Speculation on Speculative Fiction: A review of Lauren Beukes’ talk at Woordfees

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Nadia Sanger

The Arthur C Clarke Award Winning South African Science/Speculative fiction author Lauren Beukes presented a talk at Woordfees 2017 that can be described as a journey of her creative writing process. As one walked into the Drostdy-Theatre, one encountered the primer for Beukes’ talk which was a quote taken from author Muriel Rukeyser stating: “The universe is made up of stories, not atoms”. It was this quote which was to serve as the driving force behind her talk on the function of storytelling in her life, having worked as journalist and author, and in the lives of others. Her talk, which charted the course of her literary journey up until her current works, was delivered to a modest audience and was well received. Particularly noteworthy moments in her presentation were instances in which she explained what inspired her as a young woman to dream of becoming a writer, and then talking about the almost twenty-five-year struggle to make a living from it. Another such moment was when she cites her own daughter as not only a source of inspiration for some of the work she has produced, speaking here specifically about a Wonder Woman comic she produced with DC Comics for children, but displaying the power of storytelling to function across, and work for multiple generations. Her discussion spanned the length of her literary career thus far, and detailed what inspired her first novel Moxyland (2008), describing the focus of the novel to examine the use of cell phones and digital surveillance in the modern space and how this informed her writing an attempted apartheid critique and allegory. She noted, with much humour, how many of the things she created primarily for Moxyland have become functional in the real world, such as cellular networks being used to track protest groups. Following this, her explanation for her second novel Zoo City (2010) involved telling the audience about research which took her from the tunnels of Cape Town, to historic churches in Johannesburg which function as refugee shelters.

The focus then shifted as her ongoing talk about her own work, and its many inspirations then progressed to her American centred novels The Shinning Girls (2013), and Broken Monsters (2014). Her talk about the authorial journey proceeded to show the audience members about her time in Detroit City, and its many modern ruins, and interviews she conducted with former, and still active, homicide detectives, and art students. These points, however, were perhaps all overshadowed by the potential contestation of her inspiration for writing The Shining Girls. In this part of the talk, Beukes discusses with the audience (of mostly white middle aged women it should be noted) about the tragic and brutal murder of her domestic worker’s daughter Thomokazie Zazayokwe (killed at 23) and how this story inspired her to write about not only a serial murderer, but about a female subject that would not let such injustice go unpunished. This point remains contested, because for all the well-intentioned meaning behind Beukes’ act of writing this narrative, such story telling also claims the use of the lives of others, and a pain and tragedy which in many ways is not her own. One may also ask the question, why set a murder narrative, such as the one she writes, in an American context, if in fact she is attempting to speak out about violence towards women in the South African space. This moment of her talk at Woordfees 2017 may have left a slightly bitter taste in the mouths of some, despite her talk being well-intentioned and a fascinating insight into her writing process. Though, as the talk came to a close, and as Beukes circled back to her suggestions for writers out in her audience, one considers the unfortunate fact that she did not take (or have) time to reflect on the South African Science/Speculative Fiction scene, and why there is a lack of distinct and diverse voices at present. These questions may fall outside the scope of her potentially solipsistic talk, but are ever present and should be addressed by the apparently leading voice of the local Science/Speculative Fiction genre. As a whole, this talk was fascinating for anyone wanting to get a closer look into Beukes’ writing process, however for those wanting to hear about the development of an important literary space in South Africa they may well have been left underwhelmed.

By Andre van Vollenstee

 

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Re-imagining the Other: Musings on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Lecture

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Nadia Sanger

A reflection by Stephen David

On Friday, 3rd March, 2017, a lecture was hosted by University of Cape Town titled “Secure the Base”, delivered by African writer and activist, Prof Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who spoke to the need for a decolonisation of African thinking, education and self definition by reworking the curriculum. The writer harped on the need for a creation of inward looking Africans who would embrace African ontology as a framework for development. He noted that placing premium on African languages would reverse the wheels of colonial damage. The lecture opened with struggle songs which evoked participation from ‘everyone’, however, this conviviality became fraught when a lady announced to the hall that the presence of the ‘others’ – whites – in the hall would defeat the purpose of the gathering. It is this particular disruption that gave breath to this piece.

It might be apposite to note that while most of the members of the audience agreed on the need to decolonise Africa and rid her of unwholesome Western overtures that have kept the continent prostrate for years, the divisions that continue to perpetuate this rapine were palpable in the hall – a section of the black students were adamant that the ‘Whites must go’. This brought to my mind the theory of intersectionality’s concept of ‘difference/sameness’ which speaks to how the two divides often conflate to erase the presence, and experiences of marginal identities. In this case, solidarity is read in terms of colour, which in the same space excludes those at the margins whose hue of skin might wrongly signal solidarity and belonging – thus bearing the burden of ‘whiteness’.

The dangers of such top-heavy approaches was aptly demonstrated in how the plight of the disabled, poignantly highlighted by a lady who invaded the podium with a placard, fell through the cracks, unacknowledged in the heat of the white-black discourse. My take from all of this is that a discourse that remains at the vexed binarism of the ‘past’ would exclude marginal participants whose presence and narratives would have given teeth to the struggle for true emancipation and ‘quality belonging’. I will advise, like Ngugi, that there is a need for alliances between likeminded people irrespective of colour or spatial binaries. Such alliances would give impetus to a reading of the struggle as ‘inclusive’, and as such, a departure from the exclusionist discourse that continues to perpetuate layers of ‘others’.

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The time ‘the other Kennedy’ visited apartheid South Africa

Posted on July 10, 2016 by SLiP

During his 1966 visit to South Africa, US Senator Robert F Kennedy met with ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli. (Shoreline Productions)

During his 1966 visit to South Africa, US Senator Robert F Kennedy met with ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli. (Shoreline Productions)

Kenneth Kaplan, University of the Witwatersrand

“RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope” was recently screened at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) with filmmaker Larry Shore on hand to discuss the film. The documentary chronicles American Senator Robert Kennedy’s visit to South Africa in 1966, recording many historical moments around his short visit, including the defiant meeting with then African National Congress (ANC) President Chief Albert Luthuli, then under a banning order. Known by his initials, “RFK” was part of the famous Kennedy political clan. He was assassinated in 1968.

The speeches Kennedy gave at the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Wits may have faded from public memory or may no longer seem relevant. However, by recovering these images, the film succeeds not only as a record of the racial segregation of this society and the former “whites-only” universities at the height of apartheid, but acquires an added poignancy with the recent student protests and ongoing calls for the transformation of the entire education system in South Africa.

Kenneth Kaplan, who teaches directing and writing in the Film/TV division at Wits University in Johannesburg, interviewed Shore, who is a Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies, Hunter College, New York.

Why did you choose to focus on this particular event?

I was a junior high school student in Johannesburg in 1966 when Robert Kennedy visited South Africa. Although I did not attend any of the events, I followed it closely in the liberal Johannesburg English-language newspapers like the Rand Daily Mail and The Star. The visit really amazed me, as it amazed many others. In high school and then at the University of the Witwatersrand I became really interested in American history and politics, which included an interest in the Kennedys.

I remembered the visit when I left South Africa in 1973 for the US and afterwards. My MA included a good dose of US foreign policy, and policy towards Africa and apartheid South Africa in particular. So I think I was always interested in US-South Africa relations and the connections between the two countries. I also teach about this stuff as a professor at Hunter College in New York. This carried over when I became interested in documentary films.

I also liked the story because it opened up doors to other interesting stories that deserved to be told, like those of Albert Luthuli and the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), to name just two. I am very grateful and pleased that the film has been well received by South African audiences although my original primary audience was the United States. I always believed that it helps to tell a story about a foreign country to an American audience if it has an American connection. Robert Kennedy was that connection.

What impact did the visit have and how did it shape relations between the US and South Africa?

As a filmmaker you don’t want to overdo it or make more of it than is right. It was only a moment – but it was an important moment. I do think that the visit did have an impact in South Africa. It was the first time anyone important had come to the country from the outside world and said they were on the side of those who opposed apartheid. And it was someone important – a Kennedy and brother of President John F Kennedy, who was popular in South Africa. He was not just a famous American.

South Africans were interested in American affairs and they believed Robert Kennedy was going to be the next president. And you had the feeling that this important person was going to do something about it when he went home. Or at least tell the world what was happening in South Africa and maybe something would happen. Like the famous speech he gave at the University of Cape Town, his visit was a “ripple of hope” and it was felt across the country.

His visit with Chief Luthuli was a big publicity boost for the ANC, which in 1966 was in the depths of the deepest repression with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island and Luthuli banned to Groutville (a small town in the province of KwaZulu-Natal). The visit to Soweto and RFK’s meeting with various black South Africans was a lift for black South Africans.

It also was a source of encouragement for white liberal organisations and individuals within Nusas, liberal politician Helen Suzman and others. I think that the visit to Stellenbosch University helped lay a few seeds for what later became the verligte (enlightened) movement among Afrikaners. I don’t think the visit changed US policy towards South Africa directly at the time, but it was one of a number of things that began to bring attention to bear on South Africa – what was going on there and what could be done about it.

What might we know about you and your life that you think led you to make this film?

Well, as I said before, I have always been interested in US-South African stories. Certainly a part of that is because I am a South African-American. I have lived most of my adult life in America but I grew up in and have a lot of connections to South Africa. I kept that connection during my years in the anti-apartheid movement in the US and after the end of apartheid. When I became convinced that it was a good story, and would make for a good film, I realised that, as someone who understood and had lived in both countries, I was well suited to make the film.

What are some of the creative challenges you faced making the film?

I think one of the most difficult things about making a film about someone as famous as Robert Kennedy is to avoid hagiography – putting him up on a pedestal and making the visit appear more important than it was yet at the same time not denying its significance. How to find the right balance was a major challenge in making the film.

As with any documentary like this, I also faced challenges deciding what interviews not to use. I had lots of terrific interviews with important and interesting people but I had to leave some of them out and make tough selections.

The text above has been edited from an interview conducted by Kenneth Kaplan with Larry Shore following the recent screening of “RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope” at Wits University.

The Conversation

Kenneth Kaplan, Lecturer in Directing & Writing in Film/TV, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Reading, Not Ranting.

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Angelo Fick

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JOHANNESBURG - High Indignation, thus capitalised, does sound like the name of a place in a modern allegory emulating the form of the mediaeval morality play. And in some senses, with more than just a little help from post-millennial technology, the virtual place of High Indignation has become the look-out point from which many folks not only survey the world, but deliver themselves of 140-characters long sermons.

The sign for the virtual town is a blue bird on a white background, though some prefer to visit its twin-city, Moral Huff, which has as its crest the white ‘f’ on a blue background.  Now, these places were founded on very different principles.  They were meant to be places of information exchange, possibly gossip, and human interaction.  They were meant to be mostly ‘lite’ (sic) in tone.

But then they became, as such places almost inevitably do, more than places of meeting and greeting.  They became trading places, spaces where status mattered, where things could be offered for sale, and bought or rejected, and many of these commodities pretended to be ideas.  Ideas, elaborated, were flogged as politics; politics, dressed up in the right packaging, was displayed as moral purpose, sometimes high, sometimes low.

The inhabitants of the towns of High Indignation and Moral Huff soon stopped chattering, and moved rapidly to judgement and condemnation, at first quietly, but increasingly loudly, as time passed, and these days, their voices are shrill, and strident.  Those of us familiar with Salem, Massachusetts, and Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’, could guess what was coming: apocalyptic danger.  And with our noses into the wind, many of us ducked down, catching the whiff of sulphur, we gathered our meagre possessions, ideas and philosophies collected and treasured over decades, some of it the inheritance of forebears, heirlooms from mothers and foremothers, valueless in the newish economy of sound-bites and biting sounds, of vituperative accusation and condemnatory judgement, and took to the road.

But, of course, the remembrance of times past is not only nostalgia, longing for times that feel better in the bathos of the present.  The mis-memory of the past is also a reflection on our misjudgement in the present, since how we live now will at some point also be the past, and we will remember today’s dystopia as yesterday’s utopia.  And, of course, while High Indignation and Moral Huff have become uninhabitable places for many of us, they remain havens for others.  They may feel like safe harbour yet, in some unimaginably bleak future.

If one has an appetite for bile-filled exchanges that are mistaken for serious political engagement, High Indignation is a delightful place to spend time.  If one’s preference is for the long diatribe yawped into the void of what passes for a marketplace of free trade in ideas, Moral Huff is the place to strike one’s pontificating poses.  Index finger raised, fist aloft, eyes narrowed, and verbiage pouring forth: these towns are populated with statues of their high priests in just such postures.

It struck many of us who spent our formative years in Eighteenth Century Novel, and had our apprenticeship for adulthood in High Modern Essay and Philosophical Monograph, that High Indignation and Moral Huff were amusing places to tour, but they were hardly places to settle.  The conversations in them, despite their best attempts, felt more like the sort of thing one knew from Speaker’s Corner and its avatars, and from Town Crier and its descendants.  These were not reincarnations of our ancestral villages in Imbizo, Salon, Argument, Debate, and Lekgotla, though many mistook them for such.

In High Indignation and Moral Huff, every day there is something new to be outraged about.  In these places, there is often no consistency of political programme, and inhabitants can be outraged by the policing of phenotype in the casting choices of the entertainments presented on Tuesday, and by Thursday use those same techniques to police and decry casting choices in other entertainments.  They are often morally and intellectually confused and confusing places: the causes of today’s disdain are the very causes to be forcefully and vocally defended tomorrow.

And, of course, the exchange of gossip, ideas, and those tattered, devalued items in our scuffed suitcases, philosophies and politics, still goes on, underneath the exchange of more lurid though less enduring items: rage and outrage.

The high priests and all that are with them are indeed filled with indignation, and they have no hesitation spewing it forth.  But more balefully, these habits are slipping into neighbouring towns and villages, and no walls or forms of prophylaxis have yet been able to keep what does feel like contagion at bay.  Argument and Politics are already almost unrecognisable; the habits of Moral Huff and High Indignation have taken hold.  Some of the inhabitants of Philosophy slip, unwittingly, into those debasing habits, on occasion, all too easily.

For those of us, anachronisms in this brave new world, barbarians that we are, Luddites as we are called, High Indignation and Moral Huff remain, for the moment, interesting places to visit: to invoke Katherine Mansfield, one must go everywhere, see everything.  They are places of Gothic terror or comic distraction, but we know we could not permanently survive their rough marketplaces and violent streets.  And we have a grudging admiration for folks who settle there permanently: it must be exhausting, we think.  Also, we hold the high priests in awe, even if only grudgingly: how do they maintain the rictus of their postures, why do their voices never grow hoarse?

What we cannot abide, of course, is the mistake of the hieratic for the hieroglyphic.  Mistaking opining for analysis, or view for interpretation, or personal dislike for political purpose, or, in fact, mistaking the towns of High Indignation and Moral Huff for the older and more enduring cities of Philosophy, Argument, Lekgotla, and Imbizo, these are not minor errors; they have, we can tell, baleful consequences, and the ash on our tongues remind us.  The heightened emotional states of the former towns do not suit the habits we have learned in the latter cities.

It may be time to spend less time in the towns with the crests that bear the blue bird and the white ‘f’.  We are, after all, not all suited to be Sadducees.  Many of us prefer the sedentary habits that come with reading, not ranting.  We prefer the parks of quiet engagement to the crazy-paved squares of pontification and just-add-water-judgement.

 

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This article was first published by www.enca.com on 8 March 2016.

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African theatre: why it’s important to transpose Western dramatic classics

Posted on February 24, 2016 by SLiP

Vumani Oedipus being staged at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. Wits Theatre

Vumani Oedipus being staged at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.

Samuel Ravengai, University of the Witwatersrand

The Western dramatic canon has been a source of irritation to some Afrocentrists, who see it as providing unfair criteria for judging new work in Africa. Some call for its total abandonment and pursue performance modes that are relevant to Africa. I argue for its appropriation and repurposing in order to address Africa’s cultural needs.

There are several models in which this process can be carried out.

The Black Orpheus model

The first model is generally called transposition. Some American scholars call it Black Orpheus. African playwrights create African equivalents of Western dramatic classics with a direct one-to-one correspondence.

Ola Rotimi’s The Gods are Not to Blame, based on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, follows the same schema. In it Oedipus becomes Odewale, the setting changes from Thebes to Kutuje and all other names are changed to Yoruba equivalents. The Greek culture becomes a metaphor. A new text is formed which addresses African issues but with Greek structural underpinnings.

Welcome Msomi’s uMabatha which was first performed in 1971 at the University of Natal’s open-air theatre, did exactly the same thing. It was based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but changed the setting to 19th-century Zululand during the reign of Shaka and Dingane. Banquo became Bhangane, Lady Macbeth became Kamandonsela, Duncan became Dangane and the Thane of Cawdor became Khondo. It was performed entirely in Zulu.

Through this process, Msomi was able to re-programme the play’s reception as an African play dealing with African issues. Apartheid South Africa was preoccupied with the Afrikanerisation of theatre and the sidelining African culture and performances. Due to the activities of the Black Consciousness Movement, most radical theatre activities were banned during the time.

The performance of uMabatha was allowed under the pretext that Africans were complicit in their cultural colonisation. Yet the transposition of Macbeth decolonises Shakespeare through the insertion of Zulu dances, songs, drums, costume and praise poetry. The Zulu culture under threat from apartheid is revived and celebrated under the guise of Shakespeare. It was an incitement outside of the controls of censorship.

The Black Athena model

The second model of repurposing Western dramatic classics, especially of Greek origin, is “reclamation” – sometimes called “Black Athena” by diasporic Africans in the US. The creative impulse emanates from the historical fact that much of the material contained in Greek plays is of African origin. According to the Greek father of history, Herodotus, the Greeks received their myths, gods and culture from ancient Egyptians who were phenotypically a combination of yellow and black.

Dionysus was a version of the African Osiris god. The Egyptians created performative theatre which was stolen/copied/appropriated by the Greeks as dithyrambic singing and dancing. But they later developed this into the dramatic canon associated exclusively with the West. According to this paradigm, to select material stolen from Africa and reinserting it back into Africa is not cultural colonisation, but a corrective returning of the culture to its rightful owners.

While the occult dimension of Western theatre has dissipated since the rise of the western bourgeoisie rule, it is still a part of the African theatre. My play Vumani Oedipus celebrates the power of the metaphysical world over humans.

Re-historicising

The third model can be achieved through conceptual casting and re-historicising the old classics. In this model the origin of Greek culture is of little importance. The Greek play is taken as it is and performed in a new context to speak to a different set of history.

In 2004, I staged Jean Anouilh’ Antigone (an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone) at the University of Zimbabwe’s Beit Hall Theatre. Zimbabwe was five years into an economic and political crisis. I used an all-black cast and invited the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) to record the play. It happily accepted.

In the play, Antigone calls for civil disobedience over the dictatorship and heartlessness of Creon. Without changing a single word and through re-historicising and conceptual casting, the play had a different meaning to that of the original and was perceived as anti-Mugabe. ZBC refused to air it.

Similar results were achieved through the South African Antigone in 1971, which was performed by students involved in Theatre Council of Natal. The apartheid government gave the students blessings to perform the play, but the students used it to critique the government.

The play opened with a black man being hanged. They used projections of the slums of South Africa to draw similarities between the dictatorship and injustices of Creon and those meted on blacks in apartheid South Africa. In both cases the injustices of Creon were interpreted to mean the injustices of the local context.

Vumani Oedipus being staged at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
Wits Theatre

Vumani Oedipus was recently staged at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. The work is inspired by the classical playwright Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.

I did not faithfully follow Sophocles’ play. Rather, I directorially reinterpreted and reworked it through, among other things:

  • adding new material from other texts;
  • collapsing other characters, such as priest and senator into one (Ndunankulu);
  • simplifying language and cutting dialogue; and
  • re-historicising the play and reprogramming the reception of the story, theme and character.

I also did not resort to the extreme method of adaptation which virtually destroys any link between the source text and the resultant performance text. I wanted to capture the spirit of the old story in a new South African context: Nguniland of the 21st century. The new setting is fictional, but interestingly familiar to South African audiences.

Is there value in reviving Western classics in post-colonial (South) Africa? Is this not perpetuating Western cultural imperialism?

While I respect the view that Western classical canon when used unwisely can perpetuate cultural domination, I put forward views that can be considered when deciding to adapt these classics to enrich African culture. In this globalised world, negative identity is inappropriate. The whole Western modernist tradition is anchored on ideas stolen from Africa and Asia, and Africa can do the same as I have suggested above.

The Conversation

Samuel Ravengai, Senior Lecturer in Directing and Performance Studies, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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