This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

26th July 2008

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Ten Bush, a new play by Mcendisi Shabangu and Craig Higginson, opens with a nervous declaration from a clearly disturbed woman (Martha, played by Tinah Mnumzana): “Every day, I try not to look backwards ...”

The effect of obsessing about the past – whether trying to avoid it or remaining bound by it – is the central theme in this work. What does it mean to “look backwards”? In one sense, it seems to refer to the psychological enslavement brought about by superstitious fears. Martha is visited by the ghost of Chief Malaza who, according to a centuries-old legend, betrayed nine Swazi chiefs at war with the Sotho. The village of Tenbosch (in present-day Mpumalanga) was, according to this narrative, founded on their graves; and, consequently, the inhabitants of the fictionalised Ten Bush have been cursed in each ensuing generation.

Malaza (whose drooling, droning, otherworldly speeches are delivered by Hamilton Dlamini) appoints Martha to lift the curse by killing her own daughter. This is an apparently impossible commission, as Martha is infertile – she and her hen-pecked husband Simon (Sello Sebotsane) are unable to have a child. Lest we feel too sorry for Simon, however, we soon find out that he is a philanderer who is sleeping with his sister-in-law, Khabonina (Zandile Msuntwana). Martha fixes on their love-child, Duduzile (Molebogeng Modiba), as the sacrificial victim: a decision motivated less by the community-oriented convictions stemming from her ghost-haunted nightmares and more by the bitterness and jealousy that overwhelm her when she discovers the liaison between her husband and sister.

Simon and Martha become a comic – albeit menacing – Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. He is power-hungry but, without his wife, lacks the gumption to act on his bloodthirsty impulses; she taunts him and spurs him on to cruel deeds. Crucially, as in Macbeth, the audience is left unsure how much of the violence and retribution is a result of supernatural ‘evil’ (in the form of Malaza’s presiding spirit) or simply human greed, ambition and even possible mental instability.

Duduzile and her now-blind mother (Khabonina loses her sight at the hands of her furious sister) are taken in by the longsuffering Albert: a widower whose first wife, Gladys, was killed in a witch hunt trumped up by Martha to undermine Albert’s clan seniority over Simon. The conflict comes to a head some years later when the adolescent Duduzile, the target of Martha’s murderous designs, falls in love with Makhunyula (Xolile Gama) – heir to the current chief of the village and, as a recent returnee from “the city”, a would-be reformer.

Ultimately, Albert and Khabonina are not able to protect their daughter. The village elders, acting on custom, support Simon and Martha’s claim to be her ‘real’ parents and hand over the child to them – effectively condemning her to death. This seems to be an indictment of ‘traditional’ values and belief systems.

Yet when Prince Makhunyula takes the throne after his father dies, he tortures Martha and has her put to death just as previous ‘witches’ have been. Moreover, he does so out of a desire for vengeance rather than an impartial sense of justice; the ‘modernity’ he represents is equally inadequate. The play finishes in circular fashion, with Malaza delivering his opening speech to the new chief. There is no divine salvation (despite the characters’ frequent recourse to the Lord’s Prayer) and no secular solution either. The people of Ten Bush, like all societies, are doomed to repeat the same errors as their forebears – whether or not they “look backwards”.

This is a gritty, visceral production that veers from slapstick comedy to disquieting representations of trauma. Although the dramatic pitch falters occasionally and there are the odd narrative gaps, the ensemble work is slick and the use of props (from buckets and benches to fruit and various liquids) is impressive.

Not everyone has been happy with Ten Bush, however. The play opened at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and will run at the Market Theatre until 17 August but has, during the course of its short run so far, already become embroiled in one of the minor racial controversies that have dogged the South African performing arts scene in 2008. Matjamela Motloung, recently appointed Head of the Market Theatre Laboratory, has condemned the prevalence of white-black collaborations in which established white writers, directors and actors seem to dominate their black counterparts; and he deems the Higginson-Shabangu combination representative of this phenomenon.

Whatever beef Motloung may have with the industry at large, it hardly seems fair that he should point out Ten Bush as an example. Indeed, one would imagine that an inter-racial creative partnership can only enhance the conception and execution of a bilingual (English-Sotho) production that is crucially concerned with clashes of culture and belief systems. In this case, complaining about the races of artists working together, Motloung is guilty of “looking back” by applying apartheid-era racial obsessions to contemporary South African theatre.