Isibuko: No fathers here
The absence of fathers has sure fucked up our sons.
The shattering of families due to the migrant labour system, exacerbated by alcohol and poverty, is arguably the most destructive consequence of colonialism and apartheid, continuing to wreak havoc on today’s generation, and generations to come.
Stats show nearly two-thirds of South African children grow up without fathers, and so when it comes to rates of single motherhood, we’re world leaders. With no role models other than the emptiness of an absent male who tosses his sperm around at will, it’s no wonder we have gangs of young men ruling Cape Town and beyond, nyope addicts filling the gutters of Joburg, and lost, lonely, directionless youth committing random acts of violence and despair, especially sexual violence, in towns and villages from Agulhas to Musina. We are a country of broken-hearted people.
It is no surprise then, that a browse through the programme blurbs reveals at least nine plays in the Fringe Drama section dealing either directly or indirectly with absent fathers. What is suprising is there are not more.
Isibuko is one of them. Like many good stories, it doesn’t deal with its theme directly. Ostensibly it’s about a wedding; the heightened tensions of the imminently life-changing ritual is a useful, if somewhat overused, setting for personal drama.
Isibuko opens with two very drunk men stumbling against each other, alternating between sharing a bottle and clapping each other on the back. It is a familiar scene, its tension held by our knowledge that such situations can erupt into violence at any moment.
From there, actors Sabelo Makhubu and Sicelo Sithole switch abruptly to the beginning of the story, one that keeps us riveted to the climactic end.
This big reveal was unfortunately dampened by not being able to get a clear picture of the prop that holds the key, and the exclamation of one Zulu word I could not understand. Those in the front row got it, but director Zama Msibi, who explained it to me afterwards, said I wasn’t the only person who had queried it, and he was working on making the revelation more explicit.
Other than this staging problem, the work was gripping, my meagre grasp of Zulu (about a third of the text is in Zulu) no hindrance to comprehension, itself an indication of a well-constructed, and acted, play.
While Makhubu and Sithole who play lifelong friends Mxolisi and Zama could tone things down a bit – there is a tendency to overact – their complementary characters shone through brightly enough to illuminate a plot that twisted cleanly through an unusual set of complications. I certainly felt for them, willing the characters to reach for their better selves as they grappled with testing circumstance.
Writers Zama Msibi and Mxolisi Mtshali know how to create a work for stage. Despite a hackneyed wedding setting, the surprises were perfectly paced and with the exception of the bridegroom having second thoughts, were new, or at least offered new takes on well-used tropes.
Msibi also manages to avoid the trap many writer-directors walk into, that of being too verbose. The text is clipped to fit the stage, and despite the depth of the subject and the humour and pathos weaving through it, is almost sparse in parts, a feat some more well-known playwrights find difficult to achieve.
As a result they’ve staged a work that remains taut throughout, even the backstory vignettes delivered simply and partly through interludes of physical theatre, proving that for at least one of the troupe, the sins of the father do not need to cast a debilitating shadow over achievement.
Isibuko is one of those all-too-rare gems buried in the Fringe programme. These guys from Newcastle shine through the dust of neglect that too often settles on theatre outside our main cities.
Isibuko has its last run at the National Arts Festival tomorrow, 3 July at 18h00. Book here.