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Sharing sorrow,
sharing hope: Tshepang – The Third Testament
 The
evening of 6 March 2004 was a time of great emotion,
emerging talent and excellence at the eKhaya Art
Centre in KwaMashu’s C-Section, KZN, where
its AfriSun Amphitheatre was the venue for a one-night-only
performance of the play “Tshepang –
The 3rd Testament”.
Starring Mncedisi Shabangu and Kholeka Qwabe
in the lead roles, this was the first dramatic
work ever to have been staged at the theatre,
and the audience was spellbound by the outstanding
quality of the performances, the highly creative
stage-set and the powerful script. The playwright
and director, Lara Foot Newton, gives the background
to the play:
“In 2001, South Africa was devastated by
the news of the brutal rape of a nine-month-old
child named ‘Baby Tshepang’. It was
thought that she had been gang-raped by a group
of six men, but it was later discovered that the
men had been wrongly accused and that she had
been raped and sodomised by her mother’s
boyfriend. Once the story of Baby Tshepang hit
the news headlines, hundreds of similar stories
were also revealed, and with 20 000 rapes a year
being recorded, it is vital that this ‘epidemic’
of child rape be confronted. Theatre is a good
place to start.”
It is difficult to describe the power of this
play and the exceptional abilities of all those
involved in its production. Although the township
and characters depicted in the play are fictional,
the use of simple objects and imaginative stage
direction of only two actors, express symbolically
both the harshness of poverty and the tenderness
of community bonds.
While Shabangu’s character gradually tells
the story of the household and its neighbours,
the rape and the media invasion that follows,
moving through a range of passionate descriptions,
Qwabe in the female lead role (the mother of the
violated child) has no words to say – she
conveys the trauma, shame and loss of her experience
in complete silence, desperately scrubbing the
ground, losing herself in memory and staring into
unknown spaces.
The male narrator often refers to the sun –
which beats down onto the township dwellings,
giving no relief from the hot, dusty, dry environment
-as “Makulu”, the great light that
sees everything, all the time. Pairs of spectacles
are hanging everywhere, urging us to think of
our own blind prejudice, the hypocrisy of the
public eye, and the need for a united vision for
a more caring society. “Shame on all of
us,” sobs Shabangu’s character. “This
town was gang-raped long ago…”. He
reminds us that the name “Tshepang”
means “hope”, and that despite the
cruelty of deprivation and violence, human beings
are capable of deep love and selflessness. The
child within every adult is the key to this hope.
Kholeka Qwabe recalls that when she and Mncedisi
Shabangu did their first reading of the script,
everyone on the set wept. “It was an intensely
emotional process,” she says. “At
first I was too angry to accept the redemption
that comes through at the end, so the whole production
took us through a hard journey to forgiveness.
But that’s the play’s message: that
we are all so fragile and yet so strong.”
The evening ended with great rejoicing when the
producer, Maurice Podbrey, made a surprise announcement
about national recognition for the production.
On behalf of the judges, he presented Shabangu
with the Fleur du Cap 2003/04 award for Best Actor
and Qwabe with her nomination for Best Actress;
“Tshepang – The 3rd Testament”
had scooped the award for Best Play of the year.
The cast and team were due to take the play to
Switzerland and Canada in the following weeks.
KwaMashu’s beautiful eKhaya Art Centre
is now home to a number of exciting new community
projects. Contact the Director and founder, EDMUND
MHLONGO, on 082 487 7167 (or by e-mail at kcap@mweb.co.za)
for more information.
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