Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution opens on 14 November 2024 in the Barney Simon Theatre as part of the KAZA KAMBA Pan-African Theatre Festival.

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Robert Sobukwe’s birth on 5 December 2024, The Market Theatre, in partnership with the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) and Arts Alive, has commissioned a new play, Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution, which aims to introduce audiences to the life and times of the former PAC leader through critical historic moments alongside his prison letters to his wife, Veronica Sobukwe.

Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution, will open on 13 November 2024 in the Barney Simon Theatre as part of the KAZA KAMBA Pan-African Theatre Festival. It will then run beyond the festival until 8 December 2024, closing the week of Sobukwe’s birthday.

Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution sets out to show how Sobukwe’s love-centred response to oppression fuelled his fighting spirit against oppression and racial injustice. It examines love as a driving force of the revolution and a way of practising freedom while in bondage.

Written by award-winning playwright Monageng ‘Vice’ Motshabi, the show focuses on Sobukwe’s relationship with his wife through their letters, prison visits and everyday life in Kimberley, Northern Cape, where the couple lived. The struggle for freedom, as well as the evolution of strategies of responding to apartheid and its escalating violence, are seen through Sobukwe’s connection to family, friends and fellow prisoners.

Robert Sobukwe died of lung cancer in 1978. He was the founding member of the ANCYL and later first president of the PAC. As an academic, lawyer and organiser, Sobukwe was a staunch proponent of pan-Africanism, and devoted his whole life to the liberation of the oppressed African majority.

Some of the defining events central to the play include the Sharpeville Massacre, life at various prisons leading up to ‘the Sobukwe Clause’, Robben Island as well as life in Kimberly where he worked as a lawyer and community icon. The production makes use of orality and multiple-point-of-view-storytelling, monologues, satire, song and excerpts from some of Sobukwe’s favourite poems as they appear in his letters. Employing orality depicts Sobukwe’s love for storytelling, while emphasising his deep-rooted identity as a pan-Africanist.

The play carries a humanising motif, carefully portraying struggle heroes as ordinary people who, in addition to their revolutionary and moral courage against oppression, still found deep meaning in the pursuit of simple pleasures. It provokes reflections on the impact of colonialism and apartheid on the black family, as seen not only through the migrant labour system and land dispossession, but also the imprisonment, exile and killing of freedom fighters.

Greg Homann, Market Theatre Foundation’s Artistic Director, holds that Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution is a much-needed telling of our country’s liberation stories in this 30th year of our democracy, calling on us to rethink how we remember, honour and teach Sobukwe. “Sobukwe is a giant who played an important role in shaping South Africa, but his contribution is diminished in the public imagination of post-struggle South Africa. Staging this commemorative play is consistent with The Market Theatre’s unwavering commitment to being at the forefront of telling African stories with boldness, using the power of culture to agitate, inform and entertain,” outlines Homann.

The production is directed by Palesa Mazamisa. The cast is Pulane Rampoana, Zizana Peteni and Katlego ‘Kaygee’ Letsholonyana. Throughout the play, the cast moves between narration and the voicing of various characters, including Sobukwe, in a way that grapples with a complex life and legacy.

Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution offers an audience a moment to consider the philosophical and political importance of one of South Africa’s great struggle-leaders.

Do not miss this production at The Market Theatre. It runs from 13 November to 8 December 2024, with reduced price tickets at R100 over the KAZA KAMBA Pan-African Theatre Festival until 17 November. All tickets across the run are available via Webtickets.

For queries, please contact Bongiwe Potelwa (Publicist at the Market Theatre Foundation) at bongiwep@markettheatre.co.za or 011 832 1641 ext 224 or 079 967 3441.

For mehlo-maya
The BUZ HIVE
Bridget van Oerle
083 263 6991
bridget@thebuzhivehive.co.za

For reduced price block bookings (of 10 or more) and school groups, contact Anthony Ezeoke (Audience Development) at AnthonyE@markettheatre.co.za or 083 246 4950 or Mamello Khomongoe mamellok@markettheatre.co.za 081 572 9612.

Bongi Potelwa
bongiwep@markettheatre.co.za
079 967 3441
The Market Theatre Foundation
http://www.markettheatre.co.za