Welcome Msomi
A tragic end to a prolific life
● Welcome Msomi, who has died at the age of 76, was a playwright, producer, director and choreographer whose musical uMabatha, an isiZulu adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, took theatregoers around the world by storm and made him internationally famous.
It was staged at London’s West End Aldwych Theatre in 1972 and every sold-out performance in its three-week run received a standing ovation.
“Oh to be in London now uMabatha’s on,” wrote the usually acerbic Sunday Times columnist Molly Reinhardt, who described it as “unquestionably the most dramatic happening in the history of South African theatre”.
The fact that it was in isiZulu was no bar to understanding because of general familiarity with the plot, and characters to whom Msomi gave phonetically similar names.
English theatre great Peter Ustinov said he only truly understood Macbeth after seeing Msomi’s production.
What really blew audiences away was the extraordinary visual and sensory impact of Msomi’s production, the raw energy, vibrancy and thumping power of the music and dancing, which he composed and choreographed. Nothing like it had been seen before. It received rave reviews in the Fleet Street press.
Such was the runaway success of uMabatha that even the South African embassy in London, which had been unsupportive till then, hosted a reception for the cast, which responded by singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
Until then the apartheid government had barely recognised uMabatha and given it no support at all. It had grudgingly approved the tour on condition that Msomi’s company secured all the necessary funding — including for airfares, accommodation and maintenance of dependants for the 55member cast — beforehand.
Msomi, who was charming and persuasive, easily convinced donors to open their wallets and raised the required amount in five months.
The “Zulu Macbeth”, as it was called, was the first foreign production of a play by Shakespeare to be included in the World Theatre Season (WTS) which was not sponsored by its country’s government.
After its run at the Aldwych, uMabatha was invited to tour the US, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Japan and Australia. Film, recording, and publishing companies from five continents applied for rights to the play.
In 1997 uMabatha became the first visiting company from abroad to participate in the international festival marking the anniversary of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.
“Shakespeare is African,” Msomi informed the first-night audience. After a week-long run in London he took uMabatha on an eight-centre tour of the US.
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’
Msomi was born in Cato Manor, Durban, on November 18 1943. He matriculated at St Christopher’s School in Eswatini, where drama was his main interest. He acted in the Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Macbeth.
He decided on the theatre as a career while soaking up the applause after performing Mark Antony’s famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech.
His parents wanted him to study medicine, but he was determined to act and to write plays in isiZulu.
He wanted to enrol in speech and drama at the University of Natal but changed his mind when told he’d have to apply to the minister of the interior for permission to study at a white designated university. Instead he worked as a market researcher for a pharmaceutical company and after hours pursued his theatre interests by founding the Black Theatre Company in Durban in 1965.
The first plays he wrote, including for Radio Bantu as it then was, were about the effects of urbanisation on Zulu migrant workers, and violence in the townships.
His first stage production was Mtanami Nomhlangano. He walked the Durban streets advertising it and sold tickets from house to house. It was performed in 1967 in the old Bolton Hall theatre in Durban, a venue for early protest theatre.
Then came Qondeni, which was performed at the University of Natal’s Howard College Theatre. It caught the attention of professor Elizabeth Sneddon, head of the department of speech and drama at the university, who told him she thought Qondeni gave a “detrimental” depiction of the Zulu people.
She suggested he write a play that presented them in a worthier light and drew his attention to the many parallels between Macbeth and the tribal history of the Zulus.
This resulted in uMabatha, which was staged in 1970 under the direction of a senior lecturer in the department, and described in local press reviews as “inspired … unique … a theatrical event of tremendous importance”.
Peter Daubeny, founder-director of the WTS, was urged to consider uMabatha by Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who had heard of the production from his wife, actress Janet Suzman, niece of Helen Suzman, who was then the sole Progressive Party member of parliament.
In 1971, Daubeny attended a special performance at the university’s Open Air Theatre and predicted afterwards that uMabatha would be the “most exciting production” of the 200 plays the WTS had staged.
He invited uMabatha to open the ninth season of the WTS at the Aldwych the following year.
Msomi left SA with uMabatha for a 1978 run in New York and didn’t return until the early ’90s.
He was active in the anti-apartheid movement in the US, which, as he realised, would have made it difficult for him to return even if he wanted to.
In Brooklyn, New York, he resurrected the iZulu Dance Theatre and Music, which he’d started in Durban in 1965.
It taught Zulu dance, language and culture and became an institution among AfricanAmericans and the large community of exiled South Africans in New York, among whom Msomi became a cult figure.
Back in SA he pitched for and won, against a strong lineup of contenders, the contract to produce the 1994 Nelson Mandela inauguration ceremony.
Also in 1994 he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for best theatre choreographer for his choreography in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Tamburlaine the Great.
In 2006 he was made a judge of the Naledi Awards and invited onto the board by founder, CEO and personal friend Dawn Lindberg in 2008.
He won a Naledi lifetime achievement award and in 2012 a lifetime achievement award for theatre from the Arts & Culture Trust.
Missing money
He was acting chair of the Naledi Awards when Lindberg laid charges against him of misappropriating R150,000 from the awards and R350,000 from her personally.
When lawyers tried to recover the money it was found he owned absolutely nothing. Everything, including his car, was leased. It was then found he had a gambling addiction.
He was convicted last year of stealing R8m from the Living Legends Trust, of which he’d just been elected chair.
Before sentencing could take place he suffered a debilitating stroke.
Msomi is survived by his wife, Gugu, and four children.