blog rss
podcast rss
Sizwe Banzi has a desperate need to provide for his family, but his passbook contains the wrong information and so prevents him from finding work. With his new friend, Buntu, he comes across a corpse lying by the side of the road, and the prospect of stealing the dead man’s papers seems to offer the only escape route. began its life in the townships before touring the world to massive critical and popular acclaim. Created at a time when every black South African over the age of 16 was required to carry an identity book, Now a classic of South African theatre, there is a universality to Sizwe Banzi is Dead that transcends its age. The play perfectly evinces the problems faced by thousands in the world today seeking free movement in this global age. It also serves as a reminder to the outside world of how Africa and its people are still being treated.
At the heart of 'Sizwe Banzi is Dead', is the universal theme of identity. When Bantu explains that Sizwe must take on the identity of a dead man, Robert, in order to survive, Sizwe’s reaction, “I cannot lose my name”, is reminiscent of John Proctor’s desperate cries to save his name in 'The Crucible'. If one loses one’s name, does one simply become a ghost? It is a chilling spectacle to watch and listen to Sizwe memorizing his new dompas number - the loss of his name is dehumanizing and humiliating.
Ultimately, the play asks the question - repeatedly raised by Sizwe, Styles, and Bantu during its course - “What does it mean to be a man?” It is this query that transcends the barrier of the final curtain, and continues to echo in one’s mind after the play has finished.
Needless to say, the collaborative work broke cultural barriers and the award-winning actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona reprise their role. For me, John Kani is most remembered for his role in the Gavin Hood short film, The Shopkeeper. The short film is included in Tsotsi's DVD directed by Gavin Hood and based on a novel written by Anthol Fugard.
Here's the review Sizwe Banzi Is Dead from Variety.com
By Sam Thielman
Agitprop ages quickly, but sometimes it ends up in the history books and becomes interesting all over again. That's the case with "Sizwe Banzi Is Dead," South African playwright Athol Fugard's collaborative effort with his countrymen John Kani and Winston Ntshona. When Fugard, Kani and Ntshona began working together during apartheid, the collaboration earned the actors Tonys from the Broadway community in 1975 and harsh jail sentences from the government they were criticizing. "Sizwe" re-stages the first of three collaborations, and while the 36-year-old play feels a little elderly, it's still a fitting epitaph to a truly strange type of tyranny.
"This is Africa,"
says photographer Styles (Kani), gesturing at a map of the world. His
subject, Robert Zwelinzima (a movingly sad Ntshona), looks closer as he
points deliberately at South Africa. "We are right down here, just
about to fall off." If Styles and Robert are edging closer to a
precipice, the people pushing them are the Afrikaners who enforced the
kind of Catch-22 bureaucracy that still runs riot across the continent
nearly two decades after Nelson Mandela walked out of prison.
This system, which makes a sort of Kafkaesque sense, is of great concern to a man who used to be called Sizwe Banzi before he discovered he could not live with that name in Port Elizabeth -- where he has at least some chance of finding work. This man is now Robert, and he's having his picture taken so that when he sends money home to his wife, she'll see that he's all right.
Robert is being recalled to his home of King Williams Town by way of a stamp on his passbook, which he didn't understand because he can't read. The stamp means no one in Port Elizabeth will give him a job. Even if he doesn't get caught for burning the book or being without it, when he goes to the government for a replacement, computer records will ensure that the same stamp ends up in the reissued book. If he goes back to King Williams Town, he will be unable to feed himself or his family.
All this, believe it or not, is pretty funny when Kani and Ntshona explain it, proving Samuel Beckett's adage that when you're up to your neck in shit, all you can do is sing.
Kani mugs shamelessly through the play, sometimes snatching a hard-earned laugh and sometimes stumbling, pulling the audience through his initial 45-minute monologue about working for Ford in South Africa by sheer force of charm.
But the narrative sketch of life in 1970s Port Elizabeth serves the rest of the play well -- it helps put us on local time, laughing with Kani at the white man, whose ignorance is exceeded only by his power, and sympathizing with his efforts to make a living in a world that doesn't much care for him.
"Sizwe Banzi Is Dead" makes its mark suddenly, when the light conversation shifts to a question of how to change identities, and the thrill of having found a way to do it. "Burn this number in your head," Sizwe's friend Buntu (also Kani) tells him. "It is more important than your name."
The sight of a man changing himself totally to suit his persecutors breaks your heart, but when he takes pleasure in the resulting pitiful freedom, it makes you, appropriately, a little sick.
