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Woza Albert!
Now imagine this!
SCENE ONE:1
The actors enter and take their positions quickly … On the first note of their music, overhead lights come on, sculpting them. They become an instrumental jazz band, using only their bodies and their mouths – double bass, saxophone, flute, drums, bongos, trumpet etcetera. At the climax of their performance, they transform into audience, applauding wildly.
Percy stands, disappears behind the clothes rail. Mbongeni goes on applauding. Percy reappears wearing his pink nose (to indicate he’s a white person) and a policeman’s cap. He is applauding patronisingly. Mbongeni stares at him. Stops applauding.
The policeman [Percy] gruffly demands to see Mbongeni’s passbook. Upon examining it, he discovers that Mbongeni hasn’t worked for four years. Emboldened by this discovery, the policeman says, ‘This is vagrancy. You’re unemployed.’
MBONGENI: No, my Colonel, I am a guitarist, I’ve been playing music for five years, my boss.
PERCY: Hey, you lie, you fuckin’ entertainer!
MBONGENI: It’s true, it’s true, my boss.
PERCY: Can you show me where it is written ‘musician’? Hey? Where’s a guitar? Where’s a guitar? Where’s a guitar?
MBONGENI: Ag, nee – my Brigadier, I am self-employed!
PERCY: Self-employed? (Chuckling collusively to audience) Hell, but these kaffirs can lie, hey?
MBONGENI: Maar, dis die waarheid, but it is true – my General!
PERCY: You know where you should be?
MBONGENI: No, my boss.
PERCY: You should be in prison!
MBONGENI: No, my boss.
PERCY: And when you come out of prison, do you know where you should go?
MBONGENI: No, my boss.
PERCY: Back to the bush with the baboons. That’s where you belong!
And so, Percy grabs Mbongeni and throws him in prison. It is while he is in prison that Mbongeni encounters Jesus (in the play the son of God is referred to as Morena). Morena finds himself in prison for the simple reason that he looks like a vagrant. From there it goes from bad to worse.
The play is a revolutionary tour de force unlike anything South Africa – and indeed, the entire world – has ever seen.
After an intense six-week rehearsal the play, now called Woza Albert!, opened to a full house at the Laager Theatre, with a seating capacity of 60, at the Market Theatre. Under Simon’s guidance the two young men reshaped the play, giving it a much sharper edge. It had soon occurred to all three of them that they in fact did not need extra bodies to play the roles the two had envisaged for the play. The intensity of the play lay in the two men’s ability to shape-shift from one role to the next: playing a female vagrant rummaging through the bins for food now, moving into the role of a white bureaucrat in the native affairs department next.
Apart from being hailed for its originality and freshness, Woza Albert! also became the talk of the town in that it succeeded, more than any other production before it, in bringing more black people into the Market which, although progressive, was still patronised mainly by white people. It can be argued, therefore, that, after the crossover appeal of King Kong in the late 1950s, Woza Albert! was another crossover breakthrough. As fate would have it, while the play was on at the Market a crew from the BBC was in town to cover the national elections taking place at the time. A local journalist alerted the crew to this revolutionary production, and the crew, having obtained permission from management at the Market Theatre, filmed some of Woza Albert!, which they would weave into the story of South Africa they were going to show to their viewers back home. Buoyed by the positive comments sparked by the flighting of a short segment of Woza Albert! back home in Britain, the director returned to South Africa to make an entire documentary film devoted to the play. What a pleasure! I was so proud of Mbongeni for the success. Now I could see that his dreams of going to Broadway could be fulfilled. From the Market, the play went on an extensive tour of the black townships, and later of the hinterland.
Because of his embarrassing financial status, Mbongeni had not been in contact with his family back in KwaZulu, but now he was confident enough to re-establish relations with his people. During a break from his frenetic activity, he took time to go to kwaHlabisa, his ancestral home. He went there in a car bursting with grocery items – seven years after the family had last seen him.
On his return from KwaZulu he came to visit me in Daveyton. I was thrilled to see him again. From someone who had always had only two outfits – that threadbare tracksuit and jeans he would wear during the day and wash at night – he was now resplendent in the latest fashion. Ah, my boyfriend was so beautiful! The rough diamond was finally beginning to metamorphose into the precious gem it was destined to be. We spoke at length about the towns he’d been to, and the responses the play had received.
Then he suddenly became serious. ‘Love,’ he said, ‘something serious is about to happen.’
I held my breath, wondering what it was that he was about to say to me. Ever the dramatist, he knew how to keep a person in suspense. While I waited for him to get to the point, he started telling some silly stories. I had to beg him to get back to the ‘serious issue’ that he wanted us to talk about.
‘The play is going overseas,’ he said.
I jumped up and screamed. Broadway, here we come! Arrangements were being made, he told me, for forays into Britain, the United States and Germany. Then he got serious again. He said, ‘Before we go, I want us to get married.’ A part of me was on cloud nine, because I truly loved him and knew there and then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Another part of me knew that it was impossible. For a start, there were my parents to contend with. Secondly, although he had new clothes now and some cash, Mbongeni still didn’t have a place of his own, so where were we to live, and what were we going to eat?
I did not want to dampen his spirit, but he was aware how my parents felt about our relationship, which had become a talking point in the neighbourhood. Even though Mbongeni was not yet a big name, he stood out in a crowd. When he walked down the street, people talked. At a time when many people from Natal were ashamed of their roots when they came to the Transvaal because it was largely urbanised, was considered civilised and modern, Mbongeni revelled in the fact that he came from rural Natal. He spoke his language with pride. Not to mention the countless crude Zulu jokes he told. In his self-deprecating style, he also engaged in colourful Zulu dancing.
I kissed him passionately and told him how happy I was to get married to him. But then I expressed my concerns. He brushed these aside, saying, ‘Not only am I a working man finally, my face is all over the place. Your parents will be happy to have umkhwenyana who is famous!’
Over the next days we spoke seriously about the matter. Having realised that if we went straight to my parents with this piece of news we would meet a brick wall, I thought of a different approach. My grandmother loved Mbongeni to bits. But she did not know him very well. When I approached her and told her I wanted to have a serious relationship with him, she naturally had a number of tough questions. Is the man employed? What work does he do? Does he wear a shirt and tie at work? We don’t want a man who is going to kill you with starvation.
