bra gib - father of south africa’s township theatre

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BRA GIB

Father of South AfricasTownship Theatre

Rolf Solberg


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Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Foreword by David B. Coplan xi

Preface xv

PART 1: Kente the Playwright 1

1. The formative years 3

Dorkay House 5

2. The 1960s: the early plays 8

Manana the Jazz Prophet 8

Sikalo 10

Lifa 14

Zwi 17

3. The Political Trilogy 23

How Long? 24

I Believe 27

Beyond a Song 29

Too Late 30

4. In the heat of the Struggle 32

Can You Take It? 35

Laduma 37

Taximan and the School Girl 38

The Load/Mama and the Load 41

The early 1980s 44

Hungry Spoon 44

Lobola 45


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Hard Road 46

Going Back/Looking Back/Marakalas 48

5. Time out, and return 51

Now is the Time/My Troubled Land 55

Bad Times, Mzala/Things are Bad, Mzala 56

6. Vision of a promised land 59

Sekunjalo/The Naked Hour 59

7. End of an era 71WeMame! 71

Give a Child/We Are the Future 72

8. The new dispensation 75

Mfowethu 78

Mamas Love 82

Lahliwe/What a Shame 88

Ezakithi 91

How Long 2 96

9. End game 100

The Call 101

10. The curtain comes down 103

11. Gibson Kentes legacy 108

PART 2: The Person Gibson Kente 111

Professor Vilakazis letter of recommendation 113

Kente the Theatre Artist 115

Kente the Teacher 127

Kente the Musician 139

Kente the Entrepreneur 147

Photo Insert between pages 110 and 111

List of Plays 157

Endnotes 159

Index 168


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PART 1

Kente the Playwright


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1

The formative years

Gibson Mthuthuzeli Kente was born on 25 July 1932 in Duncan Village

near East London in the Eastern Cape. He was of the Madiba clan, and thus

related to Nelson Mandela, who was his uncle. He was the second of five

children, one of whom died in infancy. Despite not having much to do with

his father, his childhood was carefree and he was, as he admitted, badly spoilt

as the favourite boy child.

The family was comparatively secure financially. They had two houses

in Tsolo, and Gibsons mother, Ellen (whose African name was Nonzophi),

ran a little business selling fruit and vegetables. She was a generous woman

who readily shared what she had with others. Gibsons older sister, Frances,

says that he was very close to his mother.

His maternal grandparents owned a sizeable farm at Stutterheim. When

they died, his mother moved there with her family. Gibson spent many

childhood holidays on the family farm and it was doubtless there that he

developed the almost religious rapport with the world of nature that stayed

with him for the rest of his life.

Schooling for Kente began at the local St Philips Primary School. Always

an inventive child and prone to mischief, in 1939 he was moved from

Class 2 at St Philips to the primary division of Bethel College, a strict

Seventh Day Adventist boarding school in Butterworth.2 Secondary schooling

followed at Lovedale College in Alice, where the original plan was for him

to complete his secondary education and then stay on in the teacher trainingdivision of the College with a view to qualifying as a teacher. In 1951,

however, after clashing with the Lovedale authorities over political

involvement in oppositional activities, Kente found himself briefly expelled,

along with other students; the authorities subsequently relented and the

students were readmitted.

Among his accomplishments in the Lovedale years, Kente showed promise

as a sportsman, excelling in athletics, boxing, rugby and table tennis, playing

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college rugby at provincial level and showing sufficient promise in boxing

for a sports coach to suggest that he go professional. I turned his offer down

because education had a stronger appeal to me, said Kente in an interview

with Metropolitan Digestin 1987.3 In 1953 he was the black South African

discus champion and came second in shot put.

More significantly for our story, at Lovedale Kente also learnt to play the

piano. From early childhood, music was a central part of Gibson Kentes

universe. As he put it in the 1987 interview, although he was not really

trained to compose music, musical ability was for him an in-born talent.4

Preserved in family legend are stories of herdboy Gibson hearing melodies

in the air when he was out in the veld with the cattle; its probable that such

a child would have absorbed and enjoyed the traditionally strong musical

culture of the Seventh Day Adventists during the time he spent at school

with them. Reminiscing in an interview with the Marxist critic Robert

McLaren Kavanagh about his schooldays at Bethel College in Butterworth,

Kente recalled that:

Every Sunday was like the typical revival meet in the States. We

yelled with piety. We yelled till we had to speak in whispers the

following day. Man, we yelled!5

In the 1987 Metropolitan Digestinterview he spoke of the strong emphasis

on biblical studies and training at Butterworth, coupled with gospel and

religious music, adding: I also received much pleasure and inspiration from

Negro spirituals.6

Along with the piano lessons, it was in the Lovedale years that sports star

Kente also learned how to write down the songs that came into his head,

and he began to use them in sketches at the College.

His stay there came to a premature end when he fell out once more

with the Lovedale authorities this time, more seriously, for militancy

and he was expelled for good. Decamping to East London, he filled in time

for a year or two earning his bread as an uncertified social worker. He also

formed a popular singing group called The Symphonic Five a sign that

the entertainment world was beginning to beckon.

This trend was set to continue when, in 1955, Kente cut loose from his

Eastern Cape origins and migrated to Johannesburg to register as a Social

Work student at the pioneering Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, housed,


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along with the Bantu Mens Social Centre, next door to Dorkay House in

downtown Eloff Street. The founder-director of the Jan Hofmeyr School,

and also founder of the Bantu Mens Social Centre, was the Rev. Ray Philips,

an American Congregationalist with a long history of activism against

segregation. He appeared to be a shrewd judge of character, too, judging by

the way he encouraged the new student Kentes interest in cultural activities

that could lead to a career in music or the theatre. In the end, Kente never

did come to practise as a professional social worker. As he put it in a 1980

interview with The Star: I went straight into showbiz, and have been thereever since.7

The Sowetan journalist, Doc Bikitsha, met Kente as a newcomer to

Johannesburg and gave the following characterisation of the young Gibson:

I first met him in 1956 when I started working for the Bantu Mens

Social Centre. He was studying at the Jan Hofmeyr School of

Social Work . . . Kentes niche in history is established. My first

impression of him has never wavered. It confirms the belief that

you can take a Xhosa out of the homeland, but you can never

take the Xhosa out of the man. Soweto has broken many a rustic

or yokel, but failed when it came to Kente. Instead he broke thecountry down. The whole country copied his style of music, dance

and theatre . . . With hindsight, I can hazard that Kentes infectious

art form and style has contributed to kwaito, pantsula and other

genres today. You cannot overestimate his contribution. He might

have appeared eccentric to some people, but he was never

egocentric. He had his shortcomings, but was the ultimate

professional.8

Dorkay House

Kentes earliest paid job in the entertainment industry was with Gallo Africa,

subsequently Gallo Recording Company, where he was employed as a talent

scout between 1957 and 1959. Gallo was working hard in those days to hold

onto its position as the leading South African recording company, and the

job put Kente in touch with many top musicians including luminaries

like Miriam Makeba, Caiphus Semenya, Letta Mbulu, Hugh Masekela, and

the Manhattan Brothers for whom Kente also wrote songs and melodies.

Later he came to know pianist and bandleader Chris MacGregor, and learnt

The formative years


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much from him about music and composition. It wasnt long before Kente

wanted to strike out on his own. Dorkay House was where this first came

about.

Dorkay House was a rallying point for up-and-coming artists in South

Africa during the 1950s and 60s, and its history was closely bound up with

that of the Bantu Mens Social Centre next door at 1 Eloff Street. The Bantu

Mens Social Centre was originally established in 1924 to provide recreational

facilities, including a library, for young black men. One of the organisations

which conducted its early activities at the Centre was the Bantu Dramatic

Society, founded by Herbert Dhlomo,9 whose plays were performed there

in the 1930s and 40s. It was Dhlomo who first invoked the concept of the

New African upwardly mobile, black, urban and middle-class. Another

organisation that began its life at the Social Centre was the ANC Youth

League, launched there in 1944 by some of those who were to become the

future leaders of the ANC: Nelson Mandela; Walter Sisulu; Oliver Tambo;

and others.

Funded with proceeds from a farewell concert at the Bantu Mens Social

Centre for Sophiatowns beloved English clergyman, Father Trevor

Huddleston,10 Dorkay House, formerly a clothing factory, was secured for

the arts in 1956 by Ian Bernhardt, a white theatre enthusiast who had helped

to launch the Bareti Players for an all-black Shakespeare production in 1955.

Bernhardt was a co-founder of the Union of South African Artists, also

known as Union Artists. Its off-shoot, the African Music and Drama

Association, which was housed at Dorkay House, rapidly established itself as

a hub for young, ambitious black artists and writers. Dorkay House became

the launch pad for a number of distinguished careers in South African theatre.

Along with Gibson Kente, the Dorkay roll of honour includes names like

Barney Simon; Athol Fugard; Mbongeni Ngema; and numerous others

although, in time to come, quite a few of those would also have been through

the training ground of Gibson Kente Productions.

Ian Bernhardts involvement in black theatre was important for black

artists, particularly in the turbulent 1960s, when it was easier for a white

person to keep the authorities at bay in conflicts involving black entertainers.

When the prohibition against mixed theatre casts and audiences began to

take effect in the early 1960s through the implementation of the Separate

Amenities Act,11 Dorkay House was almost the only venue in the Johannes-

burg area, apart from private houses and university halls, where black theatre

practitioners could operate without government interference.


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In 1959 Union Artists scored a spectacular hit with the jazz opera,King

Kong. Written by Harry Bloom to music by Stanley Glaser and Todd

Matshikiza, the show was resoundingly successful in South Africa as well as

abroad and a huge source of inspiration to young and ambitious talents

like Gibson Kente.

Although King Kong, Alan Patons Sponono and other plays focusing on

South African black life were rehearsed, produced and financed by multi-

racial Dorkay House, the entertainment industry overall was still controlled

by whites; blacks might sing, play, dance, act and produce banners and props,but organising and running the whole show was a different matter.

This was still the prevailing attitude in 1959 when Gibson Kente gave

up his job as talent scout for Gallo Africa to become director of Union

Artists. Inspired by the success of King Kong, he was impatient to tackle

something challenging and creative and decided to try his hand as a composer/

producer. By this time he had formed theKente Choristers, the vocal group

for which he composed pieces in the popular Zionist ngcwelengcwelestyle.12

He had also written several songs for Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and

other rising stars and composed a big hit, Somandla, for the Manhattan

Brothers; so he was not without show-business experience.

For someone like Kente, it would have been hard to resist the buzz ofDorkay House and he was soon firmly hooked by the stage. Looking for

new challenges, he determined to try his hand as a theatrical producer. He

invited writer fr iends to come up with a story he could use and, getting no

takers, set about writing the script himself. Manana the Jazz Prophetwas the

first offspring of his new passion.

The formative years


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The 1960s: the early plays

Manana the Jazz Prophet(1961)

This is the story of how jazz musician Manana tackles a bunch of young

toughs who abuse their women and flash their knives at the slightest

provocation. On stage with Manana, appearing here for the first time, is

a fair sample of the stock characters that, over the years, came to populate

the typical Kente township scene: the hoodlums themselves (the tsotsis);

the local shebeen queen; the good-time girls; and the local preacher/

priest. Mananas answer to the tsotsiproblem is to persuade the preacher

to, literally, jazz up his services with gospel song and catchy beat and thus

lure them into church in the hope that they will put their wicked waysbehind them.

The leader of the tsotsis, Tom, is constantly in trouble because he is

married to church-going Ma, while remaining a faithful patron of the

local shebeen with its beckoning girls. Tom and his cronies, The Group,

decide to take their girls to church to see what its all about. In due

course, they all (the preacher, too, evidently) get won over by Mananas

jazzed-up version of the service. All the girls fall in love with the prophet

and the boys are madly jealous.

Kente once described himself as a moderate Christian and he never sought

to disown his mission-school upbringing. Dixon Molele, who worked in

some of the earlier Kente productions, recalls that God got a mention in

every one.13 This hints at a side of Kentes personality that may square a little

oddly with his reputation as bon viveurbut perhaps should not be too lightly

discounted. In Manana, the Dorkay House protg plainly sets out to entertain

and beguile, but a didactic purpose is not far beneath the surface. Like his

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stage character Manana, Kente appears to have found township churches a

bit too staid for their own good.

Manana attracted little media attention when it was first performed in

1961 in the Wits University Great Hall, since Gibson Kente was, as yet, a

relatively unknown name in theatre circles. Two years later, when it was put

on at the Mofolo Hall in Soweto, the initial township audience loved it. But

the production faltered, with the run being cut short owing to, as Kente saw

it, inadequate publicity and poor administration on the part of the Dorkay

House management. The townships lacked permanent theatre facilities; aproduction such as this needed to be set up as a travelling unit, with one-

night shows in schools and township halls. Its likely that no-one was quite

ready for this earliest moment of what came to be the rolling Kente jugger-

naut!

Nonetheless it was a shrewd decision for Kente to focus his sights on

township audiences and not just in order to sidestep the madness of the

Separate Amenities Act, with its prohibition of racially mixed audiences, as

well as mixed casts. This meant that for a black performer to be able to sing

in a play with white actors, it now had to be done unseen, from the wings.

During the first public run ofManana in Soweto, the reviews, though

generally positive, seem somewhat bemused by this novel creation, referringto it variously as: a straightforward musical performance; a restatement of

daily life; and an extremely colourful disjointed musical circus.

One critic declared that the rough language of the play:

. . . reflects the inner violence of the township and is concerned

about the basic issues of human conduct and ways to establish

the word of the Almighty . . . [but] Gibson Kente allows the forces

of repentance to take control at the end of the performance and

the light of humanity to shine in the characters.14

Sydney Matlakhu writes in Postthat the show held the audiences attention

to the last. The songs have:

fire, wit and freedom from clichs . . . The audience was thrilled

to see such young, unknown actors and instrumentalists playing

jazz and gospel ditties and giving full expression to themselves.15



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Sikalo (1965)

Sikalo, which means Lament, is a generation-gap story. The plot deals

with a traditionalist father and his conflict with his township-born son

with tsotsileanings, and there is also a love story between Sikalo and his

girlfriend Tando. Sikalos father, who has had a rural upbringing and

whose father was killed by one of his own sons, attempts to instil a sense

of inferiority in Sikalo, along with the need for obedience, embodied in

the lines of the famous song from the play, If youve never been to themountain, youre a boy.

Sikalo is clever and his alertness attracts the attention of the gangsters

Shushu, Congo and Sida, but Sikalo refuses to join them. Sida falls in

love with Tando, Sikalos girl. The tsotsis kill fat man Baduza and frame

Sikalo for the murder, sending him to jail. Tando teams up with Qavile,

Sikalos friend, who pretends to be stupid but is as clever and central to

the plot as his name implies.16 They bribe the jail-warden and Sikalo

escapes. When Nonto, Sidas girlfr iend, hears that Sida is after Tando, she

spills the beans; the gangsters are rounded up and Sikalo, one assumes, is

acquitted.

With his first play, Manana, Kente had followed the call to a life in theatre;

his second play, Sikalo, took that calling to a new level. It launched him

unexpectedly into an independent career of remarkable and unprecedented

theatrical entrepreneurship, allowing him to take his special brand of

entertainment to a nationwide stage where, for a number of years, he reigned

supreme.

Like Manana, Sikalo initially came to production under the auspices of

Dorkay House. When it was first performed in late 1965, independently of

Union Artists, it was seen by the Unions decision-makers. They decided,over Kentes head, that Union Artists would take over and produce the play.This they did in the Wits Great Hall in July 1966. Mindful of Union Artists

success with King Kong, Kente initially went along with that decision. But

when they declared that Sikalo was to be performed as part of the Lesotho

Independence Day celebrations in September 1966 and also took it upon

themselves to meddle with the casting of the play, insisting on a white co-

director, Kente and the cast rebelled.


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Kente and his players were unwilling to allow Ian Bernhardt and his

board to destroy Sikalo by repeating what the Kente camp perceived as the

management mistakes sloppy promotion and poor administration that

had plagued the production ofManana, and they resented what seemed like

renewed high-handedness. Shortly after the opening performance in Soweto,

Kente decided to cut loose from Union Artists, and did so with the full

support of his cast. As Kente himself relates, the incident turned out to be a

moment of high theatre for all concerned:

The cast bus was parked in Eloff Street in front of Dorkay House

ready to transport the Sikalo cast to the show. After an hour and a

half of deliberation with Ian, I stepped out of the building to report

to the cast that my negotiation with Ian Bernhardt and his com-

mittee on ourSikalo had borne no fruit. Vexed and full-to-the-

brim, the cast vowed, No deal, no show. What happened

thereafter remains one of the most unforgettable and touching

experiences of my life. Ian used threats to try to get the cast to

board the bus and go to the show. I told Ian we had taken a

decision and no amount of threats and force would change that.

Ian called the police, alleging that our actions constituted a breachof contract. Police arrived with their dogs; they tried their strong-

arm tactics coercing us to board the bus. Hell broke loose.

Emotions seized my cast like a spell. Traffic stopped as my angry

artists [stood in] Eloff Street [ready for] any eventuality, their feelings

and words dunked in tears. They dared the cops: Arrest us. You

can arrest us. We will fight for our rights. Away with white

exploitation, etc., etc., etc. I cried too, but not only because of

the drama that was unfolding before my eyes. Burning questions

were rushing through my mind like chickens answering a call for

food. My god, they are prepared to face the unknown with me.

Embarrassed, Ian Bernhardt had to tell the cops to leave. Revisitingthe events of that day, I always say: that incident had to happen

forme to happen. Fate planned it that way. That was the parting

of the ways with Dorkay. That chapter was closed. Unbeknown to

my cast and me a new chapter with profound and far-reaching

consequences and significance was just about to unfold.17

Relations with Dorkay House were subsequently restored to some degree.


bra gib - father of south africa’s township theatre

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