In a drunken scene towards the end of So What’s New?, a revival of Fatima Dike’s 1991 play, three of the protagonists join in on a rowdy and rousing rendition of the song. Dee, Thandi and Patricia are talented divas – they used to sing in a choir together – and they give an entertaining performance. By this stage in the narrative, we have learned enough about them to have a certain sympathy for each of the women: they have faced the socio-economic challenges that are, arguably, specific to black women in South Africa and they have found ways of surviving.

Yet one can’t help feeling that they are caught between the two possible personae to which Fassie so memorably gave voice. They are strong, brave women – but they are also responsible for their own problems and, worse, complicit in reproducing the conditions under which they (and their communities) have suffered.

Dee (Andrea Dondolo) is a large, loud and fearsome figure, a widow who became a shebeen-queen to provide for herself and her daughter Mercedes (Zimkitha Kumbaca); the lounge of their house – its shebeen connection evoked by empty beer crates for walls – is the setting for the action of the play. Pat (Thuli Thabethe) is a “township kugel” with a penchant for cider, a largely unsuccessful estate agent who can’t pay her booze bills but gets whisked off to fancy hotels by unnamed men. Thandi (Sibulele Gcilitshana) is diminutive but feisty, wears masculine suits and drives fancy cars; she also happens to be a drug dealer. One of her dodgy associates is Bra Willy, Dee’s on-again-off-again boyfriend.

The play has been updated by director Princess Zinzi Mhlongo and, instead of alluding to an “outside world” of violence and social instability in the final years of apartheid, its context is contemporary South Africa – democratic, but still violent and unstable. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose ... and this lack of change lends a poignant irony to the play’s title. What, we wonder after hearing a series of headlines that could equally describe the bloodshed of two decades ago, is actually new?

Mercedes represents a justifiably angry younger generation. She is part of a “conscientised” group of teenagers who are trying to take back the streets of Soweto from gangsters and dealers, who are inspired by but unlike the pupils of ’76 (they seek liberation through, not before, education). This places her in opposition to Dee and friends, yet she remains bound to them by love and affection – as well as by a grudging respect for her elders, which her mother uses to keep her in her place.

Dee would rather have her daughter “safe” at home than marching on the streets to challenge injustice and abuse. Yet, as gunshots ring out around her house, it is clear that this is short-sighted. Indeed, much as she and Pat and Thandi love to escape into the faraway world of The Bold and the Beautiful, they are reminded by this gun battle that acting like a soap opera character in the real world is not glamorous but dangerous.

So What’s New? is very funny at times (it is billed as a “domestic comedy”), yet Dike reminds the audience that there is a tragic false consciousness underlying the characters’ actions. Although this production ends with a celebratory performance of “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves”, I couldn’t help feeling that these sisters are, ultimately, doing damage to themselves.

- At the Market Theatre until 14 August