Rise up and laugh
The resurrection of Woza Albert!
They are both in their 60s, both veterans of the stage, and have both been around a block or two. Now Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema once again appear in the play that made them famous. The last time they performed Woza Albert! together was in 1985. Woza Albert! was a sensation when it debuted in 1981. Written by Mtwa, Ngema and Barney Simon and first performed at the Market Theatre, it launched the international careers of all three and became one of the most popular South African plays of resistance.
This was in the aftermath of Soweto ’76, a time of international sanctions, boycotts, violent protests and police brutality. The sharp political satire imagines the consequences of Morena (Jesus) arriving in apartheid SA. The title refers to Chief Albert Luthuli, a candidate for resurrection.
Ngema and Mtwa have just completed a run at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and are about to embark on a tour of the rest of the country.
Today the actor-playwrights find a different audience reaction. There are those for whom the play echoes with nostalgia, but others are shocked by it. Younger audiences have been the most moved. School children have been brought to tears.
Even before it premiered, Woza Albert! put the playwrights at huge risk. “We were even detained in the Transkei for 33 days. We were still writing and researching the work. The Special Branch got hold of our script and took us right in,” says Mtwa. They were sent to different prisons. Mtwa was put in solitary confinement.
Ngema says: “It was very scary. Once you are in, you never know if you are going to come out. We didn’t know how long it was going to be.”
He describes sharing a cell with a friend of Steve Biko who had been arrested under the notorious Terrorism Act, which allowed 90 days in detention without trial. After 90 days had lapsed, the security police would release him but before he could even get to the bus station, he would be re-arrested for another 90 days, repeatedly for more than two years.
“One night he came to me and said, ‘Goodnight,
I’m going home. They’ve told me I must take my things and go’, so he left. At 3 o’clock in the morning, the cell door opened and he was back. He said he had just gotten into bed with his wife after two years and then there was a knock at the door to arrest him,” Ngema says.
Upon their release (with the help of a journalist from Johannesburg), they were deported from the Transkei and banned for life from entering the area or any of the homelands.
The play was a sensation. “I think because people were highly mobilised, the energy was so electric between us and the audience. Sometimes they would chant outside in the foyer after the show, but there would be the security police who were regularly present,” says Mtwa.
During its run the duo were under heavy surveillance by the security police, who would regularly attend the production.
Ngema also recalls recently meeting a former South African Defence Force soldier at a dinner. “He said to me, ‘We were told to go watch Woza Albert! by the government’. The soldiers came to the Market Theatre regularly because the government said, ‘Those guys are making fun of us’.”
Seeing Woza Albert! now is inspiring. It recounts apartheid without being preachy or heavy.
At a time when black expression was regularly banned, the very act of entertaining an audience was an act of subversion — but the performances were so successful that the authorities had trouble banning them. Ngema says: “I think that’s what helped us. Also when we opened the play, it was during the whitesonly elections and there was a lot of international media. And there was this play opening at the Market Theatre right at the time, so we got world coverage immediately.” That became their protection and they also received invitations to perform overseas.
Looking back, Ngema says they were very serious young men. “We aimed very high. We would say things like, ‘One day we’ll be on Broadway’, at a time when we could not even afford a loaf of bread. The situation in the townships was dire. We were very focused and we knew that what we are about to embark on is something that’s not just going to die at the Market Theatre.”
Woza Albert! is a feat of physical theatre, drawing on elements of mime, breath, song, few props and the ability to describe imagery with minimal dialogue.
In the new production more emphasis is placed on the emotional content. “We have the energy that we had even when we were younger, but there is much more psychological and brain power in the performance, more maturity than a young actor,” says Ngema.
Mtwa adds: “The energy is still there, we can feel it bouncing between us and the audience all the time.”
Woza Albert! draws on everyday life. The two personify characters from a little child to an elderly woman. Of some of the characters Ngema says: “I grew up with those characters in Zululand so they could come into memory quickly. For others we went into the streets to research them and others came from past experiences, like riding trains.”
One of the most emotional aspects of seeing the play today is that life for black South Africans has not changed much in four decades.
“Politically, things have changed, but socially, things have not changed” says Ngema. “In some cases, it’s even worse. When I was last here, Khayelitsha was a small little township. Now it’s a massive city of tin. We were amazed to see people building double-storeys out of corrugated iron.”
Even though much has remained the same socially, the spirit of black protest theatre seems to have faded away.
Mtwa says: “When apartheid collapsed, it collapsed together with the anti-apartheid movement, which inspired all the protest theatre.
“The audience that visited our shows came in support of a shared ideal. Now that is gone and it’s like our theatre is in a vacuum.
“Students, even children, need a movement of some sort which is going to help bring society together. That is going to define where the nation is moving towards, because at the moment it’s like we are going around in circles.”
✼ Woza Albert! will be at the State Theatre in Pretoria from March 8 to 31. It will run in Port Elizabeth in May and at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in June
People were highly mobilised, the energy was so electric between us and the audience Percy Mtwa ‘Woza Albert!’ co-author