Xhosa play speaks to painful past

Tale of fictional village tough to watch for some, but ‘a necessary truth’

A fictional African perspective on the painful and shaded history of black people before and after the invasion of white settlers in a comical village took centre stage on Wednesday evening with a Grahamstown (Makhanda) local production – The Xhosa Chronicles.

Power outages in the City of Saints on Monday evening meant that the play could not continue as scheduled – but that, in a way, could be counted as a blessing in disguise as the auditorium was filled to the brim on Wednesday evening.

Director and cast member Masixole Heshu works with his mother, uncle and close friends to welcome audience members to the fictional Magwala village, where its residents live in crippling fear of the unknown.

The village elder, Mgolombane, tells the story of the homestead’s first-ever visitors, and how they infiltrated the land, the women, the children and the cattle.

“When the visitors first got here and saw how beautiful our village was, they wanted it all for themselves.

“They built on our forefathers’ land.

“The visitors took our pureness, leaving only poison behind.”

The play uses song, dance and narration to tell the story of an African village that is captured by people of a different colour who leave it in ruins and its people with an existential crisis about who they truly are.

Tension filled the Victoria Girls Hall as the play painfully explored questions of race, colonisation, and the false representations and myths about civilisation that came with the first visitors.

“Visitors brought brandy and tobacco, education, English, the bible and the mirror for us to see ourselves. They made our people forget their ways,” a young village girl says.

Speaking to the Dispatch, Heshu said the play used history and performance as a way of producing knowledge to address the historical context of South Africa.

“The narrative searches for rescripting and reclaiming the ruins of the fifth frontier war, which for decades has led to the dehumanisation of AmaXhosa.

“The poison we refer to in the play is the effects of colonisation.”

Audience member Ruth Woudstera described the play as “uncomfortable but important”. “Being white and watching it cut deep, but it was a necessary truth,” she said.