amakhosi Theatre led the way, but there are also some other theatre groups in Harare such as Rooftop Promotions, which runs Theatre-in-thePark, Savanna Trust and its hit-and-run-performances, and other theatre productions presented at Mannenberg Club and the stages of the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). The scripts for these plays are mostly written by Zimbabweans and feature directly or indirectly reprimands of and references to current socio-political issues. All these plays perform in between the poles of western NGOs and the government of Robert Mugabe.4 Supported by cultural institutions from the countries of their former colonisers such as the British Council or the Dutch NGO Hivos, but also by members of the local economy and political elites, this theatre speaks directly to the social, political, economic, medical and social concerns of the population. Although shot through with intervention strategies, this political and social theatre frequently creates spaces in which critical artists, human rights activists and the opposition can also act and make their voices heard. This paradox is grounded in the fact that one has to do here with theatre, and that the ‘fool’s privilege’ typically afforded to this genre is capable of freeing itself from politically motivated intervention strategies. It has to be asked why (and how) political actors appropriate theatre, and why, on the other hand, it remains despite these attempts to wield it as a tool for political influence, a place in which counter-movements and ‘counter’ public spheres are created.

4 Some of the following paragraphs are published in German in Warstat et al. (2015).

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Theatre and the Public Sphere As Christopher Balme has pointed out, in the eighteenth century in particular, European theatre was important for its efforts to create a public sphere. Balme defines the latter with Habermas as follows: The public sphere or Öffentlichkeit, as defined by Jürgen Habermas, emerges in the eighteenth century when, according to Habermas’s now intensively critiqued argument, the emerging bourgeois class engaged in a process of self-definition, political emancipation, and aesthetic tasterefinement. In the context of feudal structures in France and Germany, Habermas defines the public sphere as a domain where bourgeois virtues of Enlightenment reason and discourses could be practiced, more or less outside the structures of absolutist political control. (Balme 2010, pp. 41–42)

Be that as it may, the primary political orientation of Habermas’s definition poses some problems for linking it to a theory of performance: Habermas’s concept is primarily a political one, in which he problematizes the notion of political discourse as a precondition of democracy. While the political thrust of Habermas’ argument is too general to be applied broadly to theatre (although in specific highly politicized contexts in which theatre and theatrical behaviour come to the forefront it can be), its implied spatiality can be usefully expanded as a concept of thinking about theatre’s role in civic and political life. (Balme 2010, p. 42)

However, since the daily press in Zimbabwe came under the control of the Board of Censors, theatre in Zimbabwe has increasingly become an important public place for political discussion. As such, Habermas’s political definition could make sense in the Zimbabwean context. Nonetheless, in questioning the international applicability of this specifically European model, Nancy Fraser exposes another difficulty: Focused on relations within civil society, exponents of what I shall call ‘the legitimacy critique’ contended that Structural Transformation obscured the existence of systemic obstacles that deprive some who are nominally members of the public of the capacity to participate on a par with others, as full partners in public debate. Highlighting class inequalities and status hierarchies in civil society, these critiques analyzed their effects on those whom the Westphalian frame included in principle, but excluded or

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marginalized in practice: propertyless workers, women, the poor, ethnoracial, religious and national minorities. Thus, this critique questioned the legitimacy of what passes for public opinion in democratic theory and in social reality. (Fraser 2007, p. 11)

Although Fraser may be right in questioning the implementation of specifically European subjects in other cultural contexts, one could argue that an extended version of Habermas’s concept might be useful in Zimbabwe. In making use of the term ‘Öffentlichkeit’ to describe the political impact of Zimbabwean Arts, Preben Kaarsholm takes a step in this direction, although he refers to an ‘internationalised’ definition of public sphere by Habermas: While there can be little doubt from Habermas’ writing that this perspective is indeed Eurocentric, this does not necessarily mean that his working out of civil society as a normative and critical concept is irrelevant in nonEuropean contexts. […] He [Habermas] concedes that the public sphere is not necessarily a unified one, suggesting that a society may have different public spheres in which the aspirations of different groups are articulated and debated. The relationship between these different public spheres is a hegemonic one, in which foundations of power and resources determine the range and impact of different types of articulations. (Kaarsholm 2000, p. 205)

As I have argued in another article, some theatre plays create public spheres in the sense of Kaarsholm’s definition of Habermas’s model (Heinicke 2013b, pp. 27–39). If one understands ‘public sphere’ as a space where political discourses are discussed in public, both Mugabe’s and the politics of western NGOs try to dominate and regulate who is part of them. In addition to Fraser’s argument, one can also critique the structure of Habermas’s construction of ‘public sphere’. It inclines to favourite western models of communication and democracy, which presuppose that everyone has access to the spheres and can choose from various equal discourses to form his or her opinion. As theatre performs in the public sphere and opens space for opinion making, it is a fiercely competitive market for the political camps in Zimbabwe. However, although some theatre productions give one a first view room for these strategies of political instrumentation, they deconstruct them and open space for different discourses. I will first demonstrate in the next paragraphs the political instrumentation of theatre by the Mugabe

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regime and the western world. Thereafter, I will discuss and analyse the role of Zimbabwean performances for subverting these political strategies and building a kind of counter-public sphere.

Between the Mugabe Regime and Western NGOs: Theatre and the Public Spheres in Current Zimbabwe Looking at Zimbabwe’s theatre scene during the last ten years, it seems extremely interesting that President Mugabe appreciates and makes use of theatre’s multiple artistic levels. International donors, by contrast, place more emphasis on its social and political effects. The justification for the support given by the international cultural institutions that subsidise Applied Theatre in Zimbabwe appeal first and foremost to social and societal aims of individual projects (Heinicke 2013a, pp. 49–58). From the 1970s onward, the so-called ‘Theatre for Development’ has spread across the entire continent in order to help prevent and protect against epidemics and illnesses like cholera and AIDS. With the coming of independence in 1980, Mugabe’s new government saw the potential for this type of theatre, albeit less in protection against disease than in the protection of traditional cultural practices and the norms and values set by Mugabe. The Kenyan Ng˜ ug˜ı wa M˜ıri˜ı, who along with Ng˜ ug˜ı wa Thiong’o wrote the excellent post-colonial play I Will Marry When I Want (1982), founded the government-friendly Zimbabwean Association of Community [based] Theatre. In the course of the 1990s its aims came more and more to reflect those of the regime and followed Mugabe’s approach in using ‘Zimbabwean’ theatre traditions as a way of cordoning itself off from ‘European’ ones. The ‘African Spirit’ was to be protected against the negative influences of the western world. International (European-American) development assistance reacted shortly thereafter with efforts to promote through theatre democracy and equal rights for homosexuals (among others); that is, themes that were at the time at the top of the western agenda. The goal of these projects was the protection of western values and norms. Since then the theatre scene has found itself caught in the middle of a field of opposing forces, in which distinct hegemonies compete. Ng˜ ug˜ı wa M˜ıri˜ı promotes the African spirit (personified in Mugabe) against the influences of the western world, and

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the latter tries to invoke democratic norms and values of the Zimbabwean people against the increasingly despotic behaviour of its president. Theatre has been used since the 1990s by both sides as a sort of neocolonial instrumentation, in order to pursue the respective interests of each of these hegemonic systems. Interestingly, both sides justify their behaviour as a kind of counter-hegemonic power: on the one hand against the colonialism of the west, and on the other against Mugabe’s dictatorship. Both systems are famous for their strict hegemonic structures and are paradoxically played out against one another in Zimbabwe. It can be said of both sets of efforts that they serve only superficially to benefit the population. Instead, they appear to focus upon building up their own power in the face of their opponent, meaning that they in fact stand in the long tradition of the colonial protectorate. However, in Zimbabwe, the involved parties go about doing this in different fashions. The international NGO scene does this with money and conditions for support which delineate precisely what effects the productions are meant to have: the Mugabe regime with censorship and political pressure. Pieces that do not fit into the political elite’s image of history and society are censored, forbidden by the police and their actors are not infrequently arrested or persecuted. The obvious significance of theatre for intervention efforts of all types testifies to its efficacy. Protected spaces emerge in these projects which enable preventative measures or aims. At the same time however, theatre succeeds in undermining these politically motivated attempts at intervention. Both of these are, as will be shown through discussion of a theatre project from the Zimbabwean theatre organisation Rooftop Promotions, analysable from artistic and aesthetic perspectives.

Counter-Public Sphere I: Rooftop Promotions in Harare Rooftop Promotions was founded in 1986 by Daves Guzha and produces two to three plays per year, all of which engage with current sociopolitical themes and after a few weeks of performances in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, go on tour throughout the entire country. All productions engage with current socio-political themes. International cultural institutions and embassies uniformly finance the plays. The play, Waiting

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for Constitution,5 thematises the process of developing a constitution in Zimbabwe and discusses which rights should be taken up into the new constitution. The piece is based on a theatrical dialogue, performed by professional actors with the aid of a few props: in marketplaces, in front of supermarkets, in school auditoriums or on public stages. The acting is a mixture of Stanislavski and a somewhat exaggerated typification, with the aim of imitating representatives of Zimbabwean society. Zimbabwe had no constitution until 2013. In 2009, with the beginning of the national unity government (composed between 2009 and 2013 of both Zimbabwean parties), President Mugabe promised as a result of pressure from the former opposition party MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) to adopt a constitution as soon as possible and to include the population in the process. In Waiting for Constitution various opinions are expressed, which, although they circulated during the process of establishing a constitution, were often discussed only in hushed tones: the younger generation’s desire for the legalisation of homosexuality, the reluctance to accept this amongst the older generation. The dialogue between the two camps becomes possible in the play. The different points of view in the discussion of the protagonists reflect typical opinions in Zimbabwean society: • The maternal uncle was a member of the Rhodesian forces during the second chimurenga. He argues that there shouldn’t be rights for gender equality and homosexuality. • The paternal uncle is a war veteran and a ZANU-PF party official, who keeps pulling different cell phones out of his pocket. For him the maternal uncle is a traitor for having fought on the Rhodesian side against his own people. • The eldest daughter has recently returned from the US. She is a typical musalad, a new Shona word for ‘black Zimbabwean youths from mostly well-to-do families […], those eating salad, a foreign dish’ (Veit-Wild, p. 687). She argues against her uncles in gender and homosexual issues.

5 Chifunyise, Stephen: Waiting for Constitution, Premiere 2010 Theatre in the Park, Harare. Director: Daves Guzha.

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To sum up, Waiting for Constitution creates typical stereotypes of current Zimbabwe which present diverging points of view in Zimbabwean society. Stereotyping and its metonymic effects are important elements of theatre. On the one hand, the characteristic types are humorous and cause laughter in the audience. On the other hand, they can offer the opportunity to discuss political positions, of course pointed and extremely generalised. However, the theatre guarantees a kind of protection for the actors as they do not necessarily personally support the opinions of their roles. Artistic freedom in turn also allows for all figures to be portrayed, including those whose opinion and position is not shared by any of the actors. But it is not only role-playing—a classical theatrical technique— that protects participants from possible political consequences. So, too, the performance space seemed for many who saw the country-wide tour to be a protected one. In contrast to other initiatives surrounding the constitutional process, the populace had little fear of attending the performances, according to the director Daves Guzha: Whereas the outreach team meetings are full of tension and fear, Waiting for Constitution has no hassles with the people. The people feel so free that they open their hearts to the actors—telling them that they wished they were the ones collecting their views. They said they like the play because it was coming to the people unlike the teams, which were asking people to gather at certain venues where they could not go because they were being watched.6

At a first glance, the play subverts Mugabe’s strategies to control the Zimbabwean public sphere with attempts at intimidation. At the official meetings that are held to discuss the new constitution, nobody opens his or her heart to speak what he or she really thinks. In contrast, the theatre venue deconstructs these control systems of opinion making and provides room to discuss issues beyond the corpus accepted by Mugabe and ZANU-PF. However, in addition to this counter-public sphere ‘against’ the regime, Waiting for Constitution also intervenes against the structure of public sphere: the western NGOs try to build with the help of the play. According to an interview Guzha gave, the diverse standpoints of the 6 Rooftop Promotions (2010).

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characters in the piece led to a politically diverse and intensive discussion in the audience: As artists we have been touched by the way the play has been received by people of different political affiliations, ideologies and backgrounds. […] People have shown their hunger to speak. The issue of homosexual rights has been largely opposed by most of these communities while the issue of federal Zimbabwe raised in the play has been supported by many in Manicaland. Women have also come out in full support of meaningful gender equality in the constitution, while some people have questioned how the land issue is going to be addressed in the new constitution.7

In the staging, the attempts at intervention not only on the part of international donors but also on the part of the state are undermined. The acting technique described above allows the piece to represent diverse figures from the society, including those who are regime-friendly, which has placated the regime. Role-play allows the actors to argue that they do not represent the views of the figures they portray. As a result, they are often able to extricate themselves from trouble during police interviews (although this does not always succeed). western NGOs, in their subsidisation of the piece, support not only the values of the western world; instead, the pieces also present regime-friendly, anti-western opinions, which do not necessarily belong to the goals of European NGOs. Nonetheless, it can be said that with pieces such as Waiting for Constitution, Rooftop Promotions supports a canon of values championed by the western world, and thus acts in the sense of a neo-colonial protectorate. Not only the themes but also the form of their theatre underscores this: it is a closed work in which the audience merely watches without being involved, followed by a discussion—clearly orientated toward the model of the ‘Theatre for Development’—with all present. Although the performances of Waiting for Constitution create a protected space in which participants can speak openly about the constitutional process, there is at the same time concealed behind the project a strategy intended to ‘protect’ the values for which the international development agencies stand and to caricature the work of Mugabe’s government as backwards and undemocratic. The regime’s attempts to control the theatre projects, as well as the population’s fear of taking part in events for political 7 The Zimbabwean (2010).

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discussion, suggest that Mugabe and his ruling elite are attempting to strengthen their position of power by dismantling and controlling these public spaces for theatre. However, the lively discussions and diverse standpoints also show that the supposed dichotomies between Europeans and Africans, blacks and whites, are clearly outdated. Although the ruling elites surrounding Robert Mugabe continue to celebrate Zimbabwean traditions, they are— as the audience discussions following the performances show—increasingly alienated from a large portion of the middle and upper classes, as well as the younger generation. At the same time, it becomes clear that the western canon of values leads to discomfort in large portions of the population. Despite the public control of the regime and the efforts on the part of international cultural benefactors to implement western models of democracy and value systems, Waiting for Constitution allows the participants to push back against both allegedly anti-hegemonic (anti-colonial and anti-dictatorial) strategies: the independence of the socio-political discussion is evident not only in the protected space of the ‘fool’s privilege’, the artistic space which the theatre creates beyond the limits of ‘real’ space, but also in the possibility of portraying a wide spectrum of typified opinions. This allows these opinions to be subverted or parodied, undermining the attempt to establish a one-sided political discourse. In a nutshell, the play does not only deconstruct the political strategies to build a public sphere both in Mugabe’s and the western NGOs’ scene. One can also question with the help of performances in Theatrein-the-Park the concept of public sphere in Habermas’s and Kaarsholm’s sense: Who are the ‘actors’ behind the stage that determine what is part of the public discourse, where the locations are and who has access to these spheres? Waiting for Constitution and the discussions afterwards underline Fraser’s critique of singularity concerning the ‘public voice’ in the western concept of civil society: public sphere as a part of democracy does not mean favouring western norms of the NGOs that funded the play. Rather, it means that various opinions are performed and that civil society has the possibility of discussing all of them in a free uncontrolled space. We have seen that theatre in Zimbabwe has the potential to create this open space and even to support opinions the funding NGOs do not favour. However, at the end, one should raise the questions: Who is the audience? Who has access to these counter-public spheres? In point of fact, only a small part of Zimbabwean society has access to theatre plays. For this reason Cont Mhlanga founded in Bulawayo the Amakhosi

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Cultural Centre, where children from the poorer townships could be part of building spheres of opining, making and discussing political issues.

Counter-Public Sphere II: Amakhosi Theatre, Bulawayo Amakhosi Theatre was founded in 1982 by Cont Mhlanga in Bulawayo, and it is one of the best known and most influential theatre organisations in the country. Mhlanga’s breakthrough in theatre productions occurred in 1986 with the piece Workshop Negative, which he developed in collaboration with the director and theatre trainer Chris Hurst. The construction of the Amakhosi Cultural Centre is an important milestone in his history. For it, Mhlanga received in 1993 1.4 million ZIM-Dollars from Scandinavian cultural organisations (Plastow 1996, p. 242). The cultural centre is located on the northern border of the urban centre of Bulawayo (the second largest city in Zimbabwe) and borders the township of Makokoba. The area is a mixture of industrial terrain and a seemingly rural suburb. A short access road leads from the main road toward Victoria Falls to a spacious courtyard with trees, closed off by a large open amphitheatre resembling a Greek theatron and a two-storey house. I have never seen this space when it was not filled with groups of young people sitting under trees, discussing, talking with one another or simply ‘chilling’. Various training sessions take place in the theatre structure, including dance, rhythm and movement, but also karate and acting. In the neighbouring building, bands are given the opportunity to practise. Some of Amakhosi Theatre’s productions have received international fame as a result of their open criticism of the regime. After Tomorrow’s People, which thematises the politically motivated violence against the Ndebele, Mhlanga was forced to spend a few days in jail, and the police forbade the performance of the piece in Bulawayo. With The Good President, a satire about the president, Mhlanga won the $50,000 ArtVenture Freedom Prize offered by the international city coalition, ICORN. This piece was also banned by the police in Bulawayo. Because of the substantial political attention they received from state organs, both pieces were discussed in international newspapers such as the Neue Zürcher

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Zeitung 8 and the Los Angeles Times.9 Similar to Rooftop Promotions and Theatre-in-the-Park in Harare, Amakhosi opened the platform for political discussion and tried to break down the censorship strategies of the Mugabe regime. However, as we have already discussed in the last paragraphs, it should be questioned who is able to attend at these theatre venues and how open this political space really is. Mhlanga describes as one of the biggest challenges for the Zimbabwean society the fear to speak loudly: Fear in Zimbabwe has risen to alarming proportions to the benefit of the government. It is a way of suppressing the majority to organize themselves [sic] to change the difficult conditions that the government has created for them. The result is that people can only whisper to those that they know and trust, but whispers do not get far and wide very quickly. To those that are at a distance it may look like Zimbabweans are content with the conditions they are in and that is why they are not doing anything about it. But that is not true. Zimbabweans are whispering everywhere and as a result they don’t hear each other or they hear different information all the time and therefore cannot take collective action to change the difficult conditions. (Mhlanga 2007)

To escape this fear, Amakhosi has also realised a number of theatre projects and workshops that grew out of collaboration with the inhabitants of Bulawayo, in particular, those of the township of Makokoba. Doing so creates space for political discussion for people, who have no access to typical venues of socio-political discourses: The company has become the leading Ndebele group in Zimbabwe, with their plays written in what Mhlanga calls ‘Ndenglish’, a fusion of languages which makes the work accessible to all Zimbabweans. Mhlanga sees his mission as being a voice for the povo—the ordinary people, and it is this which drives both performance style and context. (Plastow 2004, pp. 110– 111)

At Amakhosi Cultural Centre the voice of the ‘povo’ is articulated. It was in this tradition that Amakhosi Theatre organised a competition for new talent in September of 2010: the next generation of artists were 8 Veit-Wild (2006, p. 26). 9 Dixon (2007).

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permitted to present their work on the large open stage. By doing so, the centre opens a sphere where Zimbabweans, who are normally not part of the political discourse, are trained to raise their voice and discuss their issues. However, this strategy not only opens the controlled public sphere of the regime—it also creates a counter sphere with regard to the political strategies of the western world. The organisation has been progressively drawing back from relying upon international support from NGOs, embassies and other cultural institutions. Although Rohmer and Plastow could still write at the close of the 1990s that the cultural centre attracted more international funds than any other centre in the country (Rohmer 1999, p. 146), it has in recent times shifted to working mostly with local partners—a move which Mhlanga explained in a conversation with me as resulting from the fact that here, one can plan longer term and more reliably. This is one of the reasons that in recent years, Amakhosi’s international and national presence has receded in comparison to the 1980s and 1990s, while its regional presence remains as before quite prominent. In Bulawayo and the Matabeleland province, Amakhosi is an influential cultural site. Various training sessions in the realm of rhythm, movement, karate, music and acting take place every day in the theatre structure. In these sessions, Amakhosi draws upon a large body of artistic traditions from all over the world. Mhlanga never fails to emphasise that theatre plays an important role in the history of Africa and is thus essential for societal communication: The concept is rooted [in the] belief that theatre, by its nature, is cultural as it involves song and dance, ceremonial rituals, the society and people and therefore becomes a way of life. It finds support from the fact that the continent of Africa has a long history of sending messages through drama and plays and through theatre performances, the work of African poets and actors has challenged policies and human right abuses. (Mhlanga 2010, interview)

Noteworthy are the attempts by the cultural centre to use the different practices—whether they have been borrowed from Ndebele, Shona, English or Chinese traditions—as forms of expression of equal value. I have seen a number of projects in which various cultural traditions and performance forms—for example, the Shona ritual dance zvitambo nengoma and karate—flowed into one another and were woven together.

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Amakhosi’s success, however, is founded largely in the way that the centre organises its cultural work. The youths are told neither by an instructor nor by a donor what themes their art is to address. Working against the political censorship of the Mugabe regime, which controls large portions of Zimbabwe’s public sphere, Amakhosi attempts to be one of the last locations where the young can express themselves and develop artistically, freely and without constraint (Heinicke 2014, pp. 160–162). For instance, the artistic project ‘Voices for Change’ opens the space for this kind of freedom of expression: This is a fast growing movement that supports creative artists from all disciplines to produce, perform, distribute and amplify the voices of the majority who lives in Difficult Times [sic] while exposing the trickery and hypocrisy of the minority who live in Good Times while they claim to be acting on behalf of the people and the country by taking such critical and sometimes protest works by all means available and possible. (Mhlanga 2010, interview)

This strategy includes Mhlanga’s conscious decision to distance himself from international cultural aid agencies and to work only with local donors. Amakhosi is thus an important location, where with the aid of art and culture themes can be addressed in a way that allows them to develop relatively independently of both dominant discourses of the public sphere—that of the western world and of the Mugabe regime. In analysing and reflecting Amakhosi and Theatre-in-the-Park one can argue that both organisations create counter-public spheres by trying to give various groups access and overcoming (neo-)colonial dichotomies and antagonisms. Whereas Harare’s Theatre-in-the-Park and Waiting for Constitution gives voice to various political opinions and creates space to discuss all of them, the Amakhosi Cultural Centre in Bulawayo focuses on people, who are normally not part of the society that has access to spheres of political discussion and influence. Doing so they create artistic rooms that counter the polarised public sphere that is dominated by Mugabe and the western world both in an aesthetic and in a political manner.

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Seda, Owen. 2004. Transculturalism in post-independence Zimbabwean drama: Projections of Zimbabwean theatre at the onset of the new millennium. Zambezia 31 (I/II): 136–147. The Zimbabwean. 2010. Waiting for constitution proves a hit, July 12. http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/articles/32528/waitingfor-the-consti tution-proves-a-hit.html. Accessed 10 Apr 2015. Veit-Wild, Flora. 2006. Schauplatz Simbabwe: In die Freiheit geboren? Eine neue Generation Kulturschaffender wächst heran. In Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26. Accessed 9 December 2006. Wa M˜ıri˜ı, Ng˜ ug˜ı, and Ng˜ ug˜ı Wa Thiong’o. 1982. I will marry when I want. London: Heinemann. Warstat, Matthias, Julius Heinicke, et al. 2015. Theater als Intervention: Politiken ästhetischer Praxis. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Zenenga, Praise. 2008. Censorship, surveillance, and protest theatre in Zimbabwe. Theatre 38 (3): 67–83.

PART II

The Politics of Representation

CHAPTER 8

‘I Was Never a White Girl and I Do Not Want to Be a White Girl’: Albinism, Youth Theatre and Disability Politics in Contemporary Zimbabwe Chiedza Adelaide Chinhanu, Nehemiah Chivandikwa, and Owen Seda

Introduction In this chapter, we consider and analyse the necessity and possibilities of using participatory applied theatre as a site and a tool with which to encourage and inspire young university students living with albinism to

C. A. Chinhanu School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK N. Chivandikwa Department of Creative Media and Communication, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe O. Seda (B) Department of Performing Arts, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_8

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fight for their unique physical as well as political rights, while simultaneously embracing and identifying the wider struggles of the community of people with disabilities (PWD). We recognise that in Zimbabwe, people with albinism (PWA) have an ambivalent, if not negative, attitude to the community of PWD in ways that unfortunately weaken their own struggles. We argue that the best way to solve this problem may be to encourage and to promote a radical approach, which de-emphasises the prevalence of welfare and medical approaches to the struggles of both PWA and PWD. We suggest the need to adopt radical or rights-based approaches, which recognise that both PWA and PWD are often denied full citizenship rights because of ableist perceptions of their bodies in mainstream society (Lawson 2001). We, therefore, examine a participatory project in applied theatre that we co-facilitated at the University of Zimbabwe, between 2011 and 2014. Our purpose was to empower students with albinism (also referred to in this chapter as SWA) together with other disabled student participants in order to form a political community of students with ‘disability’ (also referred to in this chapter as SWD) with a potential to radicalise disability body politics on the university campus and beyond. In order to do this, the chapter focuses on two plays, namely: The White Man from Buhera (2011–2012) and Visionaries (2011–2012). The two plays formed part of a much larger project undertaken as part of postgraduate degree studies (see Chinhanu 2013; Chivandikwa 2016). For ethical reasons, we use pseudonyms throughout this chapter to refer to non-disabled students, SWA and SWD who participated in the project.

Historical Background to Disability Issues at the University of Zimbabwe The two projects that we analyse in this chapter took place under the aegis of the University of Zimbabwe’s Disability Resource Centre (hereinafter referred to as the DRC). In this section, we provide a historical background to the political battles and hidden fights for control at the DRC, which have to do with the welfare of students with disabilities at the University of Zimbabwe. We consider this general historical background to be necessary in providing a framework in which the project we analyse took place. The two projects were conducted as part of a practical component in the University of Zimbabwe Department of Theatre Arts’

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Second Year Honours course in Applied Theatre. The title of the course is ‘Theatre and Development Communication’. Historically, the University of Zimbabwe (then known as the University of Rhodesia) enrolled its first physically challenged students in 1978, and later enrolled its first visually impaired students in 1982 (Chataika 2007). With the increase in the enrolment of physically and visually impaired students after the attainment of national independence in 1980, university authorities soon realised the need to establish a centre that would be dedicated to the provision of support services for all students with physical impairments, especially the visually impaired, who sometimes faced challenges finding their way around the campus. It is thus that the DRC was established at the University of Zimbabwe in 1987. It is important at this point to provide the history and politics of entitlement that seems to have coloured the general orientation of physically impaired students who are serviced by the DRC since its formal establishment in 1987. We believe that the politics of entitlement at the DRC is of paramount importance in understanding the plight of SWA who are enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe. With the formal establishment of the Disability Resource Centre in 1987, the university began to employ skilled personnel or specialists seconded to the centre to assist the visually impaired students (who happened to be in the majority of the centre’s users) in accessing technical equipment used for reading and writing. Although laudable and positive in itself, this development marked a new chapter in the history of the centre in that visually impaired students began to perceive the centre as being primarily meant for them. The centre soon developed rapidly in response to the challenges posed by the arrival of more and more visually challenged students. It was only a few years after 1987 that the centre began to offer expanded services to other students with conditions such as albinism, epilepsy and mental impairments, provided that such students had submitted a letter from medical authorities confirming any such condition. That notwithstanding, visually challenged students continued to harbour thoughts and attitudes towards the centre as being primarily their own facility before all other students (Chinhanu 2013). Chinhanu makes the following observation about power dynamics characterising student attitudes in the DRC: There are a lot of power dynamics within the [centre], which are deeply rooted in the country’s Disabled People’s Organization (DPO). The DPO

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appears to exclusively represent visually impaired people. In the DRC or Disability Resource Centre, there are differences between the visually impaired and the physically challenged. This is because the visuallyimpaired see themselves as the ‘legal’ and ‘legitimate’ beneficiaries of the [centre]’s ‘privileges’ since the [centre] was started out of their need to be catered for, and also because they are the ‘most’ [severely] impaired (Masendeke 2012). While the visually-challenged view themselves as holding the ‘legitimate rights’ to the centre, the physically challenged students believe that they (i.e. the physically challenged) are ‘better’ because they have the gift of sight and should therefore have control over the centre. Students with albinism (SWA) on the other hand only come to the centre as a last resort [because in comparative terms, they are not really disabled and therefore do not really require the services of the centre]. It is alleged that once they (i.e. SWA) register with the centre, they disappear and never show their faces at the centre because they do not want to be associated with it. (Chinhanu 2013, p. 16) [Interpolation ours]

Chinhanu’s observation, as outlined above, is interesting and significant for this chapter in the way in which it suggests complex forms of internalised ableism or ableist prejudice even among SWD (both the visual and the physical) wherein some sections of the community (including at the University of Zimbabwe) routinely rank forms of bodily impairment in the hope of securing maximum ‘benefits’ from society, the university administration and other well-wishers (see Chinhanu 2013). Ableism (also known as anapirophobia or anapirism) is a commonplace form of human and social discrimination directed towards people manifesting various degrees of disability, whether mental or physical. Ableist prejudice can also include people with pigmentational challenges such as albinism. Ableism characterises and ranks people based on whether or not they are ‘able-bodied’ in such a way that those with disabilities are ranked as inferior in comparison to the non-disabled. As a highly insidious form of social discrimination, ableism has been described as being: [a]nalogous to racism, sexism or ageism, [and] sees persons with disabilities as being less worthy of respect and consideration, less able to contribute and participate, or of less inherent value than others. Ableism may be conscious or unconscious, and may be embedded in institutions, systems or the broader culture of a society. It can limit the opportunities of persons with disabilities and reduce their inclusion in the life of their communities. (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2011, p. 46)

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Ableism is sometimes justified on the basis of fear as well as cultural myths and beliefs. It is against this background that the next section focuses on how, as facilitators, we tried to negotiate the existing tensions and fractures among SWA and SWD who are signed up with the University of Zimbabwe’s DRC. We believe that these tensions and fractures largely reflect the way people with albinism relate to other members of the disability community within the larger Zimbabwean society.

Negotiating Fractures and Tensions Within the Community of Disability Armed with knowledge and insights of the politics behind student attitudes towards one another in the DRC as outlined in the sections above, we decided that it was crucial for our project in applied theatre to initiate frank and robust discussions about these apparent contradictions and fissures within the group in order to promote tolerance and critical awareness about forces and institutions, which impact on the political and social agency of PWD in general and PWA in particular. We attempted to provide participating students with critical tools designed to help them to problematise social institutions and cultural processes that tend to view bodily difference in negative terms. We tried to emphasise to the students that PWD are routinely oppressed and discriminated against because of ableism or differences based on socially constructed bodily hierarchies. The idea was to deal first with internal contradictions and ensure that these young PWAs started to celebrate their bodies as political tools that can subvert hegemonic and prejudiced views about impaired bodies. Our basic perception of the challenges at hand were corroborated by Shumba (not his real name), one of the student participants living with albinism, who was always critical of the attitude of other SWD. Shumba attributed his disapproving attitude towards other SWD to larger socialisation processes, which, in his view, are prevalent in special schools where visually impaired students are routinely treated as objects of charity. The discourses of disability often recognise three approaches to disability, namely: the charity model, the medical model and the traditional model. The charity model tends to view PWD as pitiful objects of charity who are in perpetual need of benevolent alms and assistance. Modern Pentecostal churches are particularly notorious for propagating the charity model where, whenever they encounter the PWD, they often

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attempt to perform acts of miracle healing or collect alms in order to assist them out of pity. The medical model often operates in tandem with the charity model where the PWD are perceived as inherently ‘deformed’ and in perpetual need of medical attention to rehabilitate them back to ‘normalcy’. This model is prevalent in specialist institutions that cater for PWD. Although it is now quite rare, the traditional model can be quite retrograde as it propagates the view that PWD must be secluded from society as special divine creations whose lives are circumscribed with certain taboos. In our discussions, Shumba expressed his frustrations with the charity model indicating that he had a: [p]roblem with disabled students who come from special schools for visually- challenged students. They are almost all the same. They want to focus too much on their impairments. They have been socialised to think that they should always receive. This is a big problem. The visually- challenged think [that] they are the most disadvantaged and they think [that] others are opportunists who just want to get assistance and are not truly disabled. (cited in Chivandikwa 2016, p. 210)

Several other physically impaired students shared Shumba’s sentiments. Our role and attitude towards these sensitive sentiments was to encourage free discussion as much as possible in the spirit of problem-solving scholarship without necessarily offending personal sensibilities. As facilitators we realised the need to ensure good balance between critical engagements on the one hand, and tolerance and sensitivity on the other. As we reflected on this, Shava (not his real name) another SWA made the following highly significant observation about the ‘monopoly’ that visually impaired students seemed to think they had over the DRC. […] DRC is not visual impairment and visual impairment is not DRC. We all belong to the centre. We are all oppressed. Maybe this project can unite us as a strong force against our real enemies. (cited in Chivandikwa 2016, p. 164)

In light of all these tensions, which seemed to complicate and weaken SWDs’ ability to form a strong and formidable alliance in pursuit of their common welfare against bigger prejudices from the larger nondisabled community, we introduced self-evaluation as a key component designed to help them to unmask certain realities about disability politics. We realised that strengthening the self-esteem of the community of

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PWD would have to necessarily include self-evaluation but not as selfpity or self-hate. As facilitators we also realised that it was important that such self-evaluation would also have to incorporate a considerable amount of self-criticism among both the abled and the disabled students. This self-evaluation was to give rise to a suggestion to acknowledge the heterogeneous nature of the DRC by having several productions focusing on the experience of specific groups who access the centre. The students subsequently identified four ‘major’ categories of SWD who access the centre as follows: Physically impaired students in wheelchairs Physically impaired students who are not in wheelchairs Visually impaired students; AND Students with albinism. The participating students then devised four different plays focusing on these various forms of ‘disability’ within the above-mentioned groups (see Chivandikwa 2016; Chivandikwa and Seda 2014; Chinhanu 2013; Chivandikwa and Muwonwa 2013). As already indicated earlier in this chapter, all four projects brought together a mix of SWD with nondisabled students. In the group project that we analyse in this chapter (that is, the group which focused on SWA), all the participating students were deeply cognisant of the controversy surrounding whether albinism is in fact a form of disability or bodily impairment. Being practitioners in applied theatre, we were also fully cognisant of the self-reflexive capacity for participatory theatre forms to carry this debate into the wider society via artistic processes. This is not least because we were aware of the fact that this debate continues to rage within the wider Zimbabwean society (see Chivandikwa and Seda 2014). Having come up with these four categories of SWD, a total of twenty students with disabilities joined the four groups working alongside so-called ‘able-bodied’ students. In the following paragraphs we provide brief synopses of the two plays that focused on SWA, namely: The White Man from Buhera and Visionaries. The students devised the plays using their experiences of disabilities and the research they carried out prior to the devising process. The White Man from Buhera features the struggles of a set of twins (one male and one female)—Shamiso and Shingirai—who, inspired by the resilience and tenacity of their mother, defy ableist prejudice to succeed socially

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and professionally. The major theme that is embedded in the play is the need to challenge ableist traditional, medical and charity discourses which oppress PWA (see Chinyowa and Chivandikwa 2017; Chivandikwa 2016; Chivandikwa and Seda 2014). The White Man from Buhera featured the following SWA: Shumba, Ma’Mlilo, Mwendamberi, Mlilo and Shava (not their real names). The second play, Visionaries, was based on issues of sexuality and sexual agency among PWD. It explores the struggles of Cliff, a visually impaired student who abandons his visually impaired girlfriend Norma for Kim, a non-disabled young woman who seduces him on the basis of the belief (or myth) that having sexual relations with visually impaired persons can cure sexual disease and enhance one’s chances of securing the love of one’s dreams (in this case her boyfriend, Knox). In exploring these various conflicts and struggles, the play brings out other related themes such as attraction and (female) bodily beauty, sexual agency of PWD and the general misrecognition, distortions and misconceptions regarding the sexual habits and practices of visually impaired young people in particular and other PWD in general (see Chivandikwa 2013; Chivandikwa and Muwonwa 2013). Visionaries featured three SWA, namely: Ma’Mlilo, Shumba and Mwendamberi (not their real names). Generally speaking, young people (and indeed other people) living with albinism have to confront the contradictions arising from the way society views them in relation to questions of disability. Clearly, these perceptions seem to oscillate between one view of albinism as not being sufficient an impairment for one to be labelled fully ‘disabled’ and another view that says albinism is not an impairment at all. As a result, some PWA do not feel that they even belong to the community of PWD. However, whatever approach one takes, it is important to ensure that PWA avoid internalising certain hegemonic and negative perceptions of bodily difference that can complicate personal liberation and personal freedom because of the mere fact that so-called ‘able-bodied’ people do not consider them (that is, PWA) to be sufficiently ‘normal’ (see Chivandikwa 2016). In the Zimbabwean context, PWA generally find themselves in a complex position in terms of their material bodily identities. We, therefore, found it necessary to use participatory theatre processes to conscientise SWD to form a formidable front or community that could challenge the prevalence of the welfare and medical approaches to bodily impairment, which seem to characterise attitudes towards disability in Zimbabwean society.

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From our group discussions working on the applied theatre project that is analysed in this chapter, the extent or ‘degree’ of bodily impairment was at the centre of the identity crises facing SWD in general, and SWA in particular. It was evident that this community of university students was fractured on its own even as it simultaneously faced the prejudice that it faced on the wider social front as PWD. Our challenge as facilitators was to help to co-create a community of self-affirmation, confidence and selfpride where diversity and heterogeneity could be recognised, and where members were also prepared to ‘form a community with the “other” who is unique or radically different’ (Arvanitakis 2008, p. 301). This challenge included fostering an ‘[…] environment that supports an equitable, inclusive and participatory process’ (Nicholson 2008, p. 271). We were also conscious of the fact that participation ought to be a collaborative experience; a space for dialogic and dialectic engagement. The discourses of participatory development pertaining to disability indicate that the tensions and fractures relating to bodily and socially induced or socially constructed difference may be negotiated through three strategies (Barak 2013). These are as follows: firstly facilitators, civil society organisations (CSOs), human rights activists and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) working with PWD have to create space for open discussion on the material and social realities facing (young) disabled people. Secondly, there is a need to strike a balance between frankness on the one hand, and tolerance and sensitivity on the other. Thirdly, the participatory theatre context should be deliberately structured to deepen the critical consciousness of (young) participants regarding social oppression in general, and body politics in particular. The material body is a critical aspect in both theatre and disability politics because in both instances, the body is central to participation as it is simultaneously a site of oppression for those living with disabilities. In view of this, in the next section we focus on how we attempted to use the rehearsal processes for The White Man from Buhera and Visionaries to deepen critical consciousness among SWD with a specific purpose to politicise and celebrate bodily difference.

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Creating Critical Consciousness via the Rehearsal Process It has been observed that both the processes of rehearsal and the rehearsal space are, in fact, an arena for the flexible making and re-making of the play because participatory theatre is by nature characterised by incompleteness (Nicholson 2008, p. 271). In the project that we analyse in this chapter, every rehearsal session began with theatre games and exercises that were physically adapted to suit issues of body politics and body varieties in light of the project’s engagement with a cross-section of SWD. After the games, participants engaged in focus group discussions on the work that was to be covered, followed by the ‘active’ rehearsal process of performing and fine-tuning pre-determined scenes—that is, selecting and structuring the various dramatic scenarios. In all this, we were always cognisant of the fact that the participatory rehearsal process is necessarily a politicised space, which is also implicated in power dynamics (Chivandikwa and Seda 2014; Cooke and Kothari 2001; Boal 1998). In this section, we argue that rehearsal processes involving young people with disabilities ought to be structured not only as an aesthetic space, but also as a site for social, cultural, political and emotional engagement that is characterised by festivity, celebration and the contestation of bodily-based hegemonies of identity where misconceptions are constantly challenged. In this regard, we ensured that the rehearsal process included all participants in such a way that they were involved in both the artistic and the technical issues of participatory play production such as acting, staging, design and directing, including basic discussions and debates on scene selection and structuring. All this was done so that the student participants could openly reflect on the relevant artistic implications in terms of their own (that is, SWD) disabilities and the realities confronting the participants and the communities that they represented. Each rehearsal session would begin and end with robust and animated discussions on topics such as the controversies surrounding the whole notion of beauty contests, the objectification of the female body (see Bartky 1990) and ‘natural’ or ‘constructed’ human bodies, as well as the supposed ‘cure’ or ‘treatment’ of disabled bodies through rehabilitation and institutionalisation. In all this, the participants seemed to enjoy sharing their everyday experiences and then fictionalising and weaving these into the scenes that were devised via the rehearsal process. As facilitators, we helped the student

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participants to act out their stories using the playback theatre technique. Playback theatre essentially involves storytellers, spectators, performers and a conductor who facilitates both the telling and the reception of the stories (Dennis 2004). In playback theatre, real life stories are narrated and played back by impromptu performers, where the teller of the story has to confirm the efficacy and authenticity of the playback performance (Barak 2013). During these rehearsals, the students were constantly encouraged to challenge the narrator on matters relating to disability politics as they were also encouraged to workshop the story/performance if it contained interesting issues on disability and body politics. We therefore encouraged all participants to tell their stories so that these different stories could be played back by the rest of the group in an open spirit of building and sharing. We recognise that apart from imparting acting and improvisational skills to SWD, the playback theatre sessions that we used during rehearsals (no matter how rudimentary), assisted in building relationships among the participants, as well as strengthening the internal cohesion of the group (see Dennis 2004). In the following paragraph, we focus on one rehearsal, in which Ma’Mlilo narrates her story. It was in one of our rehearsals in the Beit Hall Theatre on 8 April 2011 when Ma’Mlilo (not her real name) narrated a very poignant story based on a personal experience. This was during one of the group’s playback theatre sessions. According to Ma’Mlilo, one day in January 2011, she was travelling from Gweru to Harare when she and her twin brother, Mlilo (both of whom are people with albinism), boarded a bus and everyone on board looked on in shock and disbelief, surprised because they had mistaken Ma’Mlilo and her twin brother for a young ‘white’ girl who had elected to travel on public transport with her white boyfriend for the adventure of the experience. The on-board passengers’ surprise seemed to be built around the country’s colonial and postcolonial past in which the historically privileged white citizenry would not have ordinarily sunk so low as to travel on long-distance public bus transport, a mode of transportation normally associated with historically and economically disadvantaged blacks. The bus passengers were further surprised to discover that the young ‘white’ couple could speak the local language, Shona, very fluently. What annoyed Ma’Mlilo was that upon realising that she and her brother were not white after all, some of the passengers on the bus expressed surprise that PWA could be so ‘smart’ and presentable, complete with flawless skin and well-groomed hair, in addition to being intelligent enough to go to university. In the improvisation of Ma’Mlilo’s story, MaSibanda, a female student, played the bus

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conductor, while Moyo, a male theatre student, played Ma’Mlilo’s twin brother. Shumba, Mhofu and Samanyanga played the role of the most vocal and insensitive bus passengers. In playing Ma’Mlilo, Moyo projected a highly self-confident girl who carried herself with panache. Her response at being mistaken for white was a thunderous bark in gibberish. When asked how she really felt about being mistaken for a young white woman, Ma’Mlilo’s immediate response was: ‘Well, you know, I am not a white girl, I was never a white girl, I do not want to be a white girl, and I will never be a white girl’ (cited in Chivandikwa 2016, p. 194). This response ignited both applause and disbelief among members of the group and it became a talking point about just how tragic it was that some black people still felt that the white body was superior to the black body, and that white skin was inherently ‘nicer’ and more attractive than black skin. The discussion became even more heated when Mukanya, a male student in a wheelchair, expressed the opinion that perhaps Ma’Mlilo was mistaken not to feel proud after all about having been associated with the white race, given that the white body had become a symbol of beauty and good looks in the context of the country’s troubled colonial history. Mukanya also insisted that perhaps the passengers on the bus were actually celebrating Ma’Mlilo’s beauty and well-groomed appearance. In response, Ma’Mlilo did concede that she was, indeed, very particular about her looks because, in her words: I want people to look at me and say ‘that girl looks gorgeous…’, because people have this image of a person with albinism as a person whose skin looks worn-out because they are poor and cannot afford special skin lotions. (cited in Chivandikwa 2016, p. 194)

The subsequent discussion and improvisations that emerged from Ma’Mlilo’s narrative were such that hers ceased to be an individual’s story (see Salas 1993), as it became the property of the entire group who collectively owned the story, thereby fostering a strong sense of solidarity and cohesion among themselves (see Dennis 2008). Aspects of Ma’Mlilo’s story became a significant aspect of the larger play, The White Man from Buhera (see Chivandikwa 2016; Chivandikwa and Seda 2014). By collectively owning these individual stories, a strong sense of ensemble was engendered among the group, which enabled the group to explore the possibilities of their bodies and minds becoming sites for achieving a desirable and challenging identity (Barak 2013). Playback theatre also

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engendered intimacy and personal connection in a way which motivated the student participants to begin to devise scenarios and storylines that spoke to and interrogated body politics in an environment that was relatively free of prohibitive everyday taboos and social conventions. Playback theatre elicited interesting insights from the young participants in matters relating to body weight, skin type and general notions of bodily attraction. This enabled participating students to examine body politics and their personal identities more knowledgeably and critically. We argue, therefore, that the complexity of engagement with disability issues shows that the students had started to relate critically to the medical view of disabilities. They embraced as they simultaneously challenged the medical view in so far as in this view, the body with albinism (for some) is deemed to be ‘lacking’ in certain aspects of the ‘normal’ body. In other words, even as the students acknowledged that albinism was a form of impairment, they nevertheless contested the notion that albinism is a form of bodily degradation and an ‘abnormal condition’ in regard to which PWA must live in shame. The general agreement seemed to be that albinism is a unique, but legitimate, bodily identity with specific needs and challenges, like any other body. This discussion formed the central theme in The White Man from Buhera (Chivandikwa and Seda 2014). Through these discussions and activities, SWA and SWD began to feel more confident and comfortable speaking about their bodily identities and competences positively and with a certain defiance directed at prejudicial ableist discourses (see Chivandikwa and Seda 2014; Chinyowa and Chivandikwa 2017).

Negotiating Ableist Spectatorship In this section, we briefly discuss some of the challenges that the project faced in its efforts to champion disability discourses among ableist spectators. Our primary purpose is to demonstrate some of the prevalent ableist prejudices that are routinely held in society, which our kind of work must constantly prime itself to deal with. We also believe that these prejudices have the potential to complicate the desire to use applied theatre as a medium that can create a community of young disabled citizens who can fight for their citizenship rights, dignity and recognition. We begin by describing how the two plays were structured in anticipation of these negative ableist responses. In the beginning, we deliberately avoided the inclusion of images of pity and/or charity that could easily reinforce the pre-existing prejudices of an ableist spectatorship. Secondly, it

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was resolved that after each performance Shumba (a highly eloquent law student living with albinism) would give a short motivational speech on resilience and self-esteem for PWD. These two strategies went a long way to project a positive image of the participating students in particular, and the diverse communities that they represented in general. These efforts notwithstanding, it was clear that at nearly every performance, we encountered a combination of blatant and subtle forms of prejudice, which unfortunately had the potential to weaken the cohesion of the group and distort the intended objective of the two plays. For instance, during a post-performance discussion of The White Man from Buhera at Amakhosi Theatre in Bulawayo, several spectators voiced the opinion that PWA were not ‘disabled’ in ways which unfortunately seemed to single out PWA from cast members with other disabilities. One spectator was heard to say in the Shona language: ‘Imi maface mutoribho (You guys with albinism, are just fine […] There is nothing wrong with you. You are normal just like us)’. This blatantly prejudicial comment brought about evident discomfort among other SWD because it seemed to imply that in the final analysis, there was something ‘wrong’ with their bodies. Another complication is that in the first performance, some comments clearly celebrated acting by non-disabled students and SWA in comparison with that by SWD. For instance, at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, some spectators who watched Visionaries made negative comments, which seemed to imply that SWD or people with physical impairments could never be capable of playing certain roles. This had the potential to demoralise group participants with certain physical impairments in ways that could easily undermine self-confidence against ableist prejudices that the project had worked so hard to foster among all participants. Moreover, such opinions also seemed to reinforce the notion that in comparison to SWD, SWA did not belong to the community of PWD. More significantly, before this challenge was solved, such unguarded comments went a long way towards demonstrating to participating students the deep-seated prejudicial nature of ableist discourses with which PWD would have to grapple going forward. It was important for the devisors to listen to some ableist comments to find ways to challenge them. One way as already noted, was to give space to Shumba, who in his motivational speeches, would robustly challenge such prejudices by emphasising the beauty of bodily variety and unique talents of each person with a disability. The second strategy was to limit

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the roles of non-disabled students and give them minor roles so that they would not ‘steal the show’ as it were. In the end, these efforts went a long way in subverting and pre-empting ableist spectatorship.

Conclusion Ableist prejudice and discrimination towards people with disabilities is a scourge that continues to plague many different parts of the world (see Friedman and Owen 2017). In Africa alone, there have been several instances of horrific attacks (including murders) perpetrated against PWA where, as The Conversation notes: In the last decade close to 200 killings and more than 500 attacks on people with albinism have been reported in 27 sub-Saharan African countries, with Tanzania having the highest number of attacks, at more than 170. (2017)

It is in light of this enormous challenge, looked at in tandem with ongoing debates on whether or not albinism is a form of disability that our project in applied theatre attempted to address and rehabilitate society’s orientation towards issues of PWD. In order to achieve its primary objectives, the project brought together students with albinism to work together with other young non-disabled and disabled people to devise plays focusing on visual, physical and mental impairment. We believe that what we have discussed and analysed above is evidence that participatory theatre can be a strategic site that can be used to re-orientate and sensitise young people with albinism (and society at large) to shed some commonly held ableist prejudices. Arising out of this project, the student participants managed to establish a social club at the University of Zimbabwe campus, which adopted the name ‘Visionaries’ in light of the club’s noble ideals. One of the group’s notable achievements was to begin to give more visibility and recognition to disabled students and their activities, hopes and aspirations (see Chivandikwa 2016). We, therefore, argue that one of the major impacts of the participatory theatre project was to empower the students to foster self-affirmation and create a spirit of solidarity, self-confidence and collective strength among its disabled participants, even as it simultaneously challenged ableist prejudices among the rest of the University of Zimbabwe community and

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other publics who participated in or watched the plays (see Shakespeare 1996). Last, but not least, we also argue that civil society organisations, NGOs and human rights activists in Zimbabwe may need to consider using participatory theatre as a vehicle through which to integrate people living with albinism and people with disability into the wider community as they also seek to challenge crude and internalised ableist prejudices and perceptions that are predicated on the medical, charity and traditional models or approaches to disability.

References Arvanitakis, James. 2008. Staging Maralinga and looking for community (or why we must desire community before we can find it). Research in Drama Education 13 (3): 295–306. Barak, Adi. 2013. Playback theatre and narrative therapy: Introducing a new model. Drama Therapy 35 (2): 108–119. Bartky, Sandra L. 1990. Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge. Boal, Augusto. 1998. Legislative theatre: Using performance to make politics, trans. A. Jackson. New York: Routledge. Boal, Augusto. 2006. The aesthetics of the oppressed. London: Routledge. Chataika, Tsitsi. 2007. Inclusion of disabled students in higher education in Zimbabwe: From idealism to reality—A social ecosystem perspective. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis. University of Sheffield. Chinhanu, Chiedza A. 2013. Power differentials and selfhood in applied theatre: The case of The White Man from Buhera project. Unpublished BA Honours dissertation. Harare: University of Zimbabwe. Chinyowa, Kennedy C., and Nehemiah Chivandikwa. 2017. Subverting ableist discourses as an exercise in precarity: A Zimbabwean case study. Ride: Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (Themed Issue on: Precariousness and the Performance of Welfare), 50–61. Chivandikwa, Nehemiah. 2013. Participatory theatre for development and action research: Challenges, tensions and possibilities with reference to an HIV/AIDS and disability project. In Interrogating drama and theatre research and aesthetics within an interdisciplinary context of HIV/AIDS in Africa, ed. Hazel Barnes, 109–123. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Chivandikwa, Nehemiah. 2016. Engendering body-validating community participation in theatre for development: A reflexive investigation with special reference to selected disability projects in Zimbabwe. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis. Harare: University of Zimbabwe.

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Chivandikwa, Nehemiah, and Ngonidzashe Muwonwa. 2013. Forum theatre, disability and corporeality: A University of Zimbabwe action research project. Platform 7 (1): 55–66. Chivandikwa, Nehemiah, and Owen Seda. 2014. Disabled but beautiful and proudly resistant: Applied theatre for the disabled as minority discourse. In Discoursing minority: In-text and co-text, ed. Anisur Rahman, Supriya Agarwal, and Bhumika Sharma, 247–269. New Delhi: Rawat Publications. Cooke, Bill, and Uma Kothari (eds.). 2001. Participation: The new tyranny?. London: Zed Books. Dennis, Rea. 2004. Public performance, personal story: A study of playback theatre. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis. Griffith University. Dennis, Rea. 2008. Refugee performance: Aesthetic representation and accountability in playback theatre. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 13 (2): 211–215. Friedman, Carli, and Aleska L. Owen. 2017. Defining disability: Understandings of attitudes towards ableism and disability. Disability Quarterly Studies: The First Journal in the Field of Disability Studies 37: 1. http://dx.doi.org/10. 18061/dsq.v37i1.5061. Hall, Barbara, et al. 2011. Looking back, moving forward. Ontario Human Rights Commission Annual Report 2010–2011. Ontario: OHRC. Lawson, John. 2001. Disability as a cultural identity. International Studies in Sociology of Education 11 (3): 203–221. Masendeke, Linda. 2012. Theatre for development, disability and empowerment: A case of visionaries. Unpublished BA honours dissertation. Harare: University of Zimbabwe. Nicholson, Helen. 2008. Ideals of community. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 13 (3): 271–273. Salas, Jo. 1993. Improvising real life: Personal story in playback theatre. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. Shakespeare, Tom. 1996. Disability, identity and difference. In Exploring the divide, ed. Colin Barnes and Geoff Mercer, 94–113. Leeds: Disability Press. Theconversation.com//the-trade-in-body-parts-of-people-with-albinism-is-dri ven-by-myth-and-international-inaction-84135. Accessed 29 Apr 2018.

CHAPTER 9

Popular Theatre as a Struggle for Identity and Representation in Matabeleland: 1980 to the Present Mandlenkosi Mpofu, Cletus Moyo, and Nkululeko Sibanda

Introduction Popular theatre in the form of plays, songs, poetry and dance has played a crucial role in giving the people of Matabeleland a voice in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. People in the region historically, have perceived themselves to be marginalised and suppressed by the status quo. These feelings have been deep-rooted and are reflected in subaltern forms of art and popular expression. Experiences such as the

M. Mpofu (B) · C. Moyo Lupane State University, Lupane, Zimbabwe N. Sibanda School of Arts, Drama, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_9

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Gukurahundi 1 genocide and general repression in the region during the first seven years of independence also helped Matabeleland create a unique identity in Zimbabwe, based on expressions of exclusion and marginalisation. Such expressions are identifiable in the theatre that emerged mainly in the mid-1980s, with groups such as the Cont Mhlanga-led Amakhosi Theatre Productions (hereafter ‘ATP’). In this chapter, we argue that the people from Matabeleland used popular theatre as a tool for protest against perceived marginalisation and as a resistance tool against the hegemonic tendencies of those in power. Popular theatre has come across as a significant site of struggle. In this way, theatre and other forms of artistic expressions became central to counter-hegemonic struggles by and in Matabeleland, which was critical to mediating experiences in the newly independent state. At the same time, the state has also appropriated theatre and other forms of art to propagate ideologies that promote the interests of the establishment. Popular culture, therefore, cannot be seen only as the space where subaltern voices find expression, but rather as a site of contestation between the state and local communities. An analysis of selected cases of theatrical works from Matabeleland shows that theatre has not only been a source of pleasure, but it has provided a voice and a space of struggle for identity and representation. This argument is in line with Nicholas Wolterstorff’s notion that ‘works of art are instruments and objects of action’ (1980, p. 240), and that art is actually a way of acting in the world. Wolterstorff’s characterisation of works of art finds resonance in Karin Barber’s (1997) conceptualisation of popular art. Barber observes that popular art must speak to the concerns and struggles of the people who create it and consume it, representing that part of the mind that refuses to capitulate. We contend, therefore, that the people of Matabeleland have used art to lobby for their representation in the national space, particularly in enjoying the economic fruits of independence and also to shape and project their identity. We conclude that popular theatre has helped amplify voices from Matabeleland through 1 Gukurahundi (recognised as a genocide by the UN affiliated Genocide Watch) refers to the massacre of predominantly Ndebele-speaking supporters of Joshua Nkomo’s (one of the leaders of the liberation movements in Zimbabwe) PF-ZAPU from early 1983 to 1987 by a North Korean-trained crack army unit, the Fifth Brigade, code-named the Gukurahundi. According to many authoritative estimates (CCJP 1997), over 10,000 people died in what is now recognised as an ethnic cleansing campaign to decimate mainly Ndebele-speaking PF-ZAPU supporters. Because of failure to find a lasting resolution, this episode remains a sore spot in Zimbabwe’s history.

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giving space for the articulation of issues and concerns that are pertinent to the region and playing an important role in framing national issues in the context of the region. We consider popular theatre from Tim Prentki and Jan Selman’s (2000, p. 8) perspective, who frame it as a ‘process of theatre which deeply involves specific communities in identifying issues of concern, analysing current conditions and causes of a situation, identifying points of change and analysing how change could happen and/or contributing to the actions implied’. In other words, popular theatre can be best thought of as a normative discursive practice that engages in dialogues through theatrical practices. We explore how people from Matabeleland constantly negotiated and renegotiated their position, hegemony, domination and identity in the larger Zimbabwean societal context through theatre productions. As Nkululeko Sibanda (2017) notes, these negotiations, which are moderated by the materiality of the community, result in an embodied and collaborative development process. We extend Sibanda’s argument by observing how the Matabeleland materiality provided content and creative inspiration for community-based theatre organisations such as ATP. While this chapter focuses specifically on selected ATP plays, we will refer to other productions from different theatre and artistic groups, in order to augment our argument. The selected plays are centrally situated in the contexts of the people from Matabeleland, in line with Barber’s (1997) view that popular art must express the experiences of people who create it as well as its audiences. The plays used in this chapter are ATP’s Nansi le Ndoda (1985) (There Goes that Man!), Workshop Negative (1986) and Dabulap! (1992) (Border Jumper!). Nansi le Ndoda and Workshop Negative were produced during the first decade of independence. During this period, the new political establishment censored and banned plays that pointed to the pitfalls of the nationalist government (Ravengai 2015). The first decade of Zimbabwean independence was also a period of nation and identity building. In terms of theatre and performance, community-based groups were in the process of developing their own aesthetic and presentational style suitable for the township narratives. In this search for new performance and content narratives, Matabeleland community-based theatre groups went on a collision course with the status quo as they challenged the nationalist leadership to do right by the community. It is during this time that ATP produced Nansi Le

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Ndoda and Workshop Negative to express the deep-seated disappointment and disillusionment engulfing Matabeleland post-independence. It is also during this period that the Gukurahundi campaign, which resulted in mass killings and infrastructure destruction (see CCJP 1997) took place. Dabulap! belongs to the 1990s period and continues the resistance and struggle for identity and representation alongside other artistic works from Matabeleland. This period is largely characterised by the government’s controversial Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), which forced droves of retrenched2 young people across the borders into South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.3 Although ESAP was a national programme, there was a feeling that its impact was more devastating in Matabeleland as many companies closed and relocated to Harare, the capital city.4 Dabulap! therefore, explores the challenges, dangers and frustrations of young people who are forced by the economic situation in Zimbabwe to cross the border into South Africa illegally in search of better opportunities. Furthermore, Dabulap! interrogates the fluidity of identity and survival strategies of these young Ndebele men in Johannesburg. We argue that these selected plays demonstrate that theatre was used as a resistance mechanism to fight for space and identity in Matabeleland.

Popular Art and Hegemonic Struggles in Matabeleland Popular art can be used as an instrument of repression and censorship, as Reuben Chirambo’s (2006) study of Kamuzu Banda’s regime in Malawi illustrates. The concept of hegemony as propounded by Antonio Gramsci suggests a situation in which the general population gives spontaneous 2 The most enduring aspect of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme in Zimbabwe which was launched in 1991 was the severe austerity measures intended to reduce government expenditure and to increase productivity. As part of the cost-cutting measures many workers were laid off in both the public and the private sectors, which led to a spike in unemployment. 3 ESAP was an International Monetary Fund and World Bank-backed economic programme for African countries. Far from delivering the intended economic growth, it led to massive company closures, retrenchment and other problems such as housing and transport crises. For a more complete understanding of ESAP in Zimbabwe, Alois Mlambo’s book The Economic Structural Adjustment Programme is recommended. 4 Many songs by popular Ndebele singer/song writer Lovemore Majaivana, for instance, express these sentiments.

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consent to the leadership and general direction on social life offered by the dominant class (see Femia 1981). To achieve such dominance, ruling classes either employ the coercive force of the state security apparatus to discipline subordinate groups into line (the Gukurahundi campaign comes to mind here) or provide their intellectual and social leadership in covert ways using social and cultural institutions such as churches, schools and cultural institutions (see Tollefson 1991; Laclau and Mouffe 1985). This dominance is, however, never complete as the subordinate groups use the same institutions to fight back and resist their domination. Gramsci, linking back to Hegel, employed the concept of civil society to explain how hegemony operates; he saw civil society as a symbolic social space in which social and cultural groups tussled with the state for hegemonic dominance (Gramsci 1971). During the first decade of independence in Zimbabwe the new ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANUPF), provided unquestionable political, social and moral leadership for the majority of Zimbabweans (see Morrison and Love 1996), to the extent that most people imbibed and defended its positions and moral authority on the economy, politics and (later on) community integration such as the 1987 Unity Accord with the Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (PF-ZAPU). ZANU-PF also offered political and ideological leadership generally accepted across the country except for Matabeleland, where the opposition PF-ZAPU was dominant. This created the political climate that culminated in the Gukurahundi genocide, as the ruling party sought to establish complete dominance in the country. Under this environment, the political climate was very tense in Matabeleland, especially with the Fifth Brigade at the height of their activities. Noticeably, theatre and other forms of popular art were quite subdued in the region during this early independence period; public dissent against ZANU-PF became difficult and even dangerous. Furthermore, the new government quickly asserted complete control over the state broadcaster and over Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited, the biggest print media chain established after the acquisition of Argus shares from the Rhodesia Printing and Publishing group (see Saunders 1991; Kupe 1997). At the same time, ZANU-PF’s ideology of one-party-state saw the ruling party extend its tentacles to co-opt many potential sources of dissent, such as the newly formed labour organisation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which quickly became an extension of the ruling party. Other civil society groups were also similarly emasculated. The only

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meaningful opposition party in the country, PF-ZAPU, was rendered ineffective through arbitrary arrests of its leaders and many forms of harassment of its support base using the Fifth Brigade and ruling party militia. Amakhosi Theatre Productions, established in 1981 (Dube 1992) is a definitive example of the popular cultural groups that emerged from Matabeleland under this context. Formed in 1979 as the Dragons Karate Club (Dube 1992), which provided recreation and training for young people in Makokoba and Mzilikazi, the group became an important avenue for critical engagements with the community and government during the transition into independent Zimbabwe. These critical theatrical and dialogical engagements laid the foundation for the role played by civil society organisations from the late 1980s onwards. ATP generally produces two genres of work: political satires and social plays. Political satires are more inclined to give general commentary and warning about society’s political ills (Lazaro 2001, p. 571). One example of ATP’s political satires, Workshop Negative (1986), overtly interrogates and caricatures Zimbabwean politics through performance as a means of engaging government and/or exposing politicians. The play attempts to situate its satirical subjects (Zimbabweans) within a particular time (post-independence Zimbabwe) and place (Zimbabwe) and within identifiable ideologies (socialism and capitalism). As a political satire, the play addresses challenges of corruption, nepotism and cronyism and their effects on the Zimbabwean social fabric. This critical engagement with leadership and community, which raised uncomfortable questions about the status quo, started with Diamond Warriors I and II (1981). According to Cont Mhlanga, these plays foretold the current impasse and exploitation of local communities happening at Chiadzwa diamond mining sites in Manicaland (Mhlanga 2015a). In the plays, the protagonist, who is a war veteran, gathers groups of young orphans whose parents died in the recently ended liberation war and asks society to help them obtain birth certificates, without which it is impossible to do anything including attending school in Zimbabwe. The play raises the issue of decentralisation, which has continued to be a controversial issue in Zimbabwean politics to this date. Parents are not able to obtain birth certificates for their children because to do so they have to travel to the capital city, Harare. As such, the children cannot benefit from the development programmes that are rolled out in their communities (ironically part of the ‘fruits’ of independence for which

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their parents sacrificed their lives) because they do not appear in the government’s database. In several subsequent plays such as Nansi Le Ndoda (1985), Workshop Negative (1986), and Dabulap! (1992), ATP continued to bemoan the manner in which, after independence, Harare was advancing disproportionally to other parts of the country. A common name for Harare among the Ndebele is ‘Bambazonke’ (the place that grabs everything/all the resources). In Nansi Le Ndoda, ATP intensified its criticism of the Zimbabwean state, turning focus on the returning heroes’ failure to live up to the ideals of the liberation struggle. Shashi, a former liberation fighter, is now a corrupt big-shot businessman who manipulates his position to employ unqualified relatives and to solicit for sex, at the same time creating misery for qualified young Zimbabweans whom he denies employment opportunities. All of these plays explored identity, nationality and racial issues broadly within the socialist-capitalist ideological continuum in post-independence Zimbabwe. As technocrats and liberation fighters returned to Zimbabwe in the 1980s, the fundamental ideological shifts from ‘day-time socialism to night-time capitalism’ (Mhlanga 1992) frustrated the general populace, which expected equitable and transparent distribution of resources and opportunities. These frustrations were manifest in the crevices of identity, race and nationality as the ‘new’ post-liberation Zimbabwe sought to assert and identify itself as a nation. Beyond creating critically engaging works, ATP challenged dominant structures of authority within the performance industry. During the colonial era, community spaces built to house cultural activities by young people were closed off and handed over to burial societies, women’s cooperatives and political parties at regular intervals. In 1983, ATP teamed up with Barry Daka (a prominent football personality in Bulawayo) and successfully negotiated with the Bulawayo City Council to use Stanley Hall and Square for rehearsals and performances (Sibanda 2017). The struggle to win back spaces of performance inspired other communitybased theatre groups to convert spaces such as community halls, disused beer halls and church halls into places of rehearsal and performance. This act of liberation was fundamental in the development of an Amakhosi Theatre Productions aesthetic, which defined Makokoba and Bulawayo performatively. Caleb Dube (1992) observes that after the birth of ATP, a number of community-based theatre groups emerged in Bulawayo specifically

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and Zimbabwe generally.5 Although the majority of these groups have become dysfunctional and not much is known or written about their theatrical works, it is important to note that they extended the fight for recognition and inclusion of Matabeleland and the Ndebele into the structure defining Zimbabwe. On another level, the demise of most of these groups can be linked to tight government control, through funding, political and legislative control, of the arts sector. Samuel Ravengai (2015, pp. 237–238) points out that: after independence from Britain in 1980, Zimbabwe used traditional culture as justification for political control of theatre. Where legislative control could not fully achieve the desired affects, the state used political control where its institutions were manipulated as sets of devices to control, manage, direct, and regulate the content, ideology, and style of theatre.

In the crevices of these political and legislative control mechanisms, Zimbabweans adopted popular cultural forms to artistically expose, challenge and dialogue with government, community and themselves. One of the most common platforms for artistic dissent in post-independence Matabeleland emerged in the popular songs sung in stadia during football matches. These popular songs fed into the identity/nationality debate as they distinctly set out Highlanders Football Club as a club for the Ndebele, therefore PF-ZAPU, and Dynamos Football Club/CAPS United Football Club as clubs for the Shona, thus ZANU-PF. The regional dichotomy of disproportionate distribution of resources, developmental programming and leadership representation is thus challenged and extended through these popular songs. These songs, especially at Barbourfields, which in most instances were theatrically performed, invoked and appealed to a past of glorious Ndebele warfare and were therefore an expression of nostalgia and even a form of escapism. More 5 These groups included among others: Young Actors and Writers Union, Bulawayo United Writers Club, Vumani Sketch Group, Vultures Drama Group, Progress Culture Centre, Amasilo Drama Club, Young Warriors, Tose-Sonke, Iluba Elimnyama, Isizwe SikaMthwakazi Actors and Singers, AmaSwazi Performing Arts, Assegai Theatre Arts, Royal Warriors, Drama Force, Core Force, Bazooka, Strong Wave, Kuwirirana, Bulawayo East and West Writers and Actors, Tropical S, Phakama and many others (Dube 1992, p. 45).

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than just taunt or defy the ruling party or alleged Shona-speaking enemies, however, these songs also became important rituals to galvanise support for anti-ZANU-PF programmes and to express solidarity with the ordinary person. One of the most popular songs at Highlanders Football Club matches in the 1980s was a traditional composition with war cries and their connotations. The song goes as follows: Ng’lamlela Ng’lamlela, Ng’lamlela Ng’lamlela nampa’bafo bengibulala Ng’lamlela bo! Ng’lamlela nampa’bafo bengibulala Basemajele! Ng’lamlela Ng’lamlela bo! Ng’lamlela nampa’bafo bengibulala

Help me! Oh help me! Help me from enemies, they are killing me! Oh help! Help me from enemies, they are killing me! They are in jail Help me! Oh help me! Help me from enemies, they are killing me!

This song, when read in the context of the political upheavals of the 1980s, can be seen as a cry by the people of Matabeleland for the onslaught on its people to stop. This could be in reference to Gukurahundi and the arrests of PF-ZAPU leaders such as Lookout Masuku, which the people of Matabeleland saw as unjust. At the height of Gukurahundi, singing the original song in the open was unheard of; therefore, crowds in football matches and theatre practitioners employed thin disguises. Such use of popular culture was very common in other African countries under repressive regimes, such as Malawi, where musicians and other groups employed alternative strategies such as ambiguity and innuendo in order to circumvent strict censorship laws and intimidation (Chirambo 2006, p. 118).

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The Politics of Popular Culture Management in Zimbabwe: The Emergence of New, Dominant Structures As a strategy to counter the growing popular cultural dissent in postindependence Zimbabwe, the government set up pro-state intellectuals to run popular cultural programmes promoting its hegemonic discourses. In 1983, it hired Ngugi wa Mirii, exiled from Kenya after a clampdown by the government on Kamiriithu Community Theatre project, to run a pro-poor and indigenous popular education programme, Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP), anchored on indigenous performing forms (Ravengai 2015; Sibanda 2017). At the University of Zimbabwe, wa Mirii found a willing partner in Robert McLaren, also exiled from South Africa. Stephen Chifunyise, then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture ably supported these two institutions. Together, these three institutions developed, introduced and consolidated a performance style anchored on indigenous arts and ideologically influenced by the government’s socialist ideology (Sibanda 2017). Robert McLaren observes that the university approach was to develop a drama programme which would enable the University of Zimbabwe to realise its role as a ‘people’s university’ and keep up with the process of ‘democratization, Zimbabweanization, Africanization and socialist transformation’ (1993, p. 36) of the post-independence era. This practical drama programme, through performances and community outreach, was meant to transform the University of Zimbabwe into a ‘people’s university’, actively participating in the development of the nation and fostering a symbiotic relationship with the community (McLaren 1993). This symbiotic relationship, according to McLaren (1993), was meant to eschew the elitism of ‘ivory tower’ isolation and encourage a productive interaction between the University and the community at large. However, we note that while in any democracy it is fundamentally important for universities to be connected and grounded in their communities, in this instance the government was exploiting and using popular art forms to consolidate its socialist ideologies under the auspices of an ‘open university door policy’. Wa Mirii set up the Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatre (ZACT) as a counter-strategy to the colonial residual National

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Theatre Organisation (NTO), which dominated the industry.6 ZACT emerged as a strategy to consolidate the graduates of the ZIMFEP programme into a socialist-inspired theatre movement that would challenge the dominance of NTO from the grassroots. With the support of the new dominant structures of authority, ZACT was set in motion as an indigenous social and cultural movement endowed with ‘resources and political leverage’ (Radcliffe 2011, p. 134) to broaden the bilingual intercultural education and socialist programme (Kerr and Chifunyise 2004; McLaren 1993). However, the challenge with these institutions was that they sought to create a homogeneous African performance style that did not subscribe to the popular theatre conceptualisation framework (see Prentki and Selman 2000; Mda 1993; Kamlongera 1989). Thus, when ATP and Rooftop Promotions refused to switch allegiance (from NTO to ZACT), McLaren (UZ), wa Mirii (ZACT) and Chifunyise (through the Ministry of Education) sought to discredit their work. These three argued that ATP’s Workshop Negative was a misrepresentation of the post-independent socio-political and economic landscape (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988). Chifunyise and Kavanagh (1988, p. 14) sarcastically referred to the play as a ‘negative workshop’ sponsored by the British Council, Anglo-American, commercial farmers and urban intellectuals, to the detriment of the country. These organisations and groups were considered by Chifunyise, McLaren and wa Mirii to be working against the government’s socialist programmes. Ironically, Workshop Negative (1986) was about exposing ‘night-time’ imperialists and capitalists who masqueraded as ‘day-time’ socialists (Mhlanga 1992). The direct indictment of Workshop Negative as a play for imperialists, industrialists and intellectuals positioned ATP as an enemy of the Zimbabwean socialist state. In this light, any place of performance that ATP used for Workshop Negative performances was transformed into a political and ideological space (Sibanda 2017). Ironically, McLaren, wa Mirii and Chifunyise were using popular indigenous art forms such as music, song, ritual and dance as deconstructive mechanisms of writing and performing local stories in residual colonial spaces such as the University of Zimbabwe’s Alfred Beit Hall, Luveve Beit Hall and Stoddart Hall. McLaren used the auditorium in 6 It is important to note that ATP was a member of the NTO. The other notable theatre organisation that had NTO membership was Harare-based Rooftop Players and Promotions, now Rooftop Promotions.

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the Alfred Beit Hall as a stage and auditorium in his productions uNosilimela (1984), Mavambo: The First Steps (1986) and Katshaa! The Sound of an AK (1988) by converting the raised stage into an auditorium. In so doing, he used the same strategies of popular spatial reconfiguration and similar spatial solutions that ATP deployed at Stanley Hall. This condescending relationship between NTO-affiliated community theatre groups with the state and academy is a sign of an emerging influence of the politics of cultural practice in Zimbabwe. In one sense, it could be attributed to jealousy by the government and academy gatekeepers while on the other, it could represent the government’s attempts to control and micro-manage the arts in the same manner as the colonial government. Such jealousy is attributed to competitive tendencies by government and academy gatekeepers of ATP in shaping the performance narrative for alternative theatre practice. When alternative community-based groups such as ATP became trendsetters as far as popular performance was concerned, government gatekeepers initiated a campaign to discredit their work, as well as their methods and styles of performance preparation (Mhlanga 2015a). The persecution of Amakhosi Theatre Productions by McLaren, wa Mirii and Chifunyise in the late 1980s and early 1990s is, in our view, a perpetuation of the colonialist ideology of ‘divide and rule’. Their actions worked against the Zimbabwean government’s policy of racial and political integration. By forcing ATP to denounce their NTO membership, the government and academy were suppressing ‘indigenous cartography, geographical knowledge and forms of representing social relations with [political and epistemological] territory’ (Mignolo 1992, p. 808). We view this discriminatory act by these gatekeepers as a strategy to consolidate power in order to maintain control over the leadership, development and nurturing of post-independence Zimbabwean alternative theatre practice. Furthermore, we observe that this act of forcing ATP to choose sides is related to the process of determining and defining the identity of the organisation, Makokoba and people from Matabeleland. It also reflected the gatekeepers’ understanding of the capacity of arts and culture to challenge or to consolidate and reinforce the ‘new’ status quo. The approach adopted by McLaren, Chifunyise and wa Mirii is similar to ZANU-PF’s strategic handling of Zimbabwe’s political history. In the early 2000s, scholars such as Terence Ranger (2004) identified the rise of what they called ‘patriotic history’ (see also Tendi 2010). In journalism, this kind of history ‘sought to redefine everything and make the views of

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the ruling party pervasive’ as well as to ‘ideologically claw back the interpretation of the Zimbabwean story’ (Mpofu 2015). In post-independence Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF’s political and ideological narrative is presented as synonymous with the history of the nation, while other versions that acknowledge players such as PF-ZAPU are suppressed (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007; Ravengai 2010). This meant that within the cultural industry, the government’s narrative and position defined Zimbabweans and Zimbabweanness. Theatre organisations and performance spaces that housed critical works which questioned ZANU-PF’s history and political ideology were represented according to the schema of exclusion as subversive agents (Ravengai 2010). ATP’s membership with the NTO positioned them as rebels. The organisation’s radical theatre narrative and practice which challenged the sugar-coated socialist position was received with disdain and suppressed by the government with support from academia.

Socio-Political Commentary Through Theatrical Works As we argue above, theatre from Matabeleland has traditionally suffered the dual burden of addressing issues that affect independent Zimbabwe as a nation, and issues concerning the plight of Matabeleland as a region within the same nation. In this regard, many works from Matabeleland have addressed issues of economic and social transformation, poverty in the new nation and neo-colonialism. In many cases ‘national’ issues are intertwined with issues that appeal specifically to the region. This can be seen in Workshop Negative (1986) which engages the Zimbabwean cultural polyethnic and polylingual controversy, politics and leadership in a manner that had not been experienced before (Kaarsholm 1995, p. 272). The play is characterised by Owen Seda (2004, p. 142) as ‘an honest assessment of [newly] independent Zimbabwe’s varied and contentious attitudes towards racial integration and socialist transformation’. Mhlanga notes that Workshop Negative is a call to the leadership to return to the core values that anchored the liberation struggle and community development (Mhlanga 2015b). In the grand scheme of politics in Matabeleland, Workshop Negative was seen as an indictment of the failure of government in handling the transition both economically and socially. The dilapidating workshop is a microcosm of the macrocosm. Today, industries have collapsed, and businesses since 2000 have been closing and relocating to Harare owing to

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lack of government support and a ‘conducive’ environment (see Mbira 2015). It is our view that ATP foretold this de-industrialisation through Workshop Negative, which exposed the truant tendencies by the status quo concerning development and sustainable management of businesses in the early postliberation period. The dilapidated workshop aesthetically represented on one level the debilitating state of economic structures inherited from the colonial regime. On another level, it represented the damage that cronyism, tribalism and racism was inflicting on the social fabric of the emerging nation. The candid approach adopted by ATP in Workshop Negative generated inspiration and motivation for social change at the University of Zimbabwe in 1986. When ATP were invited to perform at the University of Zimbabwe, a standoff ensued between student leaders who supported ATP’s narrative and academia, who challenged the organisation’s representation of race relations, and the economic landscape. After the performance of Workshop Negative at the university campus, students rioted, demanding responsible leadership and a change in the status quo (Chifunyise and Kavanagh 1988). To inspire this collective social action, ATP recognised the ‘creative potentials of the people, their worldview, cultural background, and experiences, and the necessity to engage them in active participation to chart the course of their collective destiny’ (Chukwu-Okoronkwo 2012, p. 692) in creating Workshop Negative. The sets and costumes for Workshop Negative capture a postliberation capitalist-communalist continuum as observed by Njoh (2007), which characterised new post-independent states such as Zimbabwe. In this case, colonial towns such as Bulawayo became ‘continuously structured entities [for colonialists] which allowed non-whites in only as strangers or visitors’ (Njoh 2007, p. 146). This continuum is collapsed in space and time through its depiction on stage in Workshop Negative. The new government did not create space for the emergence of new identities in the newly independent state; rather, it used the adapted colonial lens to characterise the Ndebele. Using theatre and other forms of art, groups like ATP had to negotiate both for space and new identities, especially after the experience of Gukurahundi. Workshop Negative was the first community theatre production to be refused a licence by the Zimbabwean government to undertake international tours to America and Europe (Sibanda 2017). The ban represented the strongest statement by the government that it would not tolerate competing narratives about the new nation, especially to the outside

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world (Mhlanga 2015a). ATP also tried to tour Workshop Negative to South Africa and Botswana but could not because they did not have the blessing of the government (Kaarsholm 1990, p. 273). Preben Kaarsholm (1990) observes that the controversial banning of the play had farreaching implications on artistic freedom as well as freedom of expression. It also caused a deep sense of unease within the arts community. On another level it gave the new government an insight into managing, repressing and banning popular artistic expressions if they were not in support of the status quo. This repression of artistic expressions became more pronounced at the turn of the millennium, with Raisedon Baya and Leonard Matsa’s Super Patriots and Morons (2003) and Mhlanga’s The Good President (2007) banned or disrupted and actors thrown into jail. Another ATP play, Dabulap! (Border Jumper!) (1992), is a reflection of the situation that obtained in Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi era. In the play, young men are forced by lack of employment as a result of factory and company closures to dabulap (meaning ‘trek’) to the City of Gold—Johannesburg. On a literary level, the term dabulap means to ‘double-up’ or illegally cross the border. It was a common term among the people of Matabeleland during the 1990s as many people flocked to South Africa to work in the mines, gaining access through undesignated entry points. In the play, two young men on a trek down south pass through streets which are populated by informal traders selling various fruits. As they walk through the streets, the young men rob, steal and violently intimidate the informal traders, who voice their unhappiness about losing their wares. These scenarios in Dabulap! present Bulawayo and Matabeleland in economic distress which manifests in a high number of able-bodied people unlawfully crossing borders into South Africa and Botswana. It is this long history of regional economic distress coupled with government’s failure to commit resources to rebuilding infrastructure destroyed during the Gukurahundi period that provides material for popular plays such as Dabulap! and Workshop Negative. Dabulap!’s two young men wear red berets as they violently intimidate the informal traders with okapis (dangerous knives that are banned in Zimbabwe). In Matabeleland, the red berets invoke the painful dark past of the Gukurahundi

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era.7 As such, the use of red berets by characters that abuse and violently intimidate informal traders, most of whom are women, is a reminder of the status quo that the people of Matabeleland have not forgotten. The Gukurahundi scenario is also echoed in Bhekumusa Moyo’s play 1983: Years Before and After. At the same time it is noteworthy to point out that the dilemma of the jobless young people of Matabeleland depicted in Dabulap! is revisited in Thabani Moyo’s The Civil Servant (2013), though it now comes with a broader outlook, demonstrating that this issue has not remained only a Matabeleland issue, but has grown to become a national concern as the unemployment rate continues to increase in the country.

Beyond Amakhosi Theatre Production: The Growth of Alternative Theatre in Zimbabwe In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of energetic, daring and dynamic young theatre practitioners emerged in Zimbabwe candidly and explicitly challenging the hegemonic hold to power by ZANU-PF. The focus shifted from a regional to a national outlook as actors, musicians and poets all took turns to criticise and speak truth to power. The site of critical engagement and resistance shifted from Stanley Hall and the Amakhosi Cultural Centre to the streets, community centres, theatres, parks and community halls. The decentralisation of the cultural resistance movement to localities of theatre practitioners allowed the use of different types of popular forms and genres in the comfort of communities. Rooftop Promotions’ Theatre-in-the-Park emerged as the major site on which the cultural resistance movement against economic upheavals, underdevelopment and authoritarianism emerged in the new millennium. While Thomas Mapfumo belted out Disaster (2000) on the theatre platform, security agents were arresting and banning (through the Censorship Board) works that critiqued government’s controversial policies and mismanagement. One such play was Raisedon Baya and Leonard Matsa’s Super Patriots and Morons (2003). The story revolves around the despotic Super Patriot, president and leader of the ruling party and his side-kick

7 The Fifth Brigade who carried out Operation Gukurahundi wore red berets as part of their regalia. These hats are, even now, frightening to many people in the south-western regions of Zimbabwe.

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Moron, who is tasked with gathering intelligence about what people think and say about the president. Another interesting play in this category is Baya’s Tomorrow’s People (2009). This play (which was also performed during the early 2000s by ATP) is about students of drama who refuse to act Shakespeare and choose rather to do a political satire that is relevant to the Zimbabwean situation. This political satire becomes a ‘play within a play’ in this play, which mirrors the enmity and animosity between the ruling party and the opposition party. The play also dwells on hatred between the Ndebele and Shona, seen in the way in which the parents of the main characters refuse inter-ethnic marriage for their children. One of the important themes in Tomorrow’s People is neo-colonialism. Years after independence, schoolchildren are still forced to read Shakespeare as opposed to their own plays by their own playwrights. The play contests the residues of colonialism in the form of a neo-colonial curriculum that is out of touch with the reality in Zimbabwe. It further interrogates the lack of freedom of expression in Zimbabwe as any dissenting voices are censored. Also, it speaks to the political issues of the day as it addresses the tension that existed between the ruling party and the opposition, especially during the year 2000 and after. Coincidentally, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was being seen as a viable alternative party, especially in Matabeleland, where many people were dissatisfied with a ruling party that had shown little interest in developing the region. A similar play is The Good President, which was written by Cont Mhlanga and produced by Rooftop Promotions in 2007. Like Tomorrow’s People, this play addresses both the intensifying crisis in Zimbabwe and issues concerning the plight of the Ndebele of Matabeleland. The play castigates the country’s leadership and questions its credibility to continue to lead through raising issues such as Gukurahundi and presenting them to the audience to consider in evaluating the country’s leadership.

Theatre, Music and the Post-independence Zimbabwean Economic Situation Popular theatre and popular music have had a close resemblance in Matabeleland in terms of their themes and in the way in which they voice the views of the subaltern. Songs that speak of the economic hardships experienced in the region following ESAP illustrate this. One of

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the popular songs in this protest genre is Umoya Wami (My Troubled Soul/Spirit) by Lovemore Majaivana, released in the early 1990s when ESAP began to bite. In this song, Majaivana laments the economic hardships in Bulawayo, which have left the city literally unliveable. These hardships include massive company closures and retrenchments which left thousands unemployed. Thousands of people are without homes as the city struggles to reduce the growing number of people on its housing list. This is captured in the chant ‘ngabe bona basakhel’ama-factory (…) ngabe ubaba abamgumulanga…ngabe basakhel’ izindlu…ngabe thina siyabuyela…koNtuthu Ziyathunqa’, which can be loosely translated as ‘If only they could build factories for us […] if only they had not retrenched my father […] if only they could build us houses […] we would go back to Bulawayo’. Majaivana’s voice captures many troubled spirits from the land, who were pushed out of Bulawayo by the harsh socio-economic conditions to seek a living in their rural homes, or in some cases even trek to Johannesburg in search of better employment opportunities. In 2001, The Cool Crooners, a popular music group from Bulawayo, released a song entitled Bhulugwe Lami (My Trousers). The song is a lamentation of the dire economic situation which has rendered people paupers because they cannot afford to buy decent clothes, accommodation and food. The singers further wail over the lack of employment opportunities in Bulawayo. Part of the lyrics read: ‘ibhulugwe lami seligcwel’izigamba. […] Imisebenzi ayitholakali’ (My pants are patched up. […] Employment is difficult to come by). This mirrors the sorry condition of an urban man whose hopes are crushed due to joblessness. This song captures the grim reality in Bulawayo initially presented in Workshop Negative and Dabulap!, thereby keeping alive a rich culture of employing popular culture to highlight political and socio-economic conditions. While the Cool Crooners lamented the economic situation in Bulawayo, Thomas Mapfumo took a confrontational route through his song Disaster (2000). This song represented the establishment as a disaster of marginal proportions that was destroying the economy, social fabric and governance structures through capitalist policies. It also put Mapfumo on a collision course with the ZANU-PF government, forcing him to go into exile in America just like Majaivana. Mapfumo’s song echoed and revitalised Majaivana’s lamentations in his 1980/1990s songs such as Mkhwenyana (Son-in-law) and Ngifuna Imali (I Want Money).

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These songs bemoan the dire social conditions that disproportionally affected Matabeleland. From the theatre sector, scriptwriters, producers and directors started speaking, radically and critically, truth to power. From Raisedon Baya’s The Moment (2004) to Daniel Maposa’ Decades of Terror (2007), through Stephen Chifunyise’s Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous (2011) to Thabani Moyo’s The Civil Servant (2013), socio-economic issues affecting not only Matabeleland, but the generality of Zimbabweans in the new millennium, are major themes. Thabani Moyo’s The Civil Servant responds to and addresses economic challenges that civil servants have been experiencing since ESAP in Zimbabwe. The play is an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, but tells the story of a civil servant, Elton Sibanda, who has served for 37 years and is worried that he might receive his retirement package in the Zimbabwean dollar currency which is rumoured to be coming back. To avoid this, he plans to commit suicide so that his children can receive his package in the much-valued US Dollars. Economic hardships are evident in the play as Elton’s children are also struggling. One of them has tried getting a job in neighbouring South Africa (echoing earlier crises as depicted in Dabulap!) but has failed. Similarly, Baya’s The Moment, produced several times in the 2000s and published in 2009, unfolds as a story about a couple (Charles and Vicky) in a troubled marriage. Charles works for the Anti-Corruption Commission and is committed to rooting out corruption while his wife, Vicky, is a businesswoman. Unbeknown to Charles, Vicky is involved in underhand foreign currency dealings. Vicky’s name gets onto the list of those wanted for investigation by the Anti-Corruption Commission. She is arrested for her illegal foreign currency deals and Charles is arrested for trying to obstruct the course of justice by trying to save Vicky from being arrested. This play captures the dilemma facing married couples during the decade of crisis in Zimbabwe. As the play explores and interrogates the Zimbabwean economic meltdown, inflation and corruption, it even questions the effectiveness of the Anti-Corruption Commission within the current framework.

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Conclusion As people from Matabeleland challenged, resisted and disrupted hegemony, theatre and music became sites upon which this struggle was fought (and is still being fought). Theatre in Matabeleland emerged after independence as part of the region’s protest culture. In this sense, it is part of broader alternative media spaces, which became critical for the articulation of the region’s concerns. In this framework, ATP remains an important institution in understanding this culture. While giving an important voice to voiceless masses in Matabeleland, this theatre at the same time articulated issues that spoke to the experiences of the new Zimbabwean nation as a whole. Using direct confrontation, disguise, innuendo and connotation, it raised many thorny issues that questioned ZANU-PF’s hegemonic vision during the first decade of independence. It, therefore, laid the foundation for many civil society organisations that began to confront the ruling establishment from the late 1980s onwards. It also became an important foundation for similar protest theatre outside Bulawayo, which became critical spaces for mediating the Zimbabwean crisis.

References Barber, Karin. 1997. Views of the field: Introduction. In Readings in African popular culture, ed. Karin Barber, 1–12. Oxford: James Currey. Baya, Raisedon. 2004. The moment. Unpublished play. Baya, Raisedon. 2009. Tomorrow’s people and other plays. Bulawayo: amaBooks. Baya, Raisedon, and Leonard Matsa. 2003. Super patriots and morons. Unpublished play. CCJP. 1997. Breaking the silence, building the peace: A report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and Midlands 1980–1988. Harare: Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe/Legal Resources Foundation. Chifunyise, Stephen. 2011. Indigenous indigenous indigenous. Unpublished play. Chifunyise, Stephen, and Robert Mshengu Kavanagh (eds.). 1988. Zimbabwe theatre report, No. 1. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications. Chirambo, Reuben, M. 2006. Traditional and popular music: Hegemonic power and censorship in Malawi: 1964–1994. In Popular music and censorship in Africa, ed. Michael Drewett and Martin Cloonan, 109–126. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate. Chukwu-Okoronkwo, Samuel O. 2012. Alternative theatre paradigm: Democratising the development process in Africa. Academic Research International 2 (3): 690–755.

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Dube, Caleb. 1992. Amakhosi theatre: AkoBulawayo. The Drama Review 36 (2): 44–47. Femia, Joseph V. 1981. Gramsci’s political thought: Hegemony, consciousness and the revolutionary process. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Kaarsholm, Preben. 1990. Mental colonisation of catharsis? Theatre, democracy and cultural struggle from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies 16 (2): 246–275. Kaarsholm, Preben. 1995. Si ye pambili—Which way forward? Urban development, culture and politics in Bulawayo. Journal of Southern African Studies 21 (2): 225–245. Kamlongera, Christopher. 1989. Theatre for development in Africa with case studies from Malawi and Zambia. Bonn: German Foundation for International Development. Kerr, David, and Stephen Chifunyise. 2004. Southern Africa. In A history of theatre in Africa, ed. Martin Banham, 265–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kupe, Tawana. 1997. Voices of the voiceless: Popular magazines in a changing Zimbabwe 1990–1996. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis. University of Oslo. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and socialism: Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso. Lazaro, L.A. 2001. Political satire in contemporary British fiction: The state of the art. In First International Conference on English Studies: Past, Present and Future, 569–572, Costa de Almería, October 19–25. Maposa, Daniel. 2007. Decades of terror. Unpublished play. Mbira, Leonard. 2015. The De-Industrialization of Bulawayo manufacturing centre in Zimbabwe: Is the capital vacuum to blame? International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, 3 (3): 1–14. McLaren, Robert. 1993. Developing drama at the University of Zimbabwe. Zambezia XX (1): 35–52. Mda, Zakes. 1993. When people play people: Development communication through theatre. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Press. Mhlanga, Cont. 1992. Workshop negative. Harare: College Press. Mhlanga, Cont. 2007. The good president. Unpublished play. Mhlanga, Cont. 2015a. Interview by Nkululeko Sibanda. Lupane Communal Lands, October 10. Mhlanga, Cont. 2015b. Interview by Nkululeko Sibanda. Lupane Communal Lands, November 16.

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Mignolo, Walter. 1992. The darker side of the renaissance: Colonisation and the discontinuity of the classical tradition. Renaissance Quarterly 45 (4): 808– 825. Mlambo, Alois. 1997. The economic structural adjustment programme: The case of Zimbabwe 1990–1995. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press. Morrison, Andrew, and Allison Love. 1996. A discourse of disillusionment: Letters to the editor in two Zimbabwean magazines 10 years after independence. Discourse & Society 7 (1): 39–75. Moyo, Bhekumusa. 2011. 1983: Years before and after. Unpublished play. Moyo, Thabani. 2013. The civil servant. Unpublished play. Mpofu, Mandlenkosi. 2015. ICTs in the struggle for democracy: Civil society, democratisation and organisational forms in the Zimbabwean crisis, 2000– 2013. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis. University of Oslo. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo. 2007. Rethinking the colonial encounter in Zimbabwe in the early twentieth century. Journal of Southern African Studies 33 (1): 173–191. Njoh, Ambe. 2007. Planning power: Town planning and social control in colonial Africa. London: UCI Press. Prentki, Tim, and Jan Selman. 2000. Popular theatre in political culture: Britain and Canada in focus. Bristol: Intellect. Radcliffe, Sarah A. 2011. Third space, abstract space and coloniality: National and subaltern cartography. In Playing with theory in theatre practice, ed. Megan Alrutz, Julia Listengarten, and Manon van Duyn-Wood, 129–145. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ranger, Terrence. 2004. National historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 30 (2): 215–234. Ravengai, Samuel. 2010. Political theatre: National identity and political control: The case of Zimbabwe. African Identities 8 (2): 163–173. Ravengai, Samuel. 2015. Performing the subversive: Censorship and theatre making in Zimbabwe. Studies in Theatre and Performance 35 (3): 237–250. Saunders, Richard. 1991. Information in the interregnum: The press, state and civil society in the struggle for hegemony in Zimbabwe 1980–1990. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Carleton. Seda, Owen S. 2004. Transculturalism in post-independence Zimbabwean drama: Projections of Zimbabwean theatre at the onset of a new millennium. Zambezia 31: 136–147. Sibanda, Nkululeko. 2017. The politics of performance space: An investigation into the practice of scenography in post-independence Zimbabwe theatre. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis. University of KwaZulu-Natal. Tendi, Blessing-Miles. 2010. Making history in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, intellectuals and the media. Oxford: Peter Lang.

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Tollefson, James W. 1991. Language planning, planning inequality: Language policy in the community. London: Longman. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Art in action: Towards a Christian aesthetic. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdemans.

CHAPTER 10

Harnessing the Whirlwind: Hybridity, Memory and Crisis in Theatre During Zimbabwe’s Operation Murambatsvina Joy L. Wrolson

During 2004–2005, I witnessed Zimbabwean theatre groups respond to the uncertainties of daily life, as the economy plunged, and the fallout of the most recent election hit, with creative work that poked at ZANU-PF with humour, satire and blatant commentary. These theatre groups effectively manipulated language using chihwerure (literally, the whirlwind, a stylistic socially sanctioned criticism) within their performances. In my Ph.D. dissertation (University of Kansas, 2009), I called this dramaturgical style ‘panic theatre’. I borrowed the term ‘panic’ from Paul Allen’s essay ‘Juice’ (2006) in which he argues that Zimbabwean poetry should be considered as panic poetry. Allen also uses the term panic poetry to describe contemporary Zimbabwean poetry as a type of poetry written ‘if, say, our house was on fire and we had to complete a poem before we escaped’ (p. 130). Metaphorically (and literally) speaking

J. L. Wrolson (B) Alexandria, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_10

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therefore, some houses of ordinary Zimbabweans today have been set ablaze: they are homeless, there is scarcity of food, and they must spend hours in queues, for the simplest amenities of daily existence. Yet there are some theatre groups who feel they have a story to tell/perform to this harried group of people. They must create these performances to quell their panic, and act to put out the larger fires in the larger house of the nation-state, Zimbabwe. The theatre groups used chihwerure and nhimbe to create an aesthetic that employed both the memories of the performers and the performances’ hoped-for audiences to disguise its criticism of the state and point to the injustices of the crisis. Nhimbe is performative events—one works hard and entertains others and oneself. Jingo James Mukwindidza suggests that this aesthetic adds to the audience’s enjoyment and the bite of the criticism, Now we have a platform to say that in the nhimbe it is done by singing where we are processing our grain it is called chihwerure. It is like, it is like, if someone divorces his wife. And they wanted to go at him there, they would sing chihwerure onayo. It is done while they are singing. If you happen to be someone who has done something you will feel it, if you have done nothing, you will enjoy it. So I think our modern theatre is moving toward that level of being like nhimbe. It is now being done like nhimbe, we are talking about serious issues but we are laughing at, we are enjoying it. (J. J. Mukwindidza 2005c)

Each of these performance forms or occasions provides important familiar vocabulary for its performers and audiences to communicate via a hidden transcript. I employ James Scott’s notion of ‘hidden transcripts’ to understand how these plays communicate complex criticism in performances, If subordinate discourse in the presence of the dominant is a public transcript, I shall use the term hidden transcript to characterize discourse that takes place “off stage,” beyond direct observation by power holders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those stage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict or inflect what appears in the public transcript. (Scott 1990, pp. 4–5)

Performers and audiences communicate with the hidden transcripts made possible by their shared experience of nhimbe and chihwerure.

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In this chapter, I will focus on how panic theatre used chihwerure to develop a strategy to deal with the crises of Operation Murambatsvina1 and evade state surveillance and reprisals. The operation was a campaign of the third chimurenga.2 Although the third chimurenga was initially a rhetorical device to dispel and redirect dissatisfaction and criticism from war veterans (and the disastrous mishandling of pensions) its violent rhetoric led to actual violence as farm takeovers began in 2000 after a constitutional referendum supported by ZANU-PF was defeated. Combined with mammoth debts to the international community, a general suspicion and distrust of the government and corruption, and general alarm in the international financial sector resulted in the first major crash of Zimbabwe’s currency in November 1997. This led to general strikes and support for what was to become the first strong opposition party to ZANU-PF.3 Morgan Tsvangirai’s the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was born out of general strikes and a growing umbrella of stakeholders who were part of a National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). This assembly was led in opposition to the government’s own constitutional conference that produced two very different results. The NCA’s document was never included as part of the referendum on the new constitution, but this umbrella group’s proposal included greatly reduced presidential powers, proportional representation, access to the media for all parties, and term limits for the president. The

1 Operation Murambatsvina (Shona for ‘drive out the trash’) is an urban renewal project

that was carried out by the ruling ZANU (PF) government in May 2005. It was targeted at perceived opposition party strongholds in the major urban areas of Zimbabwe where the government destroyed informal settlements and people’s home industries, leaving an estimated 700,000 citizens homeless and destitute. 2 Chimurenga is the Shona word to refer to an uprising. The first chimurenga was fought against the British South African Company in 1896 through to 1897 and was led by spirit mediums for the territorial spirits of Nehanda, Kaguvi, and Mlimo. All of the mediums were eventually captured and hanged. Charwe, Nehanda’s medium refused baptism and prophesied from the gallows that a second chimurenga would drive the British out of the land. The second chimurenga was Zimbabwe’s war of independence. The third chimurenga started as a rhetorical strategy of President Mugabe as he engaged the language of the liberation struggle to delegitimise the growing opposition to his regime. For more on the history of chimurenga and Nehanda, see David Lan’s Guns and Rain (1985) and David Beach’s writings, particularly (Beach 1998). 3 Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), the country’s ruling party under the leadership of the then President Robert Mugabe who led the country from independence in 1980 up to November 2017 when he was removed in a coup d’état.

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constitutional referendum that was defeated in February 2000 would have given the President sweeping powers which included more censorship for the press, greater emergency powers, immunity from prosecution, and the right to seize farmland at will without compensation. Voter turnout was low, but the referendum was defeated. Rather than a referendum on a new constitution it was seen by Mugabe and Zimbabweans in general as a no-confidence vote on Mugabe’s continued presidency and policies. White commercial farmers had supported MDC in the parliamentary elections and had campaigned against the constitutional referendum. Mugabe started an all-out war against his opposition and used the farmers as a convenient scapegoat. It is at this point that farm takeovers began.4 Operation Murambatsvina began with Ms Sekesai Makwavarara, an unelected Harare city commissioner, announcing that all responsible citizens should want to ‘kuramba tsvina’ (to drive out/reject filth/dirt) (Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum 2005). Her speech had some ominous implications for the average Zimbabwean: she singles out all sectors of the informal markets; she uses laws of the colonial era to address a potential opposition; she implies that the city will work with other government bodies to eradicate filth in ongoing missions; she creates an underclass who are those who should be driven out, separate from the business and diplomatic classes, those who would not want to kuramba tsvina. I woke up on 19 May 2005 (the day of Ms. Makwavarara’s announcement) thinking it was going to be a typical day of theatre research in Highfield. My neighbour, another Fulbright Scholar, was leaving for the United States. The embassy driver was coming to pick her up. So I decided to wait to go to Highfield, the site of the majority of my research, so that I could see her before she left. Highfield is a high-density suburb located south west of the Central Business District of Harare. In order to get there, I needed to take two Kombis (informal public minibuses). It usually took a little more than an hour to get there if all went well with 4 I am simplifying a lot of what happened and do not want to minimize the complexity or the extraordinary nature of violence and outright human rights abuses that went on during this period. For more nuanced and complete accounts of what happened in the beginning of what is now called by some as the third chimurenga, I recommend Andrew Meldrum’s Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe (2006), Martin Meredith’s Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (2002), Geoff Hill’s What Happens After Mugabe? (2005). I highly recommend Terence Ranger’s 2004 article “National Historiography”.

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connections and if I did not need to run errands in town. I waved to my neighbour and the embassy team as they left for the airport and walked to the corner to go to my office at the University of Zimbabwe. Based on some news at the University, I decided not to make the trip to Highfield at all. We had heard from students and from text messages that the police were harassing vendors and commuters. There were also rumours that some home-based factories and furniture-making shops were being burned by the police. We heard that some people were clashing with the police near the furniture makers. We had no idea of the scope of it or things to come. That evening on the shortwave station sponsored by Voice of America, we heard that the police and army had started razing markets in Mbare. According to a report co-authored by Archbishop Pius Ncube, this operation had spread nationwide to all the major urban areas within a few days and was on the move into the rural areas as well. It was also no longer limited to ‘illegal’ businesses and markets, but also included all unpermitted structures including people’s homes. The police razed whole communities, detained thousands of people and reduced them, their homes and their workplaces to trash. The government set up relocation camps and people were put in lorries and driven there in the early morning hours. There were reports that the detainees were suffering under horrible conditions and were also being subjected to ‘re-education’ (Ncube et al. 2005). As the government was using rhetoric and the colonial-era laws to refer to the razing, detaining and forced relocation of people—the ordinary person was calling this Operation Tsunami or the Mugabe Tsunami.5 Many people and organisations tried to make sense of this violence and its scope. By the time the Operation Murambatsvina ended, more than 700,000 people had been displaced from their homes, their jobs or both. The UN report concludes that at least an additional 2.4 million people were affected indirectly by the Operation (Tibaijuka 2005). The government had clearly shown that it was at war with the black, landless, jobless poor as well as the white commercial farmers. The theatre groups rehearsing and performing during Operation Murambatsvina used the poetic licence of the nhimbe performances to bewilder and evade state censorship through hidden transcripts that were 5 The destruction and devastation of neighbourhoods and forced relocation of people was being compared to the 26 December 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

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accessible to their audiences because of these shared memories (Klassen 1999; Scott 1990). These hidden transcripts along with their corresponding public transcripts made these performances necessarily hybrid, drawing from both Western and Zimbabwean performance traditions. Chihwerure onayo refers to a form of socially sanctioned criticism. This criticism is a form of satire. ‘Good’ or effective instances of chihwerure should be quick and they must swirl around the issue just like the metaphorical whirlwind. Chihwerure contains Scott’s public and hidden transcripts. The threshing songs that are presented at nhimbe were performed during and after communal or taxed labour. The songs were often bawdy as they portrayed and caricatured husbands graphically, sometimes including parents, children and occasionally those in authority. Because nhimbe performances were socially sanctioned satire, they were performed in the presence of the object of the parody often with impunity. The performances used hidden transcripts and chihwerure to maintain this poetic licence.6 Leslie Bessant catalogues a few nhimbe performances and their role within the community in Chiweshe communal lands prior to independence. He argues that although the primary purpose of nhimbe performances was to make work more fun, nhimbe also provided an immediate form of social correction: Chiweshe people sang for themselves and for each other to try to create certain standards of action, speech, and thought. The messages of these songs were not intended for outsiders: they were supposed to tell the citizens of Chiweshe how to live with each other. The songs rehearsed and explored the ties and relationships that made village life possible. (Bessant 1994, p. 46)

Nhimbe also contained language, which although metaphorical was quite bawdy and normally prohibited in mixed company. The language of these songs called people to account for their behaviour without necessarily naming names. Other performances taunted individuals who had declined to come to the work party. Bessant argues that these songs were directed at the immediate community and encouraged people to behave as a community but that they were not used to critique those outside the immediate neighbourhood, ‘[t]hough it is easy to imagine how these parties might have turned into sessions where the colonial government 6 Men also perform in nhimbe threshing songs.

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was held up as the biggest “Mr. So-and-so,” the greatest threat to village life, that seems not to have happened’ (Bessant 1994, p. 51). Nhimbe performance could not effectively shame those who did not understand their position within the community or who did not share the vocabulary of the song.

State, Censorship and Chihwerure The two laws, Public Order and Security Act and the Access to Information and Privacy Act (POSA and AIPPA) contributed to the overall crisis experienced in Zimbabwe between 2002 and up to and beyond when I did my dissertation research that discussed panic theatre. It is important to note that although these two laws were passed in 2002, they have their roots in the colonial era. These laws curtailed freedom of assembly and free speech rights in Zimbabwe. POSA, as amended in 2002 requires that groups or gatherings, which are larger than five people must obtain police clearance to assemble. However, churches, theatres, cinemas, sporting events and schools are nominally exempt from this requirement. Yet many of these organisations have had altercations with police and other authorities over events that they have hosted because it was determined that some aspects of these gatherings either disturbed the peace or denigrated the president or some other section of government. The language of POSA contains considerable ambiguities that have led to theatres and other performance events being included within POSA. As defined by POSA, theatres and other venues could definitely be construed as public spaces where ‘ “public place” means any thoroughfare, building, open space or other place of any description to which the public or any section of the public have access, whether on payment basis or otherwise, and whether or not the right of admission thereto is reserved’ (Zimbabwe. Parl. 2002a, 2002b section 2). Also, POSA seems to account for the definition of theatre in its language. A statement under its interpretation section argues that a person will be considered in violation of the Act if he or she makes ‘any expression of fact or opinion, whether made orally, in writing, electronically or by visual images; act or gesture’ and does so in front of an audience with intention (section 2). The government has taken advantage of this ambiguity to disrupt or cancel plays and other performance events at different periods in their

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production.7 In Bulawayo, police stopped a music family fun day in 2007 before it began, and its organiser was detained for being in violation of POSA (Ndebele 2007). Ndebele’s article reports that an arts and theatre festival was also cancelled outright. Raisedon Baya’s play, Super Patriots and Morons, was produced and performed at Theatre in the Park during the Zimbabwe International Book Festival in 2003 had a successful run at Harare’s Theatre in the Park, including an international tour and several other performances at different venues before it was eventually banned in 2004. The play is about an ageing dictator who hangs unto power by any means necessary. Despite never identifying the country or naming Mugabe, the National Censorship Board determined that the play violated POSA by ‘engendering feelings of hostility towards; or (ii) causing hatred, contempt or ridicule of; the President or an acting President, whether in person or in respect of his office’ (Zimbabwe. Parl.). However, outright censorship of plays is relatively less common, and plays appear to be treated differently than other forms of communication. Newspapers, books, radio and other media are much more heavily censored and controlled by AIPPA. Most plays make it through the censorship process, at least initially, with little difficulty. Prior to AIPPA, plays were subject to the Censorship Board that was formally established with the Censorship and Entertainments Control Act, which was passed in colonial Rhodesia in 1967. Zenenga points out similarities between the Censorship Act and the British Stage Licensing Act of 1737. He also argues that although on paper it seems to deal specifically with obscenity and things deemed offensive to Victorian values,8 it has been used primarily to censor plays, books and films with politically offensive content (Zenenga 2008, p. 63). Samuel Ravengai (2015) provides an excellent analysis of state control and censorship of theatre in Zimbabwe since 1980. In it he argues that state control does not end or begin with the censure or banning of a script or performance. Although the state has banned or censored plays directly, its control may be more effective using the regional offices of the National Arts Council and through self-censorship as the groups rehearse 7 Praise Zenenga’s article on censorship has other key examples of groups that have been censored. 8 One possible reason may be because of self-censorship or staging of scenes that might be considered risqué. Stage kisses are rare. In most scenes depicting sexual content or interest, the participants are typically dancing or staged far away from each other.

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or write scripts in order to make it easier for themselves. My experience with the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) in 2005 confirms what Ravengai witnessed in 2008 when his research was already underway. The play, Colored Museum, a co-production of the University of Zimbabwe and the US Embassy was approved without issue but had a bit of unfounded negative publicity broadcast on ZBC. Yet another play, The Vagina Monologues, although only provisionally passed, was deemed acceptable if it removed all references to the vagina. The play performed to packed houses and added encore performances and it did not omit the word vagina despite the recommendations of the censorship board. The theatre group was warned that if the play was ever performed again the group could face arrest not under POSA or the Censorship Act, but under the Public Decency Act. Sarah Kilalea, an actor in The Vagina Monologues reported that HIFA officials protected them from arrest and managed to stop police from entering the venue of the last performance where they wanted to stop the show (Kilalea 2005). Yet another play from Bambebela Arts from Bulawayo also passed censorship—it was called Shout for Help. While I was watching its performance at HIFA, I was quite amazed that it had managed to do so. It depicted a Zimbabwean’s return from the United Kingdom with used clothes and food that he wants to bring to the rural areas for people in need. He runs out of fuel and has to camp out because no one is able to or willing to help him. During the night, despite encountering hyenas and baboons, he is attacked and beaten by a war veteran. Most of the audience at HIFA had similar feelings. We were constantly looking around the audience during the performance to see if it would be stopped. Prior to HIFA, Shout for Help had performances in Bulawayo. After HIFA, the play had a performance at the Mannenberg (a jazz club) and was not censored. This fact may serve as an argument for poetic licence or that the regional office of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) or NACZ itself felt it would not be changing anyone’s mind regarding the military in the venues of HIFA or in Harare. A variety of explanations may account for this difference in treatment between theatre performances and other forms of media. Most playwrights and groups do not regard publishing their work as a fruitful venture. For some theatre groups they operate with a rough scenario and improvise interactions based on their audience and their general story line. Other groups view the script (if they have one) as a blueprint that can be changed at will in performance, and they may not be willing to share that with other groups. The government may feel that since plays

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in Zimbabwe are rarely published, they have little reach to the public and are not worth an official crackdown. Ravengai argues that the state feels that performances presented in Harare are ‘preaching to the already converted’ and so they have an extended poetic licence. This may have some credence as in the 2005 crisis theatre groups reached smaller and smaller audiences. Some groups could not reach an audience altogether. Also, many groups practice self-censorship. They tailor their performances to specific venues and audiences. In some cases, this may involve delivering a line differently or eliminating that line altogether. Furthermore, many groups use talkbacks or viva voce to raise an audience’s awareness or to pose solutions, rather than the performance itself. Such strategies can be eliminated in order not to risk violating POSA, or when the situation calls for it. Seda documents one example in which a play’s managers deemed it too risky to have a post-performance dialogue because of a change in venue. Previously, the play had been staged in a university setting with a talk-back with no problem (Seda 2008). In the remainder of this chapter, I will analyse the work of two theatre groups based in Highfield. These groups were performing before, during and after Operation Murambatsvina (OM). Vuka Afrika and Edzai Isu began as Theatre for Development groups that contracted for Non-Governmental Organizations and frequently performed plays based on workplace safety and workers’ rights, HIV awareness, governmental corruption and children’s issues. I will look closely at how they used chihwerure and the poetic licence of nhimbe songs to address audiences and the crisis that theatre and the ordinary Zimbabwean faced in 2005.

Hypocrites Jingo James Mukwindidza is a playwright and the founder of Vuka Afrika. Unlike many theatre practitioners in Highfield, he turned to theatre from an unsatisfying job in middle management. After seeing an Amakhosi play in Bulawayo, he quit his job and sought out training from Amakhosi, Rooftop and Zimbabwe Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ZATCYP). I began working with Vuka Afrika as both a researcher and as a temporary member of the group in early May. Mukwindidza had asked me to direct a play that he had written about freedom of the press. We had started regular rehearsals just two weeks before Operation Murambatsvina (OM) interrupted us.

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It was more than a week before I returned to Highfield to resume our rehearsals. It took a long time to get to Zimbabwe Hall (the rehearsal location for Vuka Afrika). There was a long wait for the kombi bus near the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) and we were packed in tight when one finally did arrive. It was no easier catching the second kombi. When I arrived in Highfield, there was a burnt-out kombi vehicle in the parking lot of the Machipisa shops and Mushandirapamwe Hotel where I got off the kombi to walk to the Zimbabwe Hall. The smell of burned rubber served as a constant reminder, that unlike Mount Pleasant (a low-density suburb where I lived), Highfield, where I was working with Edzai Isu and Vuka Afrika, was under siege. Despite this, we were resuming rehearsals of You Have No Right. At this point we also had started conversations on developing a new play as well. We were trying to maintain a level of normalcy in the face of the OM and I was desperately trying to keep up with my research outside of rehearsals. The play Hypocrites by Mukwindidza and Vuka Afrika began as an act of self-censorship. Mukwindidza and Vuka Afrika decided to do Hypocrites, an HIV-awareness play, which seemed less risky than You Have No Right, a play advocating for freedom of the press. Even though we carefully presented an argument both for and against state control of the press, my presence in the group made its hidden texts and use of the chihwerure too visible to the state during the Operation. Mukwindidza felt that Hypocrites and its subject matter would be safer than You Have No Right, even if I was involved. One of our early rehearsals of Hypocrites was interrupted by the arrival of the police to evict the sculptors from Zimbabwe Hall as Operation Murambatsvina continued around us. I cannot say we felt safer because we were talking about HIV, a politically less risky subject, but it seemed less subversive (Fig. 10.1). Yet it would be inaccurate to discount the power of Hypocrites ’ own hidden transcripts to question and interrogate its subject. The play Hypocrites uses the model of nhimbe and the whirlwind to provide healing and attempts at reforming the HIV-awareness play genre,9 while also calling into account the NGO community. Although this HIV awareness performance did not directly take on the state, it gives us a clear model of how the use of chihwerure and nhimbe creates hidden transcripts. 9 HIV-awareness plays had a very formulaic structure and storyline basically positing that a man can be victimised by a loose woman, and sometimes a prostitute, but also frequently an unfaithful wife.

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Fig. 10.1 Vuka Afrika’s You Have No Right, a play about the freedom of the press. Marita is being questioned (Photo by J. Wrolson)

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Hypocrites is saturated with memory and memories. The play’s structure, characters and how it hails the audience are all dependent on memory and Mukwindidza’s memories of his own grandmother10 and the mapira (funerary rituals) which he attended in his childhood. The play uses these ghosts/surrogations to draw attention to the crisis of HIV in Zimbabwe in relation to the overall crisis in Zimbabwe. Rather than lament the near-death sentence of HIV, he wants people to think differently and look to different sources for living positively. The play’s structure depends on memory and it uses flashbacks to develop conflict and resolution for the two HIV-positive characters. Jesca, the character whose memories provide access to the world of the play, uses flashbacks consisting primarily of song and dance to relate her personal journey from a young, abused child to being an HIV-positive prostitute and murderer to finally at the end of the play as a respected sahwira.11 She also shows her memories of the beginnings and endings of her friendship with James, an embittered man who is struggling with his illness and the loss of his wife and children. James is only a memory or ghost throughout the play. ‘Now with James (she shakes her head) sometimes he could carry his antics too far! (She frowns) He died last month because of (pointing to the situation) this, poor treatment from everyone’ (Mukwindidza, p. 1). Mukwindidza uses the memories of Jesca, James and the audience to mobilise chihwerure to attempt to destroy notions of who is the typical HIV+ person. Mukwindidza uses James and Jesca to replace the people in the HIV+ posters. Jesca’s memories of James paint him as terribly angry, misogynistic, argumentative and in need of reform as much as in need of antiretroviral medications. The songs and dances associated with James’s life and his memories serve as bridges to his past and its better days. The first flashback is James’s wedding. The wedding scene in the flashback is lavish. It attests to James and his wife’s family’s relative affluence and blessings, but it may also suggest that James relayed to Jesca a strong sense of nostalgia for this stage of his life. Memories are essentially abstractions created from a process that requires revision, substitution and forgetting. These memories are necessarily exaggerated so that James can justify his

10 Although Mukwindidza uses his memories of his grandmother’s performances and stories to create the structure of the play and his characters, James is not autobiographical. 11 Ritual friend, joking friend. A sahwira will have an important role during major life milestones particularly for funerals.

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current bitterness—he needs a golden age to look back on and mystify (Roach 1996, p. 7). This flashback to James and Winnie’s wedding uses a master of ceremonies to direct the dances, songs and offering of gifts. Charles Biniwere,12 who played the emcee, brought a gestic physicality to his performance that inflected a sense of humour and playfulness to the flashback. The emcee’s movement across the stage embodies a whirlwind. Additionally, his linguistic playfulness matches his embodiment of the whirlwind as he unleashes the chihwerure. The emcee’s name creates a satiric word play that haunts James’s memories as he relays it to Jesca, but it also plays with the playwright’s and audience’s memories or expectations. The emcee is called Six Million. At the time this play was written, Mukwindidza had calculated that the rehearsal budget of the play for a month would be Z$225,000,000.13 The audience could take pleasure from trying to remember when $6 million seemed like a fortune so great that it was worth bragging about. His name, when contrasted with the dollar value amount of all the gifts, provided further cognitive dissonance or alienation that might be produced by a nostalgic exchange of ‘I remember when a coke was Z$0.25’ to ‘I remember when three eggs cost Z$100,000,000,000’.14 The wedding flashback’s overall celebratory tone is a marked contrast to the opening scene as we learn of James’ illness and death. These are not simple flashbacks; Jesca is remembering and making material her memories of James telling her about his wedding. This doubled flashback brings out the strength of this nhimbe. The songs and dances that show this idealised model of a wedding/marriage in James’s mind serve as part of the indirect speech like the whirlwind that some might connect to the prevailing political situation in Zimbabwe. This nostalgia around the wedding could also be transferred to nostalgia for a better time either in the past or a hoped-for future. 12 Biniwere was also the choreographer. 13 At the October 2005 exchange rate, it would be just under US$1200. Z$6 million

at the same exchange rate would be US$30. 14 I took this last figure from a blog about currency in Zimbabwe that was posted around 25 October 2008. It does not have sources listed or an author. I find it useful because it uses concrete examples to develop an idea as to how much inflation in Zimbabwe was impacting everyday life https://humorland.wordmess.net/20081025/ what-the-real-crisis-is-like/. (Originally accessed 3/1/2009) As of 26 October 2018, this page has been inaccessible, but it is also referred to by other blogs: https://obront.wor dpress.com/2009/02/06/zimbabwe-funny-money/. Accessed 26/10/2018.

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The two songs most important for my analysis share the same use of innuendo and metaphorical speech as the Chiweshe nhimbe. Although James is angry with his wife, his memories of her as embodied in the songs are either adoring or teasing. The first song praises her beauty. This particular song is commonly used to greet the bride at a wedding or when the bride is in preparation for the wedding. The song compares the bride to a space rocket or a missile.15 Chitundu Musere-Musere (x2) Chitundu Musere-Musere! Hecho Chauya! Chitundu Musere-Musere! Chazouya! 16 Chitundu Musere-Musere! Hecho Chauya! Chitundu Musere-Musere! Chiri pamwedzi Chitundu Musere-Musere! (this stanza X2) Hecho Chauya! Chitundu Musere-Musere! Chazouya! (Mukwindidza 2005a, p. 4)

Chitundu Musere-Musere, the Shona word for rocket comes from the word ‘chitundu’ which refers to a strong, young and (healthy) person (Hannan 1987, p. 97). ‘Musere’ refers to playful talk or behaviour (Hannan 1987, p. 405). ‘Mutsere’, another variation for rocket, refers to a tall, fruit-bearing tree (Hannan 1987, p. 418). In the song, the bride’s beauty has come from the moon or from the outer world. She might be tall and fruit bearing, or she might be playful and healthy. All these exaggerations celebrate her beauty and to some extent her personality and potential. This song’s use of repetition and reduplication inspires a metaphorical link between the bride and the rocket and the bride and the Apollo 11 Mission. Chazouya! the rocket (meaning the bride), has

15 This song was inspired by the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. 16 A rough translation of the lyrics of this song goes: ‘She is a Rocket! Rocket! She is

from the moon. There she comes. She is a Rocket, rocket, there she has finally come.’ I do not have the skill in translating to keep the sense of rhythm of the words. It is a highly metaphorical song.

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finally come to earth for the wedding. Like the Apollo 11 Mission, it is inevitable that their marriage would happen. Other songs and dances in this flashback tease both the bride and the groom directly. The songs play at the boundaries of what is appropriate. The bride’s aunt teases the groom by singing about the letters that she has burnt that the newly claimed groom has written her—as if she were a jilted lover. The bride’s aunt subverts normative behaviour and ritual shyness to tease and cajole the groom—or alternatively to bring to life the fears and desires of the bride regarding previous suitors to her groom. The bride’s brother sings a song teasing the groom that verges from innuendo to vulgarity and violates some of the taboos surrounding discussing or mentioning sex in mixed company. Although it borders on the vulgar, it still speaks in veiled language. James Kovo Kovo! Kovo yapedza huku Mamhino fetu-fetu yenge khakhi ine starch James iKovo Kovo! Kovo yapedza huku Mamhino fetu-fetu yenge khakhi ine starch (Mukwindidza 2005a, p. 7)

This song compares James to a kovo, a black-tailed mongoose.17 In Shona folklore, this type of mongoose is extremely devious and traps domestic poultry by tricking them while lying on its back and displaying a ‘nut-like protrusion and any chicken that curiously pecks on it gets its head trapped and squeezed in the mongoose’s butt and is dragged away and eaten’ (Zenenga 2009). The song implies that James has a particularly strong set of skills, which include using deception to seduce young women, and like the mongoose he will finish up all the women in the area. The strong imagery in this song includes the mongoose’s nose that will twitch or the mongoose itself which stands up, like a pair of over-starched khakis, when it sees a chicken. This image is both funny for its own sake, but it is also in thinly veiled language that crudely suggests that James is easily aroused in the company of women. Inspired by nhimbe, this play argues that society ought to look to traditional structures for unconventional solutions and support. Through 17 Kovo is galerella sanguinea, which is a slender mongoose. It is also known as the Black-tailed Mongoose.

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the aesthetic of the nhimbe, Hypocrites also accuses the medical establishment (both bio-medical and alternative) of not meeting the needs of the community. As panic theatre, it persuades people to see the inadequacies of current responses to the HIV crisis and to look beyond the medical delivery system for solutions and to think about HIV+ people as more than patients and victims. At least one member of the audience wanted his friends living with HIV to see the play (Chigayo 2005). He felt that the play had something for them as well as for people who did not know how to help friends and relatives.

All Systems Out of Order Edzai Isu,18 another group that is based in Highfield, is led by Tafadzwa Muzondo. He is its primary playwright and its producer. He wrote All Systems Out of Order 19 as his first attempt at conventional theatre as opposed to Theatre for Development. All Systems Out of Order, just like Hypocrites, makes use of chihwerure to inform its dramaturgy and the use of language and song. The play uses fluidity of time, mediums and ritual to create a satire that navigates the crisis of the burning house of Zimbabwe during the Operation Murambatsvina. It uses history, space and time in ways that clearly link All Systems Out of Order to Vuka Afrika’s work. It uses a character that surveils the public toilet and brings forth judgement on wrongdoers and dramaturgically fulfils similar functions to Jesca and the emcee. It does so in much the same fashion as the nhimbe performances that Mukwindidza wants to serve as his model for the type of play necessary for Zimbabwe today. All Systems Out Of Order used images of Zimbabwe’s pre-colonial past up through post-independence in the first few minutes of the play. The whole of Zimbabwe as a nation was contained in a public toilet. Using a very physical acting style and costumes, it activated people’s memories of the past and of the present. Images of the second Chimurenga haunt the production. I started to work with Edzai Isu during the first month of the 18 Shillah Chipamuriwo, Muzondo’s ex-wife, was a vital part of the first few years of Edzai Isu. 19 My analysis of All Systems Out of Order is based on three productions of it and the script. The first performance I saw was October 2004 at Theatre in the Park. The script that Tafadzwa Muzondo (2004, 2005b, 2005c) gave me had the year 2005 printed on its cover page. I have cited each production and the script separately in the bibliography.

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OM. For the first performance that I attended as a researcher, I met the group at Zimbabwe Hall and walked with some of them to a community centre that served as a day-care. We had to detour twice as we ran into police knocking down people’s homes and walked by many other homes that had been previously burnt or bulldozed. It is this experience and the state’s use of the phrase Third Chimurenga to legitimise their violations of the rule of law that haunt my analysis and All Systems Out of Order’s place in Zimbabwean theatre history. The play’s opening invocation of the spirits of Zimbabwe uses a bonethrowing ceremony in which the svikiro or spirit medium begins to enact the vision or reflection presented by the bones. The svikiro, or Ancient Man as the play identifies him, is accompanied by two mbira (thumb piano) players. The mbira music assists the svikiro to reach out to the ancestors. The Ancient Man reacts negatively to what he sees. At this point in the script, the medium needs to relieve himself, but is interrupted by the sound of gunfire and the coming of ModernMan and the Europeans (Muzondo 2005a). As the scene continues, the place where AncientMan was going to relieve himself stands for both the colonial history of Zimbabwe and the establishment of the post-independence nation of Zimbabwe. As a flush toilet is commissioned during a ceremony to commemorate independence, a new police state/system is ushered in. The ModernMan takes his place as the ToiletCleaner while the AncientMan takes on the role of OrdinaryMan. The whole opening scene or movement20 is largely presented without words or dialogue and the movement through history takes place with pantomime, costume changes and quick scene changes or transitions. The pristine space that the AncientMan intended to use to relieve himself is rapidly replaced with the convenience of a modern flushing toilet that is out of order and is soiled by trash, human refuse and graffiti. The mbira music is replaced by whistling, an officious-sounding march, a lament and finally, barking and yipping.21 In a whirlwind, the performance mixes time and space as it summons the audience into a relationship with the public facilities and the current situation in Zimbabwe.

20 The first movement in the play is divided into three scenes. These scenes can be divided into the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence. 21 Ravengai has said that camp performances or pungwe performances frequently had whistles, barking and growling at climatic moments of performance (2016, p. 174).

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The toilet is the scene for the first, second and now third Chimurenga (Fig. 10.2). The third portion of this movement warrants some additional unpacking as it introduces all the characters that have come to represent post-independence Zimbabwe. The ToiletCleaner is central to the idea that the toilet has become dirty and lost its opening lustre as at independence. The elite authority makes deals over arms, foreign currency, grain and fuel. The YoungMan and WoMan sell basic commodities, cell phones and sex. The AncientMan cum OrdinaryMan is worthy of attention as he photographs everything that happens at the public toilet. This portion of the movement is accompanied by makwaya music praising the toilet and how everyone young and old can use it well. However, as the scene gets ‘dirtier’, barking and laughter nearly drown out the makwaya song. Muzondo, the actor, is on stage throughout the production. He starts out as the AncientMan and is transformed into the OrdinaryMan, who is both a photojournalist and a war veteran, and he is pitted against the ToiletCleaner, who in the initial scene is also the ModernMan who interrupts and possibly inhabits the AncientMan’s vision. As the play progresses, their rivalry becomes comical. ToiletCleaner: The gents’ toilet is ‘Out of Order’ just like this community, just like this bloody community, it’s ‘All Systems Out of Order’ (Laughs deliberately not having noticed an ordinary man who has just entered hurriedly towards the gents’ toilet only to find it written ‘Out Of Order’. The Ordinary Man twists his face and holds his tummy at this coinciding with the ToiletCleaner’s laughter (emphasis in script) ToiletCleaner: (laughing) Do not be surprised eh by the way he is a war veterinary I mean war vegetarian oh shit a war veteran, he? (Laughs) OrdinaryMan: O veteran (ToiletCleaner surprised) Original veteran (Muzondo 2005a).

This passage uses language and movement in the sly way of chihwerure to create humour, conflict and provide agency to the OrdinaryMan. With the invocation of being an original child of the soil (mwana wevhu), he becomes the voice of the people and the spirit of liberation that was lost with the installation of the ToiletCleaner. However, he is not able to access the toilet and is arrested by the police on trumped-up charges. At this point the OrdinaryMan, as he is referred to in the script, assumes the role of a trickster and disguises himself as a blind beggar who continues to observe instances of corruption at the public toilet and the ToiletCleaner,

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Fig. 10.2 All Systems Out of Order. Chishawasha Mission. Confrontation between AncientMan and ModernMan (Photo by J. Wrolson)

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all the time singing a song that becomes his signature tune, ‘Remember Me, O Lord’. This song is highly important in the processes of ghosting and surrogation. It is a common lament heard on the streets of Harare by beggars. It is also a lament that is heard in prayers by ordinary people. The song’s repetition calls for the help of the Mighty God while the OrdinaryMan attempts to expose the corruption which abounds around the toilet. Its reiteration is also a large part of the OrdinaryMan’s disguise. The ghosting of the begging class empowers the OrdinaryMan to witness with impunity the corruption of the toilet. The ToiletCleaner is similarly ghosted and serves as a surrogate for the state. With his opening speech inaugurating the public toilet, ToiletCleaner comes to be seen as President Robert Mugabe, or at the very least the old guard of ZANU-PF: ToiletCleaner: This is a public toilet for everyone from all walks which is here for your decent service free of charge and I commit myself to keeping it clean so that it serves the deserving public. Gone shall be the days of bush toilets and blair toilets. It’s now the public systematic toilet where we can flash [sic] our waste and dispose it in a manner that is healthy, orderly and efficient. I believe that the toilet is a basic human right as I officially declare this Public Toilet open (Muzondo 2005a, p. 2).

This speech echoes President Mugabe’s oratorical style and the ToiletCleaner cites two of Mugabe’s favourite scapegoats, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. In scene 3, the OrdinaryMan accuses him of being too old and says that he should retire for the good of the people in the queue as the ToiletCleaner successfully prevents the press from accessing the public toilet. The ToiletCleaner defiantly asks: ‘Retire? (Laughs) You want me to retire with nothing after all the years of cleaning your shit here?’ (Muzondo 2005a, p. 4).22 These iconic characters move back and forth to destabilise the audience’s identification. Yet this characterisation and haunting are unstable or like the whirlwind. As the OrdinaryMan channels the spirits of Chimurenga, he is both truth teller and an artful propagandist: ‘For the record we were not kicked out of that colonial club which ties us to a world market over which we have no say. There is nothing common 22 I am curious how this scene would play to audiences post-November 2017 and the coup that effectively removed Mugabe from the presidency.

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between our wealth and that of our former colonisers, so we withdrew for the sake of our economic independence which is in the land’ (Muzondo 2005a, p. 5). As scene 5 continues the role of the OrdinaryMan becomes more militant and the ToiletCleaner seems to be the voice of reason: ToiletCleaner: Okay then handiti the rains are falling? We want to see you fill the granaries. Ehe tinoda kuona muchiazadza matura… OrdinaryMan: We are very much capable of feeding the nation because we have always played with the soil he? (He dances to a farming song/jingle) which we obtained by the blood of dedicated sons and daughters of the soil. (He jumps up in reflection mimicking a rifle and firing, he is now highly charged) And then some of you want to reverse the gains of our struggle. The struggle for liberation in this…hiii if anybody attempts that he will never ever succeed…hiii (Muzondo2005a).

Like the whirlwind changing directions, the OrdinaryMan seems more like the capricious war veteran of the third Chimurenga than a beloved mwanawevhu of the second Chimurenga. His role as a trickster ends as his bowels rebel against him, making him the OrdinaryMan again. This slippery haunting of the two characters by Mugabe and the real and fake war veterans of the Third Chimurenga is part of the whirlwind. This is not sloppy writing or dramaturgy. The AncientMan’s inability to relieve himself is bookended with his double’s intestinal distress. The fact that both the ToiletCleaner/ModernMan and OrdinaryMan/AncientMan can stand in for ZANU-PF and Mugabe argues that there are no easy solutions for the political and social crisis of Zimbabwe in the mid-2000s. It demonstrates to the audience that they must also be careful how they identify the crisis, its actors and how to move through the crisis. As one starts to look at the other characters and relationships in the performance, one continues to see or hear the whirlwind. In the scene ‘Money Buys Love’, the corruption of the toilet is expressed cooperatively by all on stage. The four actors perform an elaborate dance synchronised on stage as the GentleMan brings the WoMan to the public toilet and pays the ToiletCleaner to use the toilet to have sex with her. The sex act becomes one of the funniest and most theatrical of the 16 scenes. All four actors’ movements are synchronised and anchored by the blind beggar’s song ‘Remember Me, O Lord’. The blind beggar uses the coins in his bowl percussively as he chants out ‘remember me’ faster and faster. The GentleMan and WoMan dance suggestively and the ToiletCleaner wraps

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his hands around his torso or alternatively grabs his tools as each character moves towards the climax of the sex act. Although the trickster/beggar is successful in exposing corruption as the play reaches its climax, the ToiletCleaner is not willing to give up his position without a fight. The opening scene and ritual are invoked as the OrdinaryMan and ToiletCleaner battle it out wearing feathered headdresses and traditional weaponry.23 The police assist the OrdinaryMan rather than the ToiletCleaner and the OrdinaryMan is finally able to relieve himself and his (op)pressed state. However, the final words of the play are spoken by the policeman: P.M: Well that could be theft by false pretence but the major case here is the mismanagement of this public toilet. I am a law enforcing agent. I am employed to uphold dearly the sovereignty of this community and to jealously guard the rights of all its people […] I think people have a right to use this toilet without prejudice. (Muzondo 2005a, p. 13)

Although these words leave a feeling that the toilet has been restored and corruption has been removed, they create doubts that the problem has been solved.24 In an interview, Muzondo credited his high school English and drama teacher with instilling a strong affection for scripted drama and satire. Yet when asked about the satire in All Systems, he indirectly cited the chihwerure and nhimbe: The power of the satire is in laughing at something then once that something has been laughed at it, then either the people who are doing it feel ashamed, they feel naked because we laughed at them, you see. Or the people who are laughing also feel angered. We are laughing at the end of the day we are being shortchanged. So that is how satire works. (Muzondo 2005e)

23 This is a point that changes between the performances. In the script and the Chishawasha performances both the OrdinaryMan and the Toilet Cleaner have feathered headdresses. In UZ’s production neither has the opening scene’s headdresses (Muzondo 2005b, 2005c). 24 Again, I wonder how this play would be read by audiences in the post-Mugabe era and now.

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All Systems uses images of the past to point to the excesses of the present. The satire in this play uses the hidden transcripts common in nhimbe to create both laughter and anger at the perpetrators of the wrongs of the ModernMan/ToiletCleaner. The communal context of the nhimbe performances ghosts All Systems and brings the audience together briefly into a work party. Additionally, it uses parodies of familiar personages using hidden texts. For example, in the UZ production, the mimicking of the then chair of department by the actor who played the ToiletCleaner caused a considerable stir and laughter. The costuming choice of putting the white hat on the ModernMan brought out ghosts from the political sphere. The ModernMan’s white cowboy hat in the UZ production added ambiguity to a critique of the crisis because Morgan Tsvangirai was the most prominent Zimbabwean politician to have worn a cowboy hat at the time. However, Tsvangirai did not wear a white hat, but a tan hat. But with character doubling, the white-hatted ModernMan is doubled with the ToiletCleaner. This doubling makes a simplistic reading of the role of the doubled ModernMan/ToiletCleaner difficult.25 Until the UZ production, the script and the previous performances suggest that the ModernMan/ToiletCleaner is more of a stand-in for Mugabe. This instability in doubling (part of the whirlwind?) signals the audience not to expect Tsvangirai to be able to solve Zimbabwe’s problems. It also has a bit of an ominous feel which suggests that the cowboy hat wearing politician may not be all that different from the current politicians. Muzondo argues that his allegorical satire wishes to draw attention to the desire to adopt ideas or systems without adapting them to contemporary realities. From the script alone, key passages in All Systems Out of Order appear to be in support of the status quo or the titular system. When it was submitted to the Censorship Board, the script was All Systems ’ public transcript. It is only during performances that the ToiletCleaner and those who take advantage of their access to the toilet take on any negative connotation. The performers’ actions and the spectators’ interpretations were the hidden transcript. Edzai Isu’s production of All Systems after Operation Murambatsvina was not censored because it used the stealthy criticism embedded in nhimbe’s threshing songs and satire. A with nhimbe performances, much of its criticism relies on the audience being able to decode the hidden transcripts and to recognise its ghosts. Like nhimbe, 25 Up to now it has seemed that the ModernMan/ToiletCleaner is haunted more by Mugabe.

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it aims to make people laugh. Once the audience has laughed, they can work together to shame those who have been shamed and exposed. Satire, farce and parody serve well in doing so. All of them require the audience and performer to recognise the ghosts of pre-Operation Murambatsvina to analyse and interpret the hidden texts.

Conclusion Theatre artists and poets have been detained under POSA—and many of them are considered enemies of the state. However, there remains a strong tradition of poetic licence and a pre-colonial tradition that allows the praise poet to criticise his or her subject through cleverly worded praises. The same can be said of other traditional forms—such as nhimbe performance. These threshing or work songs were sung during work parties and beer drinking sessions. Nhimbe criticised and used satire to voice complaint or reform behavior. These hidden transcripts provided the vehicle for theatre groups to sound the alarm and panic that they felt as the country burned, and they called for a means to resuscitate a new Zimbabwe out of the ruins of the old. They also allowed them to do so with relative impunity as they evaded the Censorship Board or other state attention.

References Allen, Paul. 2006. Juice. Southern Review 42 (1): 126–143. Beach, D. N. 1998. An innocent woman, unjustly accused? Charwe, medium of the Nehanda Mhondoro Spirit, and the 1896–97 Central Shona rising in Zimbabwe. History in Africa 25: 27–54. https://doi.org/10.2307/317 2179. Accessed 9 Apr 2009. Bessant, Leslie. 1994. Songs of Chiweshe and songs of Zimbabwe. African Affairs 93 (370): 43–73. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a09 8703. Accessed 7 Apr 2009. Chigayo, Fabian. 2005. Personal interview by Joy Wrolson. Highfield, Zimbabwe, 12 October. Hannan, M.S.J., ed. 1987. Standard Shona dictionary. Harare: College Press. Kilalea, Sarah. 2005. HIFA: A personal account—Performing the vagina monologues. 15 May. https://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/opin/050515sk. asp?sector=WOMEN&range_start=91. Accessed 7 Apr 2009.

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Klassen, Doreen. 1999. You can’t have silence with your palms up: Ideophones, gesture and iconicity in Zimbabwean Shona women’s ngano (storysong) performance. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Indiana University. Lan, David. 1985. Guns & rain: Guerrillas & spirit mediums in Zimbabwe. London: James Currey. Mhlanga, Cont. 2007. The play must play. Amakhosi Culture Centre and Performing Arts Academy: Theatre. https://www.amakhosi.org/id17.html. Accessed 24 Mar 2009. Mukwindidza, Jingo James. 2005a Hypocrites (script). Mukwindidza, Jingo James. 2005b. You have no right to remain silent (script). Mukwindidza, Jingo James. 2005c. Interview by Joy Wrolson. 3rd interview: Storytelling and grandmother, 12 October. Muzondo, Tafadzwa. 2004. All systems out of order. Directed by Stanley Mambo. Performed by Edzai Isu. Theatre In The Park, Harare. October 21–November 3. Muzondo, Tafadzwa. 2005a. All systems out of order (script). Muzondo, Tafadzwa. 2005b. All systems out of order. Performed by Edzai Isu. COSV sustained dialogue. Chishawasha Catholic Mission. June 24. Muzondo, Tafadzwa. 2005c. All systems out of order. Directed by Tafadzwa Muzondo. Performed by Edzai Isu. Beit Hall, UZ, Harare. October 18. Muzondo, Tafadzwa.2005d. All systems out of order: Production profile. Muzondo, Tafadzwa, 2005e. Personal interview by Joy Wrolson. 19 October. Ncube, Pius, Dr. Roger Bate, and Richard Tren. 2005. State in fear: Zimbabwe’s tragedy is Africa’s shame. Relief Web. https://www.reliefweb.int/library/doc uments/2005/afm-zwe-06jul.pdf. Ndebele, Zenzele. 2007. Police cancel music show. 6 September. https://www. freemuse.org/sw21395.asp. Accessed 24 Oct 2008. Ranger, Terence. 2004. Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: The struggle over the past in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies 30 (2): 215–234. Ravengai, Samuel. 2015. Performing the subversive: Censorship and theatre making in Zimbabwe. Studies in Theatre and Performance 35 (3): 237–250. Ravengai, Samuel. 2016. Chimurenga liberation songs and dances as sites of struggle to counter Rhodesian discourse: A postcolonial perspective. In Sounds of life: Music, Identity and Politics in Zimbabwe, ed. Fainos Mangena, Ezra Chitando, and Itai Muwati, 165–181. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the dead: Circum-Atlantic performance. New York: Columbia University Press. Rohmer, Martin. 2000. Form as weapon: The political function of song in urban Zimbabwean drama. New Theatre Quarterly 16 (2): 148–154.

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Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Seda, Owen. 2004. Transculturalism in post-independence Zimbabwean drama: Projections of Zimbabwean theatre at the onset of a new millennium. Zambezia 31: 136–147. Seda, Owen. 2008. Border crossings—A Transatlantic project in communitybased theatre: Performing the bus stop journals. Theatre Topics 18 (2): 183– 190. Tibaijuka, Anna Kajumulo. 2005. Report of the fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe to assess the scope and impact of Operation Murambatsvina. New York: United Nations. Wrolson, Joy. 2009. Re-Inventing memory and reforming performances: A genealogy of panic theatre in Zimbabwe. PhD thesis, University of Kansas. Zenenga, Praise. 2008. Censorship, surveillance, and protest theatre in Zimbabwe. Theatre 38 (3): 62–79. Zenenga, Praise. 2009. Songs and contexts. Interview by Joy Wrolson. Email. 23 February. Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. 2005. Order out of chaos, or chaos out of order? A preliminary report on the Operation ‘Murambatsvina’. https://www.hrforumzim.com/special_hrru/order_out_of_chaos_or_ chaos_out_of_order.htm. Accessed 6 Feb 2009. Zimbabwe Parliament. 2002a. Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Harare: Government Gazette. Zimbabwe Parliament. 2002b. Public Order and Security Act. Harare: Government Gazette.

CHAPTER 11

Towards a Democratic Protest Theatre in Zimbabwe: Vhitori Entertainment’s Protest Revolutionaries (2012) Kelvin Chikonzo

Introduction Zimbabwe experienced an unprecedented political and economic crisis between 1998 and 2008. This period is referred to as the ‘decade in crisis’ in contemporary Zimbabwean history (Bond and Manyanya 2003). During this time the ruling party, the Zimbabwe Africa People’s Union– Patriotic Front ZANU–PF tightened its control on state media so much so that the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the general citizenry were left with few platforms to air their voices. In the face of state monopoly on national media, alternative avenues of disseminating anti-state propaganda had to be developed. Protest theatre became one such option. Protest theatre developed as an alternative form of media that was meant to create new democratic spaces in an environment where state media was heavily biased towards

K. Chikonzo (B) Department of Creative Media and Communication, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_11

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the ruling party. It was generally felt that the state media bias was failing to express the views of other sections of society. It was felt that state media was disseminating monolithic state propaganda in such a way as to distort the true nature of the Zimbabwean situation. The Zimbabwean state media was no longer giving space to the views of ordinary people. Rather, according to state detractors, it was brainwashing citizens with jingles, slogans and political messages in support of the state. The question then arose: how could other voices create alternative media that would encourage critical engagement by citizens in order that citizens could take an active role in shaping the destiny of the country? There was also great fear within the opposition movement that citizens were losing interest in the Zimbabwean crisis owing to the fact that they were being denied the opportunity and forums in which to air their wishes and aspirations. The general populace seemed to be giving up on their civic responsibilities as citizens. The people had given up on engaging the state on issues of human rights, good governance and democracy. Protest theatre became one avenue that was meant to give back the people a voice regarding issues of governance, democracy and human rights. In earlier contributions (Chikonzo 2010, 2011), I bemoan the lack of democratic practice in protest theatre produced during the Zimbabwean crisis (1998–2008). I argue that mere opposition to a system of oppression does not guarantee democratic practice. Bashing the status quo only depicts the common man as a hapless victim of the state. These plays did not reveal the oppressed people’s ability to strategise, challenge or inflict harm on the state. The state was portrayed as cruel and violent but unconquerable and unchangeable. Thus, the possibility of change itself became inconceivable as character after character moaned and complained without organising strategies of resistance and recuperation from state brutality. I conclude, then, that protest theatre was so dominated by elitism and paternalism that it had failed to give voice and agency to the common man and woman who it sought to empower. My conclusion left me with a hunch; is it possible to have democratic protest theatre which portrays the common man as an agent of social change rather than a mere instrument of ideas that are generated by anti-government intellectuals and elites. Using the notion of agency as a framework for analysis, I argue that Protest Revolutionaries is a good example of democratic protest theatre and a model of subaltern empowerment, which can be embraced by other progressive forces in contemporary Zimbabwe.

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Protest Revolutionaries---Background Protest Revolutionaries (2012) was scripted and directed by Silvanos Bhanditi Mudzvova for Vhitori Entertainment. Protest Revolutionaries premiered at Harare’s Theatre-in-the-Park on 13 March 2012. In this play, the residents of an unnamed community organise a protest march against the country’s inclusive government that has come to power after an electoral stalemate. The inclusive government has not lived up to the expectations of the poor. As the people march, the state sends undercover operatives to gather information and persuade the residents to desist from the march. The locals, who encompass vendors, disgruntled war veterans, students and artists do not take kindly to attempts by the state to stop the march. The state believes that the march has been organised by civic organisations although the march is in fact a grassroots protest march. The interaction between the state and the residents questions the political legitimacy of the state as well as the ability of subaltern classes to design and implement protest marches without the influence of the elites. Protest Revolutionaries comes across as a protest against the country’s Government of National Unity (GNU), which comprised members of ZANU–PF and the MDC as well as a few independent candidates. In this play, citizens realise that the government of national unity does not automatically translate to a better life for the governed as the governed still have to fight for the basic necessities of life. Protest Revolutionaries reiterates the point that the governed alone are responsible for their destiny and ought not to depend on those who govern. Protest Revolutionaries was produced at a time when the country witnessed a significant shift in protest theatre performance from a militant and radical protest theatre to more conciliatory forms. The formation of the GNU rendered the production of radical theatre forms unnecessary as the political opposition that most groups seemed to be in favour of had since become part of the government of the day. Artists who had previously created polarised theatre suddenly found themselves largely irrelevant. The spectre of unity between rival political formations enabled these artists to realise that they could easily become redundant if they did not redefine their role within the new realities of a democratic transition in the country. As most such groups contemplated their future, they found themselves in the very same quagmire of irrelevance that protest theatre groups in South Africa faced at the end of apartheid. These artists soon realised that if they did not change tack, they could soon become irrelevant. Most

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of these groups began to question the democratic function of theatre. They realised that their role was to offer commentary on political institutions and to offer community-driven approaches to theatre. This approach restored the power of communities and citizens over political institutions. Theatre groups began to advance the rights of minorities and the marginalised as they pointed out the fact that subaltern classes also had a mandate to redefine the destiny of the country.

Theoretical Framework Agency is a critical concept in this chapter because it shapes the nature of subaltern participation and empowerment in transformative processes such as those that are performed in Protest Revolutionaries. In line with this, the chapter borrows from Antonio Gramsci’s concept of intellectual agency. Gramsci (1999, p. 140) observes that each person: [c]arries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a philosopher, an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, he has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or modify it, that is to bring into being new modes of thought.

Although each individual is in possession of intellectual capabilities as implied by Gramsci, not everyone has the freedom to exercise intellectual autonomy. Rather, a special group of people monopolises the intellectual base of a social group. Gramsci (1999, p. 140) further notes that ‘all men are intellectuals (…) but not all men have the function of intellectuals’. This is because every social group has ‘its own specialised category of intellectuals’ whose function is to give a social group a sense of ‘homogeneity and awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields’ (Gramsci 1999, p. 135). This Gramscian understanding of social relations is crucial because it alerts one to the fact that it is not only within the domain of the state that intellectuals emerge with a desire to influence the production of meaning in society. Rather, within social movements that are opposed to the state, there also emerges a group of intellectuals or elites who wish to control the thought processes of society. Gramsci (1999, p. 142) reiterates the point when he adds:

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One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals, thus the assimilation and conquest is made quicker.

Like state intellectuals, these anti-state intellectuals also seek to exercise moral and intellectual leadership over other members of subaltern groups. In other words, they seek to extend their hegemony over their subaltern compatriots. In this way both the state and the anti-state intellectuals use ideological apparatuses in similar ways. Gramsci’s conceptualisation is useful in analysing the way in which protest theatre that is deployed in opposition to the state conveys and legitimises the intellectual and moral leadership (hegemony) of elites, intellectuals or alternative groups who seek to undo the dominance of the state. It is, in this regard, a Gramscian approach which enables this chapter to explore those instances where subalterns are denied the function of intellectuals who can modify the discourse of change and transformation as espoused by protest theatre in the period under scrutiny. Gramsci (1999, p. 135) also goes further to say that: [t]he mass of the peasantry, although it performs an essential function in the world of production, does not elaborate its own ‘organic’ intellectuals, although it is from the peasantry that other social groups draw many of their intellectuals and a high proportion of traditional intellectuals are from the peasantry.

Gramsci therefore acknowledges the fact that lower classes do not have only the capacity to organise social and political struggles, but also the agency to resist, which is the ability to challenge at an intellectual level the ideas that are generated by the elites who want to exercise moral and intellectual control over processes of change. Following Gramsci, it is clear then that lower classes have the intellectual capability to modify and redefine the semiotic implications of processes of change in society. Resistive agency is thus also a form of semiotic resistance as subaltern classes generate their own meanings and understanding of their involvement in processes of social change. Subaltern classes are not only actors who execute commands that are issued by the elite. Rather they are also participants in social and political processes of change for reasons of their own. Therefore, an analysis of subaltern resistive agency and semiotic resistance to the discourse of democracy benefits from Gramsci’s ideas as outlined above.

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Character Diversity as Empowerment in Protest Revolutionaries Vhitori Entertainment’s paradigm shift is evident in the nature of the main characters in Protest Revolutionaries. The play’s dramatis personae consist of Chikaka, Mother, Mr. George, Cde Rebel, and Artist. Chikaka is a rural farmer in his forties and a former fighter in the war of liberation who has decided to join ordinary Zimbabweans in their fight for freedom. Chikaka represents the rural folk in this production. Mother is a popular vegetable vendor. She represents the poor urban folk and women of Zimbabwe. Cde Rebel represents the vision and thinking of the country’s youth. Artist is a common man and an idealist. Right from the beginning of the play, Vhitori Entertainment elevates the common people to the same levels of transformative power as they do with the elites in their previous offerings such as Final Push and Madame Speaker Sir 2.1 This emphasis enables the play to reveal subaltern interpretations of change and transformation and enables the subalterns to comment on the status quo using their own voices. Vhitori Entertainment does not only reverse the derogatory construction of subaltern agency by simply allotting all the deliberative power in this play to subaltern characters; the subaltern classes are also sensitive to diversity and fragmentation which allows voices of the elite to interact with the voices of the poor. For Vhitori Entertainment the need to provide space for the poor to find their voice does not result in the obliteration of the voice of the dominant classes. Indeed, Vhitori Entertainment is aware of the fact that replacing the dictatorship of the elite with the dictatorship of the subaltern is inherently undemocratic. Protest Revolutionaries creates a forum for dialogue that allows both the poor and the privileged members of society to speak. This is why the play incorporates characters such as Mr. George. Mr. George is a state intelligence operative. There is a number of other characters that Vhitori Entertainment creates through the style of ‘a play within a play’ and multiple casting. These directorial preferences create more characters that represent the voice of the state such as the Police Chief, the Reporter, the

1 Both Final Push and Madame Speaker Sir were written and directed by Silvanos Bhanditi Mudzvova, director of Vhitori Entertainment. These plays were mentioned in a citation which led to him being awarded the Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent by Human Rights Foundation in 2017.

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Professor and the Newsman. The voice of the state represents the voice of political elites. True to the spirit of the public sphere, the poor air their opinions in full knowledge of the interests of the elites. This enables multivocality without inhibition and restriction. Diversity of characters is not necessarily an adequate guarantee of the play’s fidelity to democratic practices. For example, in Savanna Trust’s Decades of Terror 2 (2007), a diversity of characters is evident through characters such as Brian and Father (subaltern) as well as Mutongi and Garamombe (elite). However, this diversity does not automatically result in subaltern agency. Even in plays such as Heaven’s Diary 3 (2005), where there are only subaltern characters, there are constraints in the way the play portrays subaltern agency. To this effect, the chapter interrogates the characters in Protest Revolutionaries with more rigour in order to test whether subaltern characters such as Mother and Cde Rebel are in possession of resistive agency. Resistive agency implies the ability of subaltern characters to resist and modify the intellectual leadership of the elite. It also encompasses the ability to use intellectual capabilities to redefine and change the course of events.

Mother as a Resistive Subaltern Gramsci (1999, p. 140) notes that ‘not all men have the function of intellectuals’ because every social group has ‘its own specialised category of intellectuals’ whose function is to give the social group a sense of ‘homogeneity and awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields’ (Gramsci 1999, p. 135). According to Gramsci, all people possess intellectual capabilities which inform their political consciousness and it is because of their intellectual capabilities that subaltern classes are able to resist the intellectual and moral leadership of elitist groups in society. It is therefore crucial that this section investigates how Mother displays intellectual autonomy and resistive agency. Such an investigation will reveal whether Protest Revolutionaries empowers the agency of subaltern characters.

2 Decades of Terror was written by Daniel Maposa and directed by Samuel Ravengai at Theatre in the Park in 2007. 3 Heaven’s Diary was written and directed by Daniel Maposa. He also performed in the same play.

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Foucault (1994, p. 128) has written that an analysis of agency should entail an examination of: [t]he forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point. To use another metaphor, it consists in using this resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, find out their point of application and methods used. Rather than analysing power from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analysing power relations through the antagonism of strategies.

By analysing resistance, one also examines subaltern capacity to organise and lead the struggle for change. Mother is a subaltern character. A vendor by profession, Mother carries a big basket full of fruit and vegetables. Throughout the play she wears an old and oversized apron, a doek and a torn pair of shoes. She has the habit of speaking at the top of her voice since she is used to speaking loudly as she markets her wares to passers-by. Reporter, who is a dramatic embodiment of the elites, interacts with Mother in ways which allow Mother to modify the intellectual processes of Reporter. In one scenario, Mother challenges Reporter word for word. She protests against authorities not because someone has influenced her to do so, but because of her own experience with repressive state agents, as the following episode indicates: Reporter: Who forced you to attend this protest? Mother: Who forced you on a propaganda rollercoaster? Reporter: How much were you paid by the American government to destabilise a sovereign and peaceful nation such as ours? Mother: Thanks to the barbaric and insincere police who abuse energy crushing the innocent instead of conserving that energy for the bed. Three protesters were killed by the police, look at those fresh graves, why are they provoking us? (Protest Revolutionaries 2012).

Mother demonstrates that she has the intellectual capability to challenge the propaganda that Reporter unleashes on her. She makes it clear to Reporter that she has her own agenda, which has nothing to do with the Americans.4 As she interacts with Reporter, her movements and use of space complement her display of resistive agency. She is not the docile mother 4 The nationalist discourse espoused by the state projected the West and Americans as sponsoring anti-state discourses through Civic Society Organisations.

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who is afraid of authorities. Her gestures are not in any way submissive. She assumes a combative posture, raising her chest in order to demonstrate that she is ready to fight for her rights. She invades Reporter’s space and forces him to retreat, which shows that she is capable of challenging him both physically and intellectually. In a different scenario, Mr. George tries to convince Mother to go home since in his view she is being ‘used’ by the MDC to engage in protest action. This is clear in the following conversation: Mr. George: Look guys, we should just go home and enjoy life with our families [rather] than risk it for some politicians’ benefit. Mother: Which politicians are you talking about? I am doing this so that my family can have a better future, a better life for our kids (Protest Revolutionaries 2012).

As Mother talks to Mr. George she circles around him to demonstrate that she has a dominant status. She walks with a masterful gait and she speaks at the top of her voice, indicating that she is not the passive and feeble woman whom Mr. George assumes she is. Mother turns the tables as she deliberately conjures images of power and victimisation that are normally associated with state operatives such as Mr. George. By so doing, she appropriates the very images that Mr. George uses to invoke fear. Through the appropriation of Mr. George’s images of power, Mother becomes what Homi K. Bhabha (1994, p. 88) calls the ‘mimic man’. The mimic man or woman is important because s/he disrupts imaginary lines of difference which the elites often use as an alibi to justify the domination of subaltern groups. Foucault (1994, p. 126) observes that a dominant social group will employ ‘dividing practices’ that invent derogatory identities of inferiority which are then ascribed to other social groups to legitimise domination. Foucault (1994, p. 131) also submits that a dominant social group exercises control through ‘pastoral power’. Pastoral power allows members of dominant social groups (Reporter and Mr. George) to lead subordinate groups. Gramsci’s equivalent of Foucault’s pastoral power is hegemony, which he defines as the moral and intellectual leadership that a dominant social group exercises on its subjects. For hegemony or pastoral power to be effective, the dominant social group invents difference. This difference is not real but imagined. When

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Mother appropriates Mr. George’s images of power, she disrupts imaginary lines of difference that Mr. George attempts to use to legitimise pastoral power and hegemony over Mother. Mother proves that she is not different from Mr. George and that like Mr. George and Reporter, she too is capable of leading the struggle. Through the deconstruction of imaginary lines of difference, Mother makes ‘visible the contradictions of authority’ (Sharpe 1995, p. 99). Sharpe (1995, p. 99) also notes that ‘the mimic man (woman) is a contradictory figure who simultaneously reinforces the authority and disturbs it’. At one level, appropriation suggests that she conjures up her resistance in the image of the oppressor. This paradigm is of little significance if one realises that she does not mimic Mr. George blindly. Rather, she displays intellectual autonomy by mimicking to contaminate and undermine the ideological basis of Mr. George’s superiority. The contradictory and ambivalent behaviour of Mother indicates her ability to re-invent herself beyond the ideological boundaries that Mr. George creates for her. Mother therefore becomes a problem to authority. Bhabha (1994, p. 88) reiterates this point when he submits that ‘the menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of the colonial (state) discourse also disrupts its authority’. In Bhabha’s (1994, p. 88) construct, Mother is indeed: [t]he figure(s) of a doubling, the partial objects of a metonym of a desire which alienates the modality and normality of the dominant discourse in which (she) emerge(s) as (an) ‘inappropriate’ [...] subject [Brackets mine].

Appropriation and the subsequent ambivalence and mutation of identity are therefore forms of resistance that display Mother’s intellectual authority and control. Mimicry thus becomes a ‘complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline which appropriates the other as it visualises power’ (Bhabha 1994, p. 86). Mother’s dominant role in conceptualising and organising the protest is significant because it highlights the agency of poor mothers as transformative agents. While elite narratives of struggle side-line the contributions of the poor, they side-line women’s agency even more severely (Young 1988; Brooks 1997; Phillips 1992; Walby 1992; Gunew 1990; Barrat and Philips 1992). To this effect, Mother represents the marginalised of

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the marginalised, the most neglected section of the subaltern community. It cannot be denied that gender politics and patriarchal control are also prevalent among the subaltern. For this reason, Mother’s story is dually constructed. She fights two wars, the greater political war and the gendered war within that greater political war. Her conviction for participating in the struggle reveals the fact that the common people do realise that change will not come if they leave it to a few elites. Mother realises that there is power in numbers and that, although some will perish in the process, their numbers will ultimately win the war. She also engages in the protest demonstration because she wants to register her personal agency as a force for change. In fact, the focus on the activities of the common people during protest marches in this play reveals the significance of subaltern agency in bringing about progressive social change. It clearly shows that the story of struggle is not complete without the likes of Mother, who plays a critical role in bringing about social and political reform.

Subaltern Semiotic Resistance: Chikaka and Cde Rebel Gramsci (1999) observes that intellectual autonomy generates semiotic resistance, which has a bearing on what Raymond Williams (1977, p. 35) refers to as ‘the general production of meaning in society’. Chikaka and Cde Rebel redefine what struggle and Chimurenga imply in the new Zimbabwe. They modify the memory of Chimurenga 5 and proffer counter-discursive readings of Chimurenga. The status quo in this play refers to the country’s chimurenga wars as instances of the gallantry of the people (the elites) against white colonialists. Chikaka and Cde Rebel refer to chimurenga as an instance of people’s (the subaltern) gallantry against systems of oppression. There is a world of difference between these two 5 Chimurenga refers to ‘revolution’ or ‘uprising’. It is a term that was coined by Africans when they fought European settlers in the 1890s. There have been three Chimurengas in Zimbabwe, which are the first Chimurenga (1896–7), second Chimurenga (1966–79) and the third Chimurenga (2000–2009). T. O. Ranger submits that the state’s patriotic history project insisted that Chimurenga implies war against Whites. Chikaka and Cde Rebel argue that Chimureng a implies not a racial war, but a war against oppression in all its ramifications. Chikaka and Cde Rebel advance the point that the official understanding of Chimurenga masks corruption, poor governance, and primitive accumulation by state elites.

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interpretations. Chikaka, a veteran of the second chimurenga, argues that the war did little to remove oppression as the new ruling class replicates systems of oppression that they purport to have removed. He argues that he did not fight the war to usher in black-on-black oppression. The semiotic battle over the meaning of chimurenga is also evident in Cde Rebel’s psychosis. Cde Rebel believes that the protest march represents the fourth chimurenga. According to Cde Rebel the fourth chimurenga is the war that his community launches in order to fight black-on-black oppression. It is the war to fight oppression on any other creed of humanity. Cde Rebel therefore modifies the memory of chimurenga, redirecting it to have implications beyond state control. When Mother and Chikaka appear to be intimidated by Mr. George, Cde Rebel clearly reminds them that the protest against the status quo is part of the trope of the Chimurenga wars launched by people against oppression. He remarks: Cde Rebel: Comrades, you cannot abandon the cause. It is now or never. During the liberation struggle, the first shots were fired inChinhoyi. All the six comrades who started the war died. Today they are heroes and we talk about them. The guerrillas never gave up. It actually strengthened them. We have begun, so let us finish. We are so close. We can do it comrades (Protest Revolutionaries 2012).

Cde Rebel also redefines the title of ‘comrade’, which is usually given to people who support the status quo in Zimbabwe. Cde Rebel appropriates this title as a way of disrupting its association with pro-state activists. This indicates the depth of semiotic resistance that is signified by his character. The play is therefore inclusive as it embraces the intellectual contribution of subordinate groups in the struggle for change.

The Reversal of Identities of Victimhood Mother, Chikaka and Cde Rebel refuse to be the helpless victims of police brutality. Unlike Brian and Father, who play the role of victims in Savanah Trust’s Decades of Terror (2007), Mother, Chikaka and Cde Rebel organise resistance against the police. Unlike Laiza, Tom and Zacks, who bemoan state-sponsored violence, Mother and company retaliate against the state. During the protest, which they have organised without the help of the elites, they do not run away from the police. They are so brave that Mr. George implores them not to fight back against the police.

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They do not mourn. Rather, they organise as they demystify the power of the state. They refuse to believe that their actions are fruitless. Unlike Savannah Trust’s Heaven’s Diary (2005) where Tom, Zacks and Laiza discuss issues without taking action, Mother, Chikaka and Cde Rebel design and implement change. They reverse relations of power between state intellectuals and themselves. Their protest creates a revolution; hence the play’s title: Protest Revolutionaries. The change in the balance of power is significant. Jill Dolan (1988) argues that at times performances which advocate subaltern independence such as protest theatre leave the status quo intact as they do not significantly realign relations of power. She argues that while the subalterns engage in resistance, they only ruffle the feathers of power structures without necessarily dismantling such structures. This description befits protest plays such as Decades of Terror (2007) and Heaven’s Diary (2005). In both plays, the consciousness of subaltern characters (Brian and Father in Decades of Terror and Zacks, Tom and Laiza in Heaven’s Diary) is contaminated by the influence of the elite to the extent that the subaltern players in these productions fail to display any capacity to organise and resist the state without the help of the elites (Chikonzo 2010, 2011). However, the actions of Mother, Chikaka and Cde Rebel strongly refute Dolan’s conclusion because they reverse and undermine the authority of the state at both the hegemonic and the repressive levels. They not only discard the moral and intellectual control of Mr. George and Reporter, but they also defeat the police. In Gramsci’s (1971) understanding of state civilian relations, there are two forms of power that are used by the state to control citizens. The first is ‘rule’ which in Gramsci’s (1971, p. 12) view is: [t]he apparatus of state coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ’consent’ either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed.

The state enforces control using physical force which coerces the ruled to consent to the authority of the state. The police and the army are the agents of coercion in this play. The second form of control is ‘hegemony’, which Gramsci (1971, p. 12) describes as:

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[t]he ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ’historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.

State intellectuals try to naturalise the moral and intellectual leadership of the status quo so that citizens spontaneously agree to be under the authority of the state. Mother, Chikaka and Cde Rebel defeat the state in both manifestations of state power. Gramsci (1971) also argues that the state maintains hegemonic control by taking cognisance of the interests of the subaltern, which makes state hegemony a hybrid result of both subaltern and elite co-operation. Tony Bennett (1996) suggests that the state designs the compromise equilibrium between itself and the subaltern classes in such a way that in the end, the state prevails. Like Dolan (1988), Bennett (1996, p. 351) argues that the state retains its dominant status: If the Gramscian concept of hegemony refers to the processes by which the ruling class seeks to negotiate opposing class cultures onto a cultural and ideological terrain, which wins a position of leadership, it is also true that what is thereby consented to is a negotiated version of ruling class culture and ideology.

The escapades of Mother, Chikaka and Cde Rebel contest Bennett’s submission because, at the end of the play the state (Mr. George) begs the three to accommodate him in the new dispensation. The play demonstrates that it is conceivable to effect change from below. The call for the democratisation of protest theatre is not an attempt at achieving the impossible. It is possible to create protest theatre which does not undermine the agency of other social groups. It is possible to democratise political protest theatre so that it ceases to construct citizens as victims of political patronage but rather as individuals who have the intellectual capacity to determine the destiny of their country. This is crucial because people engage in struggle not because the elite have told them to do so but because they have reasons of their own. It will be interesting to explore how the model of democratic protest theatre proffered by Vhitori Entertainment can be used to empower subaltern agency against other structures of oppression such as patriarchy, gender, race and class oppression.

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References Barrat, Michelle, and Anne Philips, eds. 1992. Destabilizing theory: Contemporary feminist debates. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bennett, Tony. 1996. Popular culture and ‘the turn to Gramsci’ . In Approaches to media: A reader, ed. Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Chris Newbold, 348–353. New York and London: St Martin’s Press Inc. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The location of culture. London: Routledge. Bond, Patrick, and Masimba Manyanya. 2003. Zimbabwe’s plunge: Exhausted nationalism, neoliberalism, and the search for social justice. Harare: Weaver Press. Brooks, Anne. 1997. Postfeminisms, feminism, cultural theory, and cultural forms. London and New York: Routledge. Chikonzo, Kelvin. 2010. The construction of subaltern consciousness in Zimbabwean protest theatre: The case of Heaven’s Diary. Latin American Report 26 (2): 107–113. Chikonzo, Kelvin. 2011. The pitfalls of realism in transformative theatre. Latin American Report 27 (2): 213–224. Dolan, Jill. 1988. The feminist spectator as critique. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Foucault, Michel. 1994. The essential Foucault: Selection from the essential works of Foucault 1954–1984. London: The New Press. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. A selection from prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Gramsci, Antonio. 1999. Selections from the prison notebooks. In Essential classics in politics: Antonio Gramsci. London: Electric Book Company. Gunew, Sneja, ed. 1990. Feminist knowledge: Critique and construct. London: Routledge. Maposa, Daniel. 2007. Decades of terror. Savannah Trust, Video Recording. Harare. Mudzvova Bhanditi, Silvanos. 2012. Protest revolutionaries. Vhitori Entertainment, Live Recording. Harare. Phillips, Anne. 1992. Universal pretensions in political thought. In Destabilizing theory: Contemporary feminist debates, ed. Michelle Barrat and A. Philips, 23– 34. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sharpe, Jenny. 1995. Figures of colonial resistance. In Post-colonial studies reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 99–103. London: Routledge. Walby, Sylvia. 1992. Post-postmodernism: Theorising social complexity. In Destabilizing theory: Contemporary feminist debates, ed. Michele Barrat and Anne Phillips, 31–54. California: Stanford University Press. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Young, Iris. M. 1988. Justice and the politics of difference. In Democracy: A reader, ed. Ricardo Blaug and John Schwarzmantel, 165–168. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

CHAPTER 12

Who is Indigenous? Freeing Indigeneity from a Time Warp Pedzisai Maedza

Introduction In this chapter, I consider Great Zimbabwe University (GZU)’s Venda and Shangaan 1 dance troupe as a source and subject of discourse about indigeneity and post-colonial identity. I examine how the troupe is constituted in and through performance to frame dance as an expression and articulation of cultural tradition, practice and a distinctive avowal of cultural and national identity. Dance becomes a site for the embodiment, production, reproduction, negotiation and ascription of cultural identity. I problematise the conflation of indigeneity with the pre-colonial experience. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s (1977) concept of the panopticon 1 The Venda and Shangaan are also found in South Africa and Mozambique. In South Africa, the term Tsonga is preferred to Shangaan as the latter is associated with Tsonga speakers who are descendants of a Nguni group led by Soshangane. Not all Tsonga speaking people originally belonged to this Nguni grouping. This chapter focuses on the population groups in Zimbabwe.

P. Maedza (B) School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_12

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I interrogate the construction and use of the notion of indigeneity in the field of African indigenous dance. I also repurpose Pascal Blanchard’s (2008) work on the human zoo to examine the packaging of indigenous performing arts. What I suggest here is that in performance, the dancers’ bodies singularly and collectively produce, rather than serve as mere reflections of meaning. I further suggest that the GZU Venda and Shangaan dance troupe, like some other indigenous arts, is currently framed in a manner that colours and traps indigenous performance traditions in a time warp. This account can be understood as an imperfect response to three rhetorical questions as follows: who creates culture? Secondly, who decides what this culture comprises of? And lastly, how is this culture represented? The insights in this chapter are primarily drawn from a yearlong experience of observing and working alongside the GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe by the author as part of the teaching staff that was tasked with developing a new Performance Studies department at Great Zimbabwe University. This chapter interrogates the university’s current performance interpretation of the culture and heritage promotion discourse. I confine the investigation to the construction of indigeneity in and through the GZU’s indigenous dance troupe for the purposes of illustration. I frame the troupe’s ‘performance as a lens [which] enables commentators to explore not only isolated events and limited cases, but also the scenarios that make up individual and collective imaginaries’ (Taylor 2003, p. 278). The observations can be extended to a wide spectrum of similar cases where culture is exclusively used as a prerequisite in the constitution of cultural performing groups and the contextual politics of indigeneity. I make two interrelated arguments. The first is that the groups’ conceptualisation is ominously out of step with where anthropology and cultural studies have got to in this post-colonial age. Second, the group’s cultural signification and markers of authenticity seem to be steeped in a time warp. To appreciate the performance troupe’s conceptualisation of what is presented as indigenous fully, it is essential to interrogate the university context in which it operates. GZU is one of ten state universities in Zimbabwe. It is a multicampused university located in and around the City of Masvingo, formally known as Fort Victoria in colonial Rhodesia. The university was launched in June 1999 as a satellite Masvingo Degree Programme of the University of Zimbabwe. In 2000, it was upgraded to the Masvingo University

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College of the University of Zimbabwe. On 22 December 2002, it was granted autonomy to operate as Masvingo State University through an Act of Parliament Chapter 22.24 No. 11/2002 (Research Council of Zimbabwe 2016, p. 45). The university is named after the ancient stoneruin city known as the Great Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwe Ruins.2 The ancient city is located about 28 km southeast of the current city of Masvingo, near Lake Mutirikwi. The site is famous for its granite freestanding masonry walls which were constructed without mortar. It is a UNESCO, UNDP and World Heritage List registered site (Ndoro 1994, p. 620). The ruins are recognised as the relic of a thriving pre-contact Karanga civilisation. The architectural ingenuity and magnificence of the city has been described as being second only to the pyramids in Egypt (Bangré 2010). The art of the mortar-less masonry earned the site the name Dzimbabwe (Houses of Stone) in Chikaranga, the local Shona dialect (Ndoro 1994, p. 617). This ancient pre-contact civilisation has a lot of symbolic importance in the country’s collective nationalist imagination and statecraft. This symbolism is evidenced by the fact that the country Zimbabwe draws its name from this site. The soapstone carved Chapungu birds, christened the Zimbabwe bird, found at the site have a long appearance history on the country’s national flags. The bird made its first appearance on the flag of Rhodesia that flew from 1968 to 1979 and was also adopted on the personal flag of the governor of Southern Rhodesia. It was depicted on the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia flag of 1979. The bird adorned the car flag of the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980. It was also retained on the newly independent Zimbabwe flag inaugurated in 1980 and became an emblem on the country’s coat of arms. The bird was also depicted on some of the country’s abandoned currencies. The Rhodesian pound, the Rhodesian dollar and the Zimbabwe dollar all carried the bird on their face. Through its naming and location, Great Zimbabwe University is imagined as a symbolic umbilical celebration and regeneration of the grandeur of the ancient civilisation. The university was thus conceptualised as the country’s ‘centre of excellence in arts, culture and heritage studies’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). The heritage and cultural specificity of its founding Charter makes it unique from all 2 In July 2007, the Masvingo State University Amendment Act (2007) was passed in Parliament paving the way for Masvingo State University to be renamed Great Zimbabwe University adopting the name of the former Church university.

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other state universities. Its mandate and mission is firstly to lead efforts to ‘reclaim and preserve […] African culture and heritage’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). Secondly, its mission is to ‘mainstream Arts, Culture and Heritage’ in its ‘teaching and research’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). Thirdly, the university’s mission is to ‘lead in the development of entrepreneurs and professionals in the creative industry’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). The university assumed its current name due to a series of events. The first was the March 2004 closure of the privately run Reformed Church in Zimbabwe (Dutch Reformed Church) University that went by the same moniker. Masvingo State University absorbed the staff and students of the failed university (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). The second was a September 2004 executive presidential call. The call was made by then President Robert Mugabe, who was the Chancellor of all State Universities while addressing traditional chiefs at the Great Zimbabwe Monuments. Mugabe argued that there was need for an institution of higher learning to be named after the monuments that would lead in heritage, arts and cultural studies. The state then issued an edict to the failed church university to cede its name to Masvingo State University. This was followed up in January 2006 by an international conference. The conference was titled ‘Transformation of Masvingo State University to Great Zimbabwe University’. It ran under the theme ‘Reclaiming National and Cultural Heritage in Higher Education: Situating the Humanities and Creative Arts in Local Contexts’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). In July 2007, the Parliament of Zimbabwe passed the Masvingo State University Amendment Act (2007) which enabled the institution to adopt the name of the failed church-run university (Research Council of Zimbabwe 2016).

Venda and Shangaan Performance Troupes The GZU Venda (Fig. 12.1) and Shangaan (Fig. 12.2) performance troupes are co-ordinated by staff in the performance department. Its volunteer members are drawn from the whole university’s student population regardless of programme of study and specialisation or level of study. The current composition of the GZU Venda and Shangaan performing troupe membership is determined by indigeneity. This means all current members of the performance troupe are persons who self-identify as either Venda or Shangaan. This is a phenomenon that can be observed across

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Fig. 12.1 GZU Venda dancers

Fig. 12.2 GZU Shangaan dancers

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the region in the composition of performing groups plying their art and trade under the label of cultural performance troupes. With Mathias Guenther, I am disturbed, for reasons I will expand on below, ‘by the essentialism, primordialism and primitivism’ that shadows the cultural performance troupe (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 17). This is further complicated by the ‘residual colonialism, inherent in the conceptualisations’ and representations of identity (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 17). The exclusive use of dancers who self-identify with certain ethnicities essentialises their identities as fixed and immutable. When ethnic origin is used to define and to determine insider or outsider status, fixed notions of identity and authenticity are imposed onto the corporeal bodies. These identity markers are reified when they perform indigenous cultural dances. I suggest that such readings of dancers’ corporeal bodies constitute a form of public segregation which is an affront to ‘the people’—in this case the Venda and Shangaan and other minorities need to be probed. The University’s performance troupe exists, as does the university, as part of a nationalist project to ‘reclaim and preserve our African culture and heritage’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). African tradition interwoven with culture and heritage is framed as needing post-colonial resuscitation. This is envisioned as being possible through a systematic project to harness and restore pride in what is local and indigenous. This understanding of what is African and ‘ours’ is drawn as a binary opposite to what is colonial and western. It is an oppositional appropriation and unintended continuation of the colonial worldview. Colonial Europeans considered African tradition as ‘any aspects that were not European’ without defining what these were (Krystal 2012, p. 147). In Rhodesia, as seems to be the case now, what is African, traditional and Zimbabwean is ‘assumed to have been stable, essentially unchanged from a deep imagined past before European presence’ (Krystal 2012, p. 147). One could go as far as to suggest that in nationalist state-building the ‘traditional cannot be divorced from [the] colonial’ (Krystal 2012, p. 147).

Who is Indigenous? While the full scale of definitions falls outside the scope of this chapter, I draw on a few theorists to propose a working definition of who counts as indigenous. This is because ‘indigenous’ is a highly contested and problematic term and designation. The term emerged in the 1970s and was championed by the American Indian Movement and the Canadian Indian

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Brotherhood (Smith 1999, p. 7). These movements sought to forge an international front to champion the cause of people subjected to colonisation. The term ‘appears to collectivise many distinct populations whose experiences under imperialism have been vastly different’ (Smith 1999, p. 6). In different places across the world, various other terms have been used to refer to persons designated as indigenous. ‘First Nations’, ‘First Peoples’, ‘Native Peoples’, ‘People of the Land’, ‘Aboriginals’, ‘Fourth World Peoples’ have been the preferred terms at various times in Australia, the Americas, Canada, New Zealand and in Southern Africa (Smith 1999, p. 6). Even the United Nations does not have a universal definition of who counts as indigenous. Instead it has an often-cited fluid working characterisation of who qualifies as indigenous. This outline states that ‘[i]ndigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system’ (Cobo 1982, p. 3). While this U.N. definition provides a general guideline, it does not state how the continuity and claims to territory can be substantiated. More importantly, we must be wary of being reductionists who believe that legal conventions equal preservation. This is because the recognition and observation of minorities’ cultural and human rights have not always operated in tandem. As Guenther reminds us: ‘‘Indigenous’ is a term applied to people—and by the people to themselves—who are engaged in an often, desperate struggle for political rights, for land, for a place and space within a modern nation’s economy and society. Identity and selfrepresentation are vital elements of the political platform of such peoples’ (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 17). This leaves the question of who counts as indigenous in a paradoxical grey zone. The fluidity of the concept means that the rights and claims of those who claim indigeneity equally rest on the recognition of those considered as non-indigenous. My concern with the exclusive use of ethno-tribal affiliations in determining membership to the GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe stems from the fact that the indigeneity rhetoric itself has its

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costs. Since modernisation, and in the 1960s and 1970s, indigeneity has come to symbolise backwardness in the social imaginary. This was based on the perception that the traditional practices and beliefs of indigenous peoples obstructed the progress of the modern nation (Valdivia 2005). In this context, the GZU performance troupe’s exclusive group membership risks being misunderstood and being reduced to entrenching perceptions of hereditary backwardness. These stereotypes have long been used to justify minority group discrimination. As minorities, the Venda and Shangaan people in Zimbabwe have borne the brunt of this in a society where the Shona-speaking majority dominates the political and public sphere. Twentieth century anthropology left behind a lingering legacy of static and essentialist conceptualisations of culture and identity. Colonial Rhodesia perpetuated these notions, and post-colonial Zimbabwe seems to have followed suit in codifying certain cultures, and those deemed ‘indigenous’ have been particularly prone to such reductionism (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 22). For the GZU troupe this is evident in the ease with which the Venda and Shangaan people despite being two distinct entities have their cultures merged into one performance troupe. The danger of enduring colonial stereotypes lies in the fact that it is a small move from ‘primitive’ to ‘indigenous’, and more worryingly it is not hard to move back again to the old colonial stereotype insults (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 22). Appeals to stereotypes of hunter-gatherers for minorities make it hard for indigenous people to argue for goods and services that do not fit the image of ‘natives’ (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 22). I take issue with the university practice of confining membership of the performing troupe to minority communities. Such an approach reduces cultural dance as an art form to indigeneity. This is unsustainable since ‘it must be recognised that indigenous people do not require particular phenotypical traits, certain forms of cultural alterity, specific ethic-moral beliefs/actions, or a level of social disadvantage in order to be indigenous’ (Paradies 2005, p. 363). I argue that culture and performance have the capacity to lead and aid post-colonial societies in dismantling stereotypes and to re-imagine identity. Post-colonial society in general and GZU in particular, as an academic institution hosting this performance troupe, can aid and lead in consciously decoupling indigeneity from disadvantage and marginality. This decoupling should sever cultural and physical alterity from callow moral dichotomies in the social imaginary.

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Indigeneity Zimbabwe as an emergent post-colonial state has had a troubled tenure with addressing the systematic colonial destruction of indigenous cultures and value systems. This is particularly acute for indigenous minorities given that contemporary post-colonial politics pivots on ethnic identity. Post-colonial Zimbabwe has politicised and used indigeneity to justify and motivate for various forms of social, political and economic redress. Among various ethnic groups that have claims—after generations of oppression by the colonial state—to rights and land, there are competing claims to indigenous status and standing (Guenther et al. 2006). Ethnic inequalities can be witnessed in the way minority communities have had to organise and are active on many fronts. Some indigenous minorities in Zimbabwe have devoted the past three and a half decades to the struggle to have their languages accorded legitimacy as mediums of instruction in schools and in the administration of justice. This activism and lobbying for most local languages to be given constitutional recognition was acceded to only with the adoption of a new constitution in 2013. For most of these newly recognised languages, the struggle to get adoption and usage in formal educational institutions and judicial legitimation and practice is still ongoing. This activism shows that cultural identity in its many manifestations is an extremely important matter in the post-colony. Against such a backdrop the ethnic specificity of GZU troupe members makes for an informative case to study how culture is imagined and performed. The establishment of the university as chronicled above, can be understood as being part and parcel of the national government’s nationalist statebuilding project. The university uncritically promotes the state’s vision to instrumentalise the reclamation and promotion of indigenous knowledge systems in state-building. The GZU Venda and Shangaan troupe is part of this vision. In and through performance the group is ‘encoding identity through movement […] dance functions as a mode of empowerment for oppressed characters’ (Gilbert 1992, p. 139). My reading of identity and indigeneity in the GZU dance troupe foregrounds the issue of self-identification as fundamental. I argue that there is substantial ‘tension between self-identification and the concept of indigeneity as being founded on historical descent and genealogical lineage’ (Canessa 2007, p. 198).

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Through the GZU performance troupe we witness how dance is used to articulate, express, contest and contemplate indigenous cultural belonging. The dances the troupe present are understood as representations and expressions of views about social life and cultural behaviour (Figs. 12.3 and 12.4). This is because ‘dance constitutes one of the major vehicles for ethnic reinvention and the construction of ethnicity, identity, and heritage’ (Shay 2006, p. 56). Through dance, individuals can ‘embrace or challenge tradition and express conformity or individualism’ (Krystal 2012, p. 6). It follows then that while dancing, dancers can ‘follow tradition and innovate while expressing individualism that conforms to the norms of the group’ (Krystal 2012, p. 6). Indigeneity is not best understood in terms of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as some of those involved on both sides of the, ‘indigenous peoples debate’ would have it (Canessa 2007, p. 196). The exoticised and romanticised image of the hunter-gatherer indigenous person is a manifestation of the time warp that I seek to displace. I suggest that people’s dynamic relationship with the past is what underpins their social relations in the present. Historical consciousness becomes manifest in present social

Fig. 12.3 GZU Venda dancers greeting the crowd

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Fig. 12.4 GZU Shangaan dancers acknowledging the audience

relations and cannot be confined to their corporeality. Rather, indigeneity is ‘a contemporary social relation articulated in terms of the past. This, however, need not imply a genealogical relation with the past and there is no necessary reason that such an understanding be essentialized’ (Canessa 2007, p. 196). I suggest that indigeneity be understood as a, ‘political construct, not an anthropological one’ (Guenther et al. 2006, p. 24). For Guenther indigeneity stands for ‘a claim to legitimate political goals for a category of peoples whose identity we recognise “when we see it”, despite the possible definitional problems that the concept creates’ (2006, p. 24). While I agree with most of Guenther et al.’s observations, I take exception to the idea that indigenous people have an ‘identity we recognise “when we see it”’ (2006, p. 24). This conception of visibly authentic and recognisable indigeneity fuels some unhelpful phenotypes and stereotypes of cultural performances. Similar ideas inform the framing and reception of the GZU Venda and Shangaan troupe’s membership and corporeal bodies. It is imperative that we decouple and free indigeneity from the

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yoke of this romanticising view. This yoke disregards the dynamism of culture. Instead it demands a slavish adherence to archaic precepts as the only expression of cultural authenticity. The complexity of indigeneity should be recognised and not erased when different groups of people use it to articulate, impose, inhabit, contest and negotiate their identities. I use the term indigenous as a label to represent people, but with the caution that it does not fix them as naturally indigenous or define them by one aspect of identity. We cannot take it as a matter of course that all people who might be considered indigenous think of themselves in these terms at all. Such assumptions cannot be made, and when made should not remain unchallenged even in cases when their putative leaders express their collective identity in these ways.

Performing Culture There seems to be an unstated expectation that for the GZU Venda and Shangaan dancing troupe’s performances to be accepted as cultural they must remain entrapped in a time warp. There is an expectation that the performers keep close to what the audiences imagine as being pre-colonial dance pattern choreography. This is promoted in the guise of authenticity. The aura of authenticity is cultivated and nurtured in the packaging of the performance and attention to costume and regalia. The costumes like the colourful, thick layered chibadela that dancers wear accentuate and display the performers’ physiognomy (Fig. 12.4). The costumes aid in the construction of an image of an authentic troupe based on costume, props, actions and choreographic movements. This expectation seems to be shared by the performing troupe members and their audiences. This view flies in the face of the meticulous and articulate observation that, ‘there is no such thing as culture, but a very powerful idea of culture’ (Mitchell 1995, p. 102). Culture, Mitchell writes, and I am inclined to agree, is erroneously considered to be an assemblage of, ‘products’ whose form is expected to remain consistent and constant even when the content and society practising the culture changes (1995, p. 102). The net result is the establishment of a theoretically and practically indefensible notion of what is considered and accepted to be a proper cultural dance. A return to this false understanding and romanticism is usually proffered as the vanguard against both the real, and perceived, ill effects of colonialism, modernity, globalisation and cultural imperialism.

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Through costume choices and selective membership, the GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe seem to devote attention to keeping the dance as ‘authentic’ as possible. Sometimes authenticity is advocated at the expense of more effective staging and performative choices. I would argue that while such efforts are perceived as noble and rank highly in the university’s state-led cultural preservation discourse and ideology, they need to be scrutinised. Claiming authenticity is an inherently problematic way of confronting cultural inequalities or decontextualised staging choices where dance is perceived as an aesthetic spectacle. Dance staged out of its social and cultural context and as a spectacle, by its very nature displaces analysis. It also tends to suppress profound issues of conflict and marginalisation. The more that the GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe and the university ceremonies, as well as ethnographic festivals at which they perform, succeed in their visual appeal and spectacular effect, the more they reclassify the cultures they present as art, the inevitable result being that they aestheticise that which is marginal. Through this they risk appealing to prudent interest by presenting one version of indigeneity, which draws its authority by being tied to a time-bound, and fixed, understanding of tradition. When dances are re-staged and decontextualised by the academy and presented to the viewing public, they can be perceived in a myriad of ways. The dances can be read as circus and zoological garden, theatre and living ethnographic display, staged recreation and/or as cultural performance. It is possible, even when efforts are made to the contrary, that live performances sometimes turn people into artefacts. This is because the audience’s ethnographic gaze tends to objectify the GZU Venda and Shangaan performers. Where dancers are concerned, there is a fine line between attentive looking and staring. When the GZU dancing troupe is placed on a performance pedestal, the audience is granted a ‘panoptic’ gaze (Foucault 1977, p. 195). The concept of panopticon refers to a scopic technology and a regime of power/knowledge whereby an allseeing viewer and a defencelessly exposed and ‘blind’ target meet each other. The performance stage creates a meeting context that guarantees the maximum transparency of the dancers to the spectators and inaccessibility and immobilisation for the spectator (Foucault 1977, p. 195). Simply put, the stage serves as a panopticon since it grants audiences the capacity to see the troupe without being seen, and to objectify without being objectified through the same indigeneity lens.

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As stated earlier, the current composition of the GZU Venda and Shangaan performing troupe is such that membership is reserved to those belonging to the two minority communities. These admission criteria reveal a few basic assumptions. First, they privilege indigeneity as the main basis and criterion for inclusion rather than other markers such as dance artistry. Second, they assume that such indigeneity necessarily means and translates to dance knowledge and artistry. What is at issue with these assumptions is the power of live performance and bodies to construct cultural identity. In and through performance the dancers are framed as an index of their bodies, personhood and life. The GZU Venda and Shangaan dance troupe’s live performances as a representational mode make their own kinds of claims. The inherently dynamic, embodied, visceral performative nature of live performers veers the indigenous dance strongly in the direction of spectacle. Read as anthropological spectacle, the performances blur the line between morbid curiosity and scientific interest. Semiotically, live indigenous dance ‘displays make the status of the performer problematic, for people become signs of themselves. We experience a representation even when the representations are, if you will, the people themselves’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, p. 5). It could be argued that the performers are all self-consenting volunteers. However, such an argument overlooks the fact that ‘[s]elf-representation is representation, nonetheless. Whether the representation essentialises (one is seeing the quintessence of Venda and Shangaan) or totalises (one is seeing the whole through the part), the ethnographic fragment returns with all the problems of capturing, inferring, constituting, and presenting the whole through parts’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, p. 55).

Cultural Participation In this section I examine notions of authenticity in post-colonial cultural heritage reclamation. I proffer a working definition of cultural participation to read and appreciate the GZU Venda and Shangaan troupe. For the GZU Venda and Shangaan troupe, the question of who is indigenous can be rephrased to: who has the right to perform and embody culture? The troupe’s current constitution reveals a privileging of ethnic or community descent over artistry. Community descent becomes the basis of inclusion and exclusion. Such an interpretation of culture is limited, and borders on the scandalous when officially promoted at a

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post-colonial university. This approach displays ‘self-enclosed approaches’ to culture (Hall 1998, p. 432). ‘Self-enclosed approaches’ entail ‘valuing “tradition” for its own sake, and treating it in an ahistorical manner’ (Hall 1998, p. 432). Such an approach is reductive, for it ‘analyses cultural forms as if they contained within themselves from their moment of origin, some fixed and unchanging meaning or value’ (Hall 1998, p. 432). At GZU this can be seen in the fixation with the Venda and Shangaan choreography that predates colonialism. This time-bound interpretation of tradition is widespread. In our appraisal of GZU Venda and Shangaan dances, we need to acknowledge the limitations of viewing culture as a ‘thing’. This reification of culture is promoted by what could be termed cultural gatekeepers. These are agents who may be self-appointed, democratically chosen or institutional. They can also be performance makers or consumers. What all cultural gatekeepers have in common is that they impose time-bound freezes on dance choreography, especially regarding indigenous art forms. Gatekeepers claim and appropriate the right to define what is considered traditional and indigenous. Their suppositions are used to sift the contours between ‘real and authentic culture’ and ‘fake or modern’ imitations. The dancers’ corporeal bodies and the choreography, whose composition genesis is traced or attributed to a pre-colonial time, are used to mark what is considered authentic and inauthentic. For gatekeepers, ‘to be able to decide how people are sorted and identified is an exercise of power’ (Krystal 2012, p. 15). In positioning themselves as protectors and preservers of authentic cultural expressions, the state, through the university, gets to define what culture is, what this said culture comprises, and how it is expressed. What goes without interrogation here are notions of authenticity. Authenticity is a fluid and complex concept that is equally difficult to define outside the context in which it is applied and used. What is authentic can be understood as that which is ‘1 a: worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact […] b: conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features […] c: made or done the same way as the original… 2: not false or imitation: real, actual […] 3: true to one’s personality, spirit, or character’ (Merrian-Webster.com 2017). Using this rubric on cultural practices raises conceptual challenges, the main challenge being the place and status of mimicry, in a mimetic form like dance. This is complicated further by the challenges of reconciling what cultural insiders and those on the outside perceive as authentic. The popular usage and understanding of what is culturally authentic draws

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its worth from recognised tradition and constancy. However, since the publication of the seminal text The Invention of Tradition, the stability of traditions has been shown to be a modern construct (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Traditions derive their appeal as authentic on being accepted as being rooted in the past. The further back the past is perceived to be and the less there is evidence of change, the more authentic the tradition is imagined to be (Krystal 2012, p. 32). Notions of truth are captured in the dictionary definition in the insistence that what is authentic is, ‘not false (…) real, actual’ (Merrian-Webster.com 2017). In cultural dance this change, be it internal or induced by outside forces such as colonialism and other cultures, is perceived as contamination of the purity of tradition. In societies that are less collective the authenticity of artistic expression is accepted when the work is deemed as a true reflection of the named creator’s personality, spirit, or character (Krystal 2012, p. 33). In more collective African contexts like those of the Venda and Shangaan dance troupe, the authenticity of a shared dance tradition is derived by the people themselves. The performance is authentic if it is original to the community and their predecessors. This often leads to particularly Western technological innovations being shunned by gatekeepers as a contamination of tradition (Krystal 2012, p. 33). Gatekeepers usurp the authority to serve as arbitrators to negotiate differences or conflicts in what is accepted as authentic between cultural producers and consumers. At the core of the authenticity debate is the often unchallenged idea that indigenous cultures are not complex and diverse and that they cannot change, recreate or mutate and still retain their right and claim to be indigenous (Smith 1999, p. 74). This paternalism is hardly ever applied to the colonial West or other cultures whose tenets are not questioned for innovation and change. In and through performance, ‘a skilful dancer can simultaneously express tradition and innovation’ (Krystal 2012, p. 102). It is this role of gatekeeper that the post-colonial university risks assuming when it is tasked with leading a nationalist-informed cultural regeneration project. This authority draws on problematic colonialist anthropological registers. These registers appropriate the power to define and interpret from the makers of culture. They depend on an essentialist checklist of traits to create a version of the other. Gatekeepers create images of cultural authenticity to which they subject people and their practices. Change, or deviations from this image, is often interpreted as

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decay and an end of culture (Krystal 2012, p. 33). The ends to which the academy applies itself in the search for or restoration of this notion of authenticity is not often questioned. While the state is motivated by nationalist state-building, the academy becomes an accomplice in the establishment of a cultural and political hegemony under the veneer of neutrality and objectivity. Such an approach does not fundamentally aid the decolonial project, for it too seeks to dictate how indigenous people ought to perform their identity. This is similar to how the colonial regime and the missionary establishment sought to strip the indigenous sovereign power to ‘define and act on their own cultural identities’ (Wolf 1999, p. 145). The search for cultural authenticity in the face of the dynamism of culture is like a search for the Loch Ness monster. In and through performance, the GZU Venda and Shangaan troupe are cast in accordance to imagined pre-contact expectations. Their bodies on the stage become ‘an artefact of cultural framing, […] the object that must always display its signs; […] the materiality of the body is understood to offer a continuous surface of legible information’ (González 2008, p. 4). Change, innovation and dynamism in culture are better appreciated if we accept ‘tradition as a process in which people find meaning in the present through referring to the past’ (Eber and Tanski 2002, p. 36).

Cultural Appropriation The exclusive membership of the GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe as a marker of authenticity and an exercise in self-representation can be read as a valorisation of cultural appropriation and re-appropriation from within. This valorisation of descent in cultural matters is not ordinarily interrogated as an act of appropriation. Most attention is paid to acts of cultural appropriation that involve ‘outsider’ group members (Desmond 1993; Rogers 2006). There is an unsubstantiated belief that in-group or self-appropriation or minority group consent or approval somehow lessens or eliminates the potential destructiveness of cultural appropriation. The GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe and similarly constituted groups are examples of in-group acts of appropriation. It is imperative to interrogate who gets to represent the minorities’ ‘culture’ as well as what they potentially stand to gain in and through such representations. This is essential in regarding what makes a dance cultural.

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There are two under-interrogated axes to this: body and time. On the one axis is the body of the dancer, or choreographer. These are the individuals that lend their material bodies in space and through movement to make the dance visible. On the other axis is time. Time here can refer to the era in which the said dance movement or choreography was first composed and articulated. This conceptualisation of cultural dance underpins the sense of a time warp. This leads to a scenario where past time as tradition lends dance choreography some elements of historicity and authenticity. These two axes and their combinations are often used or evoked to attribute cultural essence to dance. If we are to accept this time-bound specification, culture becomes trapped in a time loop. Contemporary choreography is then deemed to be not cultural. The assumption behind this is that ‘accurate imitation [in step and cultural artefacts] generates something that is objectively authentic’ (Krystal 2012, p. 174). In this time loop, only the dance forms inherited from predecessors are deemed to be culturally authentic. The present can participate in cultural production only through repletion, but it cannot make culture. The present, in this view, will be of cultural value only to our successors. This approach establishes an unhelpful link between that which is inherited from predecessors to the present. In this view, time is the determinant that makes activities cultural. This is then sometimes complemented by the value, symbolic or otherwise, that the actors of the acts give their actions, or more accurately, the present’s interpretation of what this symbolic value was. It is in this light that the GZU Venda and Shangaan troupe embody culture. The promotion of dances of and from the past is read as part of and in-line with ‘heritage reclamation’ (Great Zimbabwe University 2017). Pre-contact choreographies are imagined as being more authentic expressions of indigenous culture than others. Such an interpretation of the university mandate frames culture as a ‘thing’ and is informed by notions from tangible heritage. Gatekeepers appropriate the right to determine what is accepted as legitimate culture. This leads to the usurping of the power to define certain dance choreographies as cultural and revoking the same from others, particularly contemporary ones. Various avenues are used to appropriate the right to define which dance, dancer and dancing is cultural and has heritage value. One such avenue is the organisation and adjudication of cultural festivals and competitions. Across Zimbabwe, competitions such as the Chibuku neShamwari Traditional Dance Festival can be viewed as ways

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to encourage, promote and control indigenous dance practice. Control is exerted through incentives in prize money and more crucially through the setting up of rules and regulations that are used as markers of cultural skills mastery. This discourse enables the claim that culture is separable from the corporeal being of the minorities. This view makes the case that culture is independent from the corporeal bodies of cultural producers. Such cultural reclamation disregards the inventiveness and inventedness of tradition. It becomes an exercise in realigning minorities with set notions of what their culture ought to have been in an imagined past. It negates the present realities and artistry of minorities and becomes a project of saving the ways of the past and monitoring how culture should be expressed. Disturbing echoes of social Darwinism underlie this view. At one end, it assumes that minority cultures are endangered and in need of saving. At the other, it ascribes an idealistic stasis to the communities.

Staging Culture Dance is culture embodied, yet some dance arrangements or choreography passed from generation to generation are said to be more authentic as ethnic markers than others. Efforts to resist innovation in the dance are couched with tones of preservation. Choreography whose existence and practice can be traced to an era before the advent of colonialism is valorised ahead of any other arrangement. It can be argued that the GZU performing troupes degenerate Shangaan and Venda cultural rituals into edifying spectacle; into sheer show (Fig. 12.5). That most contemporary manifestations of indigenous arts, and dance in this case, objectify culture has been long recognised. The kind of stasis that is expected and demanded of indigeneity is out of tune with societal dynamics. An analogue from language illustrates the impossibility of this stasis. When somebody learns a new language, for example, her mastery of the language is evident when she can express herself in the language. When the speaker uses the acquired language, it is shaped by the distinct features of the speaker’s context. The speaker’s language proficiency is not expressed or measured through a slavish adherence to the word patterning that she was taught while learning the language. Such rudimentary replicatory usage of a language would be considered as a failure to master the language in question. Language expertise is expressed through forever evolving and developing, increasing complexity and context-specific articulation of the language. Paradoxically, when it comes to dance in the

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Fig. 12.5 GZU Venda dancers on stage

realms of culture, tradition and indigeneity such as in the constitution and practice of the GZU performance troupe, repetition is valorised. Heritage reclamation is narrowly understood as a case of slavish adherence to the rudimentary elements of the dance. This repetitive adherence—which cannot be achieved with exactitude, even if dancers tried—is presented as a fact and a seal of traditional dance mastery. Any and all, particularly recent, changes, revolutions and developments in dance are shunned as a mark of inauthenticity. We can extend this analogue to the notion of dances being perceived as heritage. As Elizabeth A. Hanley reminds us, the starting point in engaging dance culture is to recognise that ‘no dance form is permanent, definitive, or ultimate’ (Kariamu 2004, p. 6). Acknowledging the dynamism, creativity, and adaptive nature of culture is only a starting point. Change in performance culture need not necessarily attract panic and/or lamentation; nor should it be idealised (Krystal 2012, p. 35). The post-colonial university can lead the course in examining and describing how these changes occur. Unyoking indigeneity from authenticity can help in re-evaluating the concept of culture, and respecting the changes

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that communities undertake to ensure the survival of their culture (Krystal 2012, p. 35). The language analogue can also be applied to the recognition of traditional indigenous dance routines as ‘belonging’ or being the products of certain or the representation of certain cultural groups, or of certain origins. We can then read the exclusive group membership of the GZU Venda and Shangaan dance troupe as signifying contemporary valorisations of phenotypes. These phenotypes were popularised by nineteenth and twentieth centuries evolutionary anthropologists to designate ethno-tribal groups and belonging. These colonial identity relics by and in themselves present special challenges, especially because of their widespread everyday resonance. The main issue in such a packaging and framing of the GZU Venda and Shangaan dancing troupes is the reinforcement of binaries in understanding dance and the people who dance. The dance routines become a substitute, or code or surrogate for the people. The performers’ cultural value in the reclamation of heritage is confined to being surrogates of their predecessors. That minority societies are dynamic, and the same dancing bodies can and are able to develop other dance routines becomes glossed over or dismissed in the name of authenticity. This valorisation of a small number of dances essentialises and limits routes for contemporary conservation projects. Its rationale might be clothed as cultural preservation, but viewed from another perspective, can smack of the colonial human zoo.

Exhibiting Humans: Reconsidering the GZU Dance Troupes in Performance The objectification of culture has become prevalent, if the widespread prevalence of curios and cultural markets that mostly cater to foreign tourists is to be regarded as a marker. What is less palatable is the objectification of the human performers in such enterprises. In the case of the GZU performance troupe, making the corporeal physiognomy of the dancers a cultural nexus of their societies and a spectacle is problematic at many levels. Spectacle by its very nature displaces analysis of the codes underpinning the staging and consumption of the spectacle. It also supresses the marginalisation paradigms that exoticise minorities and indigeneity. The GZU dance troupe objectifies the human performers and implicates them directly in this process. It reduces the dancing bodies into substitutes of Venda and Shangaan societies.

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Blanchard’s work on the ethnographic display of humans is especially useful to the analysis of the GZU heritage reclamation project through dance. Insights from Blanchard et al.’s work on the human zoo allows us to think through the staging of dance classed as traditional for contemporary audiences. The human zoo can be understood as ‘[placing] a man […], with the intention that he should be seen, in a specific reconstructed space, not because of what he ‘does’ (as an artisan, for example), but because of what he ‘is’ (seen through the prism of a real or imagined difference)’ (Blanchard et al. 2008, p. 23). In the case of the GZU Venda and Shangaan performance troupe, the dancers themselves are the medium of ethnographic representation, as they perform their own cultural dances (Fig. 12.6). Through performance they become living signs of themselves. Such framing reveals a belief in the authenticity of the indigenous cultural acts which is hinged on whether or not the performing group conforms to expectations of pre-colonial dance. This belief equates authentic representation of precolonial cultural acts with imagined nineteenth century representations of pre-colonial choreography.

Fig. 12.6 GZU Shangaan dancer in a solo routine

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This understanding of what counts as tradition and cultural in the promotion of indigenous cultures can easily veer into a form of exoticism. This form of othering is often predicated on the nobility and novelty of the restoration and promotion of ethnic pride. The reclamation of Zimbabwean culture and heritage in the post-colony requires a more complex reading of the colonial and what decolonisation might mean. The University and other institutions of higher learning can and should be at the cutting edge of problematising simplistic positivist nostalgic images of an imagined glorious pre-contact past. Efforts that seek to turn back the hands of time, so to speak, do not add much value to the restoration of African pride. Simplistic ideas of decolonisation, which present and promote pre-contact art forms respond to the master-narrative only by refuting hegemonic interpretations of indigeneity. While this is a worthwhile effort, I argue that it is just a starting point. Devoting energy to disputing colonial falsehoods or the status quo risks sticking with already established frameworks and not charting new territories. Put differently, the current cultural reclamation efforts narrowly define their mandate to excavating the past. This approach is limited and weak because it fails to integrate the present as part of society’s culture. This leads to a reductive return to the pre-colonial past in efforts to erase the inaccuracies of the colonial master narrative. As a result, such efforts fail to gather traction, to be sustainable, or to gain popular currency in the public imagination as it is void of contemporary experiences and aspirations. A thriving and sustainable cultural policy does not dismiss or invalidate the current aspirations of society at large and is not a slave to its own expectations of what culture is and should be. This returns us to the other rhetorical questions that I posed earlier which ask who defines what culture is and how this culture is represented. I advocate for a decoupling of the notion of culture from a pre-contact time frame. Culture with a big capital letter ‘C’ is not in tandem with the ‘now moment’ in which we are finding ourselves. Grand narratives of culture are crumbling and collapsing. ‘All struggles have become struggles of representation’ vis-à-vis the West at the expense of studying the African experience as it is (Mbembé 2001, p. 6). Nationalist state-led cultural policy cannot be used to impose value judgements, about what is and what should not be considered as culture in the academy. There is a need for a shift in cultural advocacy to take note of and embrace the present as a fact of being in the contemporary articulation of indigeneity

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and culture. This account shows that being indigenous entails the continuous reinvention and negotiation of ways of being. As custodians of the performance troupe, the university is saddled with the ethical responsibility for representing those it includes in ‘their most traditionalist form’ (Hall 1981, p. 230).

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Index

[Page numbers in bold refer to figures.] A able-bodied, 183 community, 154, 158 students, 157 ableism challenging, 154, 158, 163–165 conscious, 154 definition, 154 discrimination against people with disabilities, 154, 165 internalised, 154, 166 justification of, 155 negative responses, 152, 155, 163 oppression of people with disabilities, 155 ranking of people as inferior, 154 unconscious, 154 ableist perception, 152 challenging, 154 ableist prejudice, 15, 154, 157, 163–166 challenging, 155, 164, 165 prejudicial discourse, 163, 164

ableist spectators, 163 Ableist spectatorship negotiating, 163 ableist spectatorship, 163, 165 adaptation of (plays) act of appropriation, 63 act of resistance, 63 not mimicry, 63 African dance, 36, 103 Afrocentric ideological base, 102 ideological re-alignment, 93 socialist, 93 Afrocentricity, 13 Afroscenology definition, 8 albinism alienation, 206 ambivalent attitude, 132 attacks on people with, 165 attitude to community, 152 disability, 15, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Ravengai and O. Seda (eds.), Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3

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264

INDEX

discrimination, 154, 165 impairment, 154, 157, 158, 163, 165 integration of people with, into society, 166 legitimate identity, 154, 163 physical rights, 152 political rights, 152 re-orientating people with, 15, 165 representation of, 15, 16 sensitising people to, 15 sensitising people with, 165 specific needs and challenges, 163 students with (SWA), 152–155, 157 unique condition, 163 alternative theatre companies, 41 growth of, 184 Amakhosi, 11, 15, 102, 103, 124, 143–145, 202 Amakhosi Cultural Centre, 104, 106, 108, 142, 143, 145, 184 Amakhosi Juniors, 103 Amakhosi Performing Arts Workshop (APAW). See also Amakhosi Theatre Productions (ATP) framework of training and development programmes, 92, 99 Juniors, 103 modules, 95, 101, 102 performance style, 100 Seniors, 103 training programmes, 92, 99–102, 104, 105 Amakhosi plays, 202 Amakhosi Seniors, 103, 104 Amakhosi Theatre Productions (ATP) collapse of, 181 criticism of regime, 175 denunciation of NTO membership, 180

development of aesthetic, 175 persecution of, 180 theatre training programmes, 93, 100 Township Square Cultural Centre, 14, 103, 104, 107. See also Amakhosi Cultural Centre training programmes, 11, 100, 101 training structure, 99 unique physical theatre style, 11 workshop training programme, 99 anapirism. See ableism anapirophobia. See ableism anti-apartheid novel, 64 anti-apartheid play, 65 anti-colonial strategies, 141 anti-dictatorial strategies, 141 anti-hegemonic strategies, 141 apartheid/separate development affirmation of, 52 anti-, novel, 65 anti-, play, 65 discourse of, 52 end of, 223 ideology of, 30 notion(s) of, 14, 55 official policies of, 48 South Africa, 30, 39, 60 APAW. See Amakhosi Performing Arts Workshop (APAW) approaches to disability charity model, 155 medical model, 155 traditional model, 155, 166 approaches to representation constructionist, 16 intentional, 16 reflective, 16 Association of Rhodesian Theatrical Societies (ARTS), 118

INDEX

C censorship laws, 133, 177 political, 137, 145 self-, 200, 202, 203 state, 14, 20, 197, 199, 200 structural, 39, 40 Censorship and Entertainment Control Act (1967), 53 Censorship Board, 184, 200, 201, 216, 217 Central African Federation (of Rhodesia and Nyasaland), 117, 118 collapse/break-up, 3, 118 character diversity, 226 charity model frustration with, 156 propagation of, 155 view of disabled as pitiful, 155 Cinematograph Ordinance (1912), 36 colonial discourse African dance, 36, 103 mechanics of, 13 Rhodesian, 9, 12, 13 colonial era laws of, 196, 197, 199 settler, 114 theatre clubs, 114, 116 theatres, 116 colonialist orientation, 128 colonial theatre, 10, 28, 71, 115, 117, 120–124 alternative to, 112, 115 training model, 10 consciousness critical, 159, 160 cultural, 115 dominant, 14, 111–115, 128 emergent, 111–115, 119, 120, 124, 127, 128 historical, 246

265

oppositional, 114, 115, 118 political, 113 residual, 111–115, 117, 124, 128 social, 113, 114, 159, 246 transformation of, 115 counter-colonial discourse, 12 counter-hegemonic power, 137 counter-hegemonic struggles, 170 counter-public spheres, 14, 132, 136, 137, 139, 141 counter-representation, 44 critical theories, 50 cultural appeal, 136, 249 cultural decolonisation, 112 cultural imperialism, 125, 248 cultural production, 2, 9, 13, 14, 25–28, 32–34, 37, 39–41, 48, 51, 52, 60, 124, 254 intertwined nature of knowledge and discourse, 72 cultural relevance, 120 cultural slippage, 112, 114, 123, 124, 128 cultural theories, 43

D Darwinism, 30, 51, 255 decoloniality, 253 decolonial theatre, 10, 25 recourse to design elements, 10 decolonisation cultural, 112, 259 meaning, 8 simplistic ideas, 259 theatre, 8, 10 theatre scholarship, 70 de-industrialisation, 182 democratic protest theatre, 221, 222, 234 disability charity model, 155

266

INDEX

medical model, 155 three approaches to, 155 traditional model, 155, 166 discourse colonial, 2, 12, 13, 25, 35, 36, 38, 48 conjunction of power and knowledge, 27 definition(s), 34 of dominant groups, 27 intertwined nature of knowledge and, 72 domination cultural, 11, 13 economic, 11, 12, 113 instruments of, 36 legitimisation of, 229 political, 113 psyche of, 64 reality of, 55 structures of, 175, 178, 179 white cultural, 27 E elite co-operation, 234 emergent consciousness in post-colonial theatre, 119 empowerment character diversity as, 226 dance as a mode of, 245 subaltern, 222, 224 Entertainments Control and Censorship Act (1932), 37 epilepsy, 153 F Federal Theatre League of Central Africa (FTLCA). See also Association of Rhodesian Theatrical Societies (ARTS) aim, 118

library, 118 Federal Theatre League of Rhodesia, 54 Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 3, 30 collapse/break-up, 3

G globalisation, 91, 248 Gramscian cultural theory of hegemony, 18 Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) cultural dance troupes, 19, 237, 238, 245, 250, 257 performance studies department, 238 Shangaan dancer(s), 241, 247, 258 traditional dance troupes, 19 Venda dancer(s), 241, 246, 256

H hegemonic contest, 9 control, 234 control of power, 9 discourses, 11, 126, 178 dominance, 173 equation, 65 interpretations of indigeneity, 259 perceptions, 155, 158 prejudiced views about impaired bodies, 155 relationship between public spheres, 135 structures, 137 struggles, 172 systems, 137 tendencies, 170 vision (of ZANU-PF), 173, 184, 188

INDEX

hegemonic interpretations of indigeneity, 259 hegemonic perceptions, 158 hegemonic tendencies, 170 hegemonic vision (of ZANU-PF), 188 hegemony/hegemonies bodily-based, 160 competition, 123 concept of, 113, 172 confrontation, 124, 188 co-operation, 234 counter-hegemonic discourse, 13 cultural, 11 definition, 113, 229, 234 disruption of, 18 political, 155, 253 practice, 118 resistance against state, 18 resistance to, 65, 170 rule and, 26, 128 state, 18, 233, 234 hidden transcripts decoding of, 216 evasion of Zimbabwean state censorship, 20 hybrid performances, 198 means of subtle criticism of state, 20, 194 “off stage” discourse, 194 shared memories, 198 spectators’ interpretations, 216 hybrid/hybridity consciousness, 127 cross-cultural, 112 emergent consciousness of, 112, 127, 129 nature of cultural formations, 112, 127 nature of theatre, 124 performances, 198 racial, 55, 58 realities, 69, 84, 216

267

slippages, 112, 115, 124, 128

I identity/identities African, 9, 120 assertion of, 62 assertion of alternative, 44 bodily, 158, 159, 163 building, 245, 253 celebration of, 160 collective, 106, 248 construction among the disabled, 10, 111, 246 construction of, 10, 31, 111, 246 contestation of, 12, 160 crises, 159 cultural, 10, 16, 58, 237, 245, 250, 253 essentialist, 19, 244 ethnic, 242, 243, 245, 246 fluidity of, 172 formative, 11 hegemonies of, 10, 160, 253 institutional, 105, 106 legitimate identity (in albinism), 163, 247 national, 43, 237 Ndebele, 11, 15, 16, 18, 172, 182 personal, 163 post-colonial, 244, 245 pre-contact, 19 representations of, 242 struggle for, 169, 170, 172 theatre, 9, 10, 18, 44, 127, 158, 162, 170–172 white, 31, 32 ideological/ideology. See also apartheid/separate development colonialist (“divide and rule”), 112, 120, 180 conflict, 122

268

INDEX

differences in, 62, 122, 128 dominant, 14, 47, 48, 50, 61–66 engineering, 55 imperial, 49 official, 49, 60, 63 one-party-state, 173 political, 181 residual dominant, 14 Rhodesian ideologies, 13 socialist, 18, 178 socialist underpinning, 18 theatre, 112, 120, 170, 176 impaired bodies, 155 prejudiced views about, 155 indigeneity/indigenous. See also Great Zimbabwe University with regard to traditional African dance African dance, 238. See also Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) art forms, 244, 259 colonial destruction of culture, 245 communities, 244, 250 concept of, 237, 245 conflation of, with pre-colonial experience, 237 construction of, 238 contextual politics of, 238 cultural action/acts, 126 cultural dances, 242, 244 cultural forms, 126, 251 culture, 245, 252, 254, 259 dance troupes, 245, 257 forms of theatre, 28 framing device, 247 hegemonic interpretations of, 259 knowledge systems, 245 music, 91, 102, 179 people(s), 116, 244, 246, 247, 253 performance structure, 237, 240, 243, 244, 256 performance styles, 102, 178 performing arts, 63, 91, 116, 238

plays, 116 popular art forms, 178 rhetoric, 243 status, 245 symbols, 244 text(s), 11 traditional dance routines, 257 indigenous performing arts, 63, 91, 116, 238 African dance, 238. See also Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) interculturalism, 55, 63

K karate, 11, 96–98, 100, 101, 106, 142, 144 influence of, 106

M marginalisation, 170, 249, 257 marginalised groups, 16 Matabeleland artistic dissent in, 176 artistic works, 172 communities, 96, 171 community-based theatre groups, 171 cultural groups, 174 disruption of hegemony, 18 hegemonic struggles in, 170, 172 people, 18, 169–171, 177, 180, 183–185, 188 plight of the Ndebele, 185 politics in, 181 popular art, 171, 172 resistance to hegemony, 172 socio-economic issues, 187 theatre and music, 188 theatrical works, 170, 176, 181 medical model, 155, 156

INDEX

operation in tandem with charity model, 156 memory, 194, 205–207, 209, 231, 232 mental disability, 154 Meridian Theatre, 12 mimicry, 63, 125, 230, 251 Mugabe, Robert censorship, 143, 145, 196 dictatorial behaviour, 132 dictatorship, 132, 137 influence of, 131, 136 norms and values, 136 political discourse, 135 political pressure, 137 violent social practices, 40 multi-racial theatre companies, 59 Muzorewa, Abel, 4, 128

N National Censorship Board, 200 nationalist discourse, 44, 228 National Theatre Festival, 51, 54, 200 National Theatre Organization (NTO) colonialist orientation, 128 competitive festivals, 118, 119, 123, 124, 127 membership, 123, 126, 179–181 workshops, 11, 92, 100 Ndebele identity/identities, 11, 15, 16, 18, 172, 182 indigenous text, 11 music, 18, 102 performances, 18, 100 play, 39, 143, 185 plight of the, 185 traditional dances, 100 warfare, 176 negative perceptions, 158 neo-colonialism, 41–43, 91, 181, 185

269

Nkomo, Joshua, 4, 5, 115 Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Patriotic Front) ((PF) ZAPU), 4, 115 Northern Rhodesia Drama Association (NRDA). See Federal Theatre League of Central Africa (FTLCA) O Obscene Publications Act (1911), 36 Operation Murambatsvina (OM), 20, 132, 193, 195–197, 202, 203, 209, 210, 216, 217 P patriotic discourse, 13 Pearce Commission of 1972, 37 people with disabilities ableism. See ableism discrimination against, 165 performance history of, 2 performance research, 73 performance studies, 238 department, 238 performative approach, 91, 92, 94, 102 performativity dimensions of the theatrical experience, 79 performing arts African dance, 36 development of, 101 founding programme (Zimbabwe), 2, 239 indigenous, 63, 91, 178, 179, 238, 255 sector, 176 traditional, 116 training in, 101, 105

270

INDEX

weapon (for) fighting official policies, 60 women as a significant entity, 64 performing arts sector, 176 phenomenal body/bodies, 70, 75, 76, 82, 84 object(s), 76, 84 physical disability, 154 physically challenged students/people, 153, 154 Policy of National Reconciliation, 115 politics, 8, 12, 14–17, 19, 43, 57, 64, 72, 95, 120, 132, 135, 151–153, 155, 156, 159–161, 163, 173, 174, 180, 181, 231, 245 history of, 2 post-colonial contexts, 129 post-colonial theatre. See also consciousness; emergent consciousness in post-colonial theatre emergent consciousness in, 112, 119 identity construction among the disabled, 111 politics of representation, 14 post-independence context, 5, 120 post-independence slippage, 112, 114 post-independence Zimbabwe cultural dissent, 178 cultural polarisation, 111 development of community theatre, 120 economic situation, 185 performing arts in, 101 political and economic crises, 1 socialist-capitalist ideological continuum, 175 theatre companies, 12 theatre industry, 103, 106 theatre practitioners, 91, 128

theatre training and performance, 92 workshops, 92, 103 power. See also empowerment analysis of, 75, 228 balance of, 233 consolidation of, 180 construction of cultural identity, 250 dynamics, 153, 160 economic, 116 executive, 133 forms of, 228, 233 hegemonic, 9 inequalities of, 53 monopoly of, 26 pastoral, 229, 230 political, 41 social, 10, 11, 49 somatogenic (of the body), 75 structures, 49 subjects of colonial, 48 transformative, 77, 226 usurping of, 254 protest theatre, 7, 16, 19, 20, 188, 221–223, 225, 233, 234 democratic, 221, 222, 234 domination by elitism and paternalism, 222 Public Decency Act, 201 public sphere, theory of, 141

R racial discrimination, 55 representation approaches to, 16 cultural dancing, 81, 258 dramatic, 70 politics of, 14, 151 proportional, 195 self-, 243, 253

INDEX

representational mode, 250 representational systems, 15, 16 Reps Theatre, 56, 58, 59, 62, 63, 65, 70, 91, 127 resistance act(s) of, 50, 60 analysis of, 48, 63 black, 50 colonial, 48–50, 63, 65 contamination as, 55 contradiction, 66, 114 cultural, 184 discourses of, 65 emphasis on Black African, 49 form(s) of, 49, 65, 66, 228, 230 interculturalism as, 55, 63 processes of, 60, 225 semiotic, 225, 231, 232 settler, 49, 50, 55, 64 strategies of, 49, 222 subaltern semiotic, 231 theatre as a fight mechanism, 58, 172 theories, 48 tool against hegemonic tendencies, 170 white, 49, 50, 60, 64, 66 resistive agency, 19, 225, 227, 228 Rhodesia colonial, 3, 6, 14, 26, 48, 49, 59, 95, 117, 127, 200, 238, 244 discourse, 9, 12–14, 25–27, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44 flag of, 239 politics of representation, 14, 15 University of, 153. See also University of Zimbabwe (UZ) Rhodesia Front (RF), 3, 4, 30, 52, 61, 115 Rhodesian discourse culturalism, 27, 30, 31 cultural superiority, 12

271

history of theatre, 29 metanarrative of past and present, 13 moral panic, 31 reliance on pseudo-scientific race theories, 26 resistance to, 13 restriction on what could be written and performed, 13 social Darwinism, 30, 51 strictures to cultural production, 13 Rhodesian ideologies, 13 Rooftop Promotions, 14, 133, 137, 139, 140, 143, 179, 184, 185 rule and hegemony, 113, 114, 128

S scenic elements, 72, 77, 79, 85 spatiality, 71, 134 transformation of, 77 scenic environment, 70 scenic objects, 70, 75 semiotic approach body/bodies, 76 complexities, 85 object(s), 85 transformation of scenic elements, 77 semiotic resistance, 231 semiotics aspects of theatrical performance, 70 dimensions of the theatrical experience, 69, 79 performativity, 79 semi-professional theatre companies. See Amakhosi; Reps Theatre; Rooftop Promotions separate development. See apartheid/separate development Shangaan dancer(s), 241, 247, 258

272

INDEX

Shona folklore, 208 language, 5, 38, 161, 164 nature of religion, 34 performance(s), 14, 144 play(s), 39, 62 ritual dance, 144 role of spirit mediums, 127 slippage cultural, 112, 114, 123, 124, 128 hybrid, 112, 115, 128 post-independence, 112, 114 Smith, Ian declaration of UDI, 30 demonstration against, 61 Lancaster House Constitution, 41 nationalism, 120, 121 Rhodesia Front (RF), 3, 4, 61, 115 Southern Rhodesia Drama Association (SRDA). See Federal Theatre League of Central Africa (FTLCA) subaltern co-operation, 234 subaltern groups, 225, 229 subordination of political processes, 120 psyche of, 64 reality of, 55 Sundown Theatre. See Zimbabwe Arts Productions syncretic performances, 102 syncretic theatre forms. See also Amakhosi Theatre Productions (ATP) aesthetic style, 171 cultural experiences, 93, 100 cultural space, 99 performance style(s), 100 play texts, 6 techniques borrowed from other methods, 77 theatre performances, 18

theatre training programme, 99 training, 95, 99 training and developmental strategy, 99 training methods, 11 training styles, 99, 102 syncretism, 89

T theatre companies, 12, 14, 29, 54, 73, 74, 103, 117, 121–124, 126, 127 theatre groups amateur, 117 theatre research, 196 theory of the public sphere, 141 Township Square Cultural Centre, 14. See also Amakhosi Cultural Centre traditional model retrograde outlook, 156 seclusion of disabled people from society, 156

U University of Zimbabwe (UZ), 2, 11, 15, 57, 70, 79–81, 83, 84, 90, 91, 93–95, 152–155, 165, 178, 179, 182, 197, 201, 203, 238, 239

V Venda dancer(s), 241, 246, 256 victimhood, 19, 232 reversal of identities, 232 visually impaired students/people, 153–157

W western NGOs, 131, 133, 135, 136, 139–141

INDEX

whitehood, 61 official notions of, 61 white theatre companies, 41 women, 31, 49, 53, 64, 100, 135, 140, 175, 184, 208, 226, 230 significant entity, 64

Y youth theatre, 151

Z Zimbabwe history of theatre, 9, 12, 15, 210. See also Rhodesia; Rhodesian discourse multiracial theatre company, 14 post-independence, 1, 12, 19, 44, 89, 92–95, 101, 103, 111, 112, 114, 120, 121, 124, 128, 174, 175, 178, 180, 181, 210, 211

273

University of, 2, 10, 15, 57, 70, 79–81, 83, 84, 90, 91, 93–95, 152–155, 165, 178, 179, 182, 197, 201, 203, 238 Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Patriotic Front) ((PF) ZAPU), 98 Zimbabwe Arts Productions, 128 core members, 128 various plays, 202 Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatre (ZACT), 11, 12, 18, 92, 93, 95, 111, 112, 115, 121–123, 126–128, 178, 179 socio-political philosophy, 122 Zimbabwe Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ZATCYP), 202 Zimbabwe bird (Chapungu), 239 flags, 239 Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP), 95, 121, 122, 178, 179