Our old, principled struggle leaders are dying, the Mandela generation has gone to the grave or retired and on the way there, leaving a brutalised, embittered youth who inherited the revolutionary rhetoric but none of its discipline. The corruption that set in among the gravy train generals serving only to justify criminality as a means to grab what was promised and never delivered, leaving the country, especially its majority poor inhabitants, in a shithole of unrealised dreams and rampant crime.<\/p>\n
Yet not only do these young revolutionaries who came of age amidst the smoke, tear gas and stench of necklaced flesh but never matured enough to embrace the emancipating philosophies of Biko, Fanon, wa Thiong’o, Sobukwe and Mandela attack the inheritors of apartheid privilege, they turn their anger upon their own, adding the salt of continued violence into the wounds of inherited oppression.<\/p>\n
This bleak but accurate picture forms the core of the tale told in Emsini<\/em><\/a>, produced by Kimberley’s Galeshewe Theatre Organisation.\u00a0It is an important comment and mirror on contemporary township South Africa, reflecting it through the events that occur in old Dan’s shack.<\/p>\n An ageing anti-apartheid activist, Dan, who fails to understand what has happened to the world, and in whose book-lined shack all the action takes place, was unfairly labelled an impimpi thanks to diabolical police tactics. His solitary life is interrupted as a young woman (unfortunately none of the actors are named in the programme, or can be found online), chased by a pair of thugs, bursts into his home looking for refuge.<\/p>\n Written and directed by Moagi Modise, Emsini<\/em> is traditional theatre in the South African protest theatre mould. Some might argue the genre is tired but I don’t mind it if it is done well, and I found the play engaging, to a point. That point was about 50 minutes into the 70 minutes of the play, when the redundancy in the text became tiresome.<\/p>\n As is often the case when a writer also directs, a hard-nosed editor is required. Lyricism turns to superfluity and I found myself willing the actor to stop saying the same thing in five different ways and just bloody well get on with it.<\/p>\n Except for the young woman (dammit why don’t they put actors names in their blurb?), the acting was pretty darn good. She, however, was at times overacting to the extent I had to avoid looking at her to keep irritation from ruining the unfolding story.\u00a0The thugs were particularly good, with the handlanger adding a welcome comic touch.<\/p>\n Despite Modise’s long-winded attempts at echoing the lyricism in the Wordsworth poetry Dan so cherished, his ending is very concise. The set also went against the grain. I’m generally not fond of the sort of realism employed here but in this case I enjoyed the atmosphere it created, and the lighting was suitably atmospheric.<\/p>\n All the elements for a solid play in its genre are there, Modise just needs to get a good editor, take the cuts, get his actress to get real, and Emsini can improve from tolerable to taut.<\/p>\n Emsini plays at City Hall during the Cape Town Fringe until 4 October.<\/em><\/p>\n — Steve Kretzmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our old, principled struggle leaders are dying, the Mandela generation has gone to the grave or retired and on the way there, leaving a brutalised, embittered youth who inherited the … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[278],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}