Sizwe Banzi is Dead
Written by Athol Fugard in collaboration with John Kani & Winston Ntshona
Directed by Peter Brook
Playhouse Theatre
Sydney Opera House
Until 16 December
A jam-packed, internationally flavoured opening night gave this highly unusual drama a hero's welcome at the Sydney Opera House. Sizwe Banzi is Dead was created 35 years ago when South African playwright Athol Fugard collaborated with black township actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona to forge a story of repression and hope under apartheid. It signalled a rise in artistic resistance to that racist system and became an international theatrical phenomenon.
That the play — adapted by veteran Peter Brook and performed in French with English subtitles — is riding high today shows the universality of its themes and the power of its story.
The notorious pass system, in which every coloured South African was controlled by compulsory identity papers that restricted their movements, is the most obvious issue of the play.
Sizwe Banzi (Pitcho Womba Konga, a political activist from Mali) is becoming increasingly desperate as he realises he is far from his home town, where there's no work and little hope, with a pass that says he is overdue to return there. He finds a dead body at the roadside, prompting his street-wise mate Buntu (Habib Dembele, a Congolese-Belgian rapper) to tell him to steal the dead man's unrestricted pass and assume his identity as Robert Zwelinzima.
The thought of sacrificing his identity for the sake of a precarious liberty bothers Sizwe deeply.
"But that will mean Sizwe Banzi will be dead!", he exclaims.
For director Peter Brook, the global themes of racial oppression and the robbing of identities are equally alive today, despite the demise of Apartheid.
"Because, in any rich country, there are people who have not the right to simple existence if they can't produce a piece of paper with the right stamp on it", he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"In France you see it on the Metro: a policeman goes up to a middle-aged African woman with kids and says, rap rap, where are your papers? You can see the fear, because if something is found to be wrong, there is no appeal. And that is a world situation."
But Brook never asks his audience to simply wallow in the injustices and oppression denounced by the play.
A cheeky tone pervades the satirical opening monologue by the charismatic Styles (also played by Dembele) as he relates his experiences as a "circus monkey" on the production line for the fat, racist Ford motor company bosses.
Styles's foreign tongue here heightens the humour, helping to highlight our shared working-class condition: "You must understand one thing. We own nothing except ourselves. This world and its laws, allows us nothing, except ourselves. There is nothing we can leave behind when we die, except the memory of ourselves."
The finale is delivered with notes of hope, cunning and pride, even as it is suggested that death is a sort of liberation from the misery of oppression.
Sizwe warms to Buntu's cunning idea, even as he laments that his society values identity of the person less than his identity pass, which outlives him: "[You mean] a Black man can stay out of trouble? Impossible! Our skin is our trouble!"
The intersection of race and class — crucially, delivered in Third World voices — that is all too rare on the Australian stage makes the revival of this classic play all the more welcome and as relevant as ever.