WWI Commemoration Events

Johannesburg

Wednesday 8 June 201619.00 Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

Performance of the play Devil's WoodDirected by Sylvaine Strike, with Thabo Rametsi, Daniel Geddes & Thishiwe ZiqubuFollowed by a discussion between Sylvaine Strike & Bill Nasson (StellenboschUniversity)

Thursday 9 June 201611.00 Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (by invitation only)

Performance of the play Devil's Wood

19.00 Goethe-InstitutRound-table on Commemorating South Africa and World War One: 1914-1918 in National and Historical ImaginationBill Nasson (Stellenbosch University), Tilman Dedering (UNISA) & Marion Edmunds (documentary director)

Friday 10 June 201619.00 Alliance Française of Johannesburg

Screening of Animated Short Films on WWI

Durban

Thursday 9 June 201618.30 Alliance Française of Durban

Screening of Animated Short Films on WWI

Tuesday 14 June 201610.00 Durban Holocaust Centre (by invitation only)

Performance of the play Devil's Wood

18.30 Durban Holocaust CentrePerformance of the play Devil's Wood

Cape Town

Tuesday 14 June 201618.30 Alliance Française of Cape Town

Screening of Animated Short Films on WWI

Wednesday 15 June 201618.00 French School François le Vaillant

Performance of the play Devil's Wood

www.ifas.org.zacomm.research@ifas.org.za

SOUTH AFRICANHOLOCAUST & GENOCIDE FOUNDATION South Africa

Alliance Française

© IWM (Q 1156), (Q 80269), (Q 10677), (Q 80270), (Q 58332)

In July 2016, South Africa will commemorate the Centenary of the WWI Battle of Delville Wood, when 3 200 troops of the South African Infantry Brigade arrived on the battlefield of Delville Wood in the department of La Somme (France). This battle became one of the deadliest Somme engagements of the First World War, in which the Union of South Africa lost almost two-thirds of the complement of its Overseas Expeditionary Force in less than a week of warfare.

The South African Union was only four years old at the beginning of WWI in 1914. As part of the British Empire, the country became attached to the Allied war effort in several military operations in Africa and the Middle East (South West Africa, South East Africa, North Africa, and in Egypt and Palestine), and in Western Europe. Over 200,000 White, African and Coloured South Africans went to fight as combatants or to labour as non-combatants on these varied fronts. Due to the political requirements of segregation, black Africans were only allowed to serve as labourers or as other unarmed auxiliary workers, and were all prohibited from bearing arms. By the end of hostilities, around 12,500 South Africans had either been killed in action or had died as a consequence of their active war service. In death they were segregated as they had been in life - black servicemen were not buried together in the same cemeteries with their white compatriots.

As part of the remembrance of the Delville Wood battle, the French Institute of South Africa, the Alliance Française network, the Goethe-Institut and the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation will be organising a series of events to commemorate the Union of South Africa's engagement in the First World War. This project has obtained the “Label du Centenaire”, a French certification highlighting the most innovative and structured projects around the memory of WWI.

Historians will participate in a shared discussion of a century of commemoration of WWI in South Africa. Playwright and director Sylvaine Strike will create a performance alongside an exciting young cast to poetically convey the experience of young men who volunteered to be sent to the European battlefront, as well as the feelings back home in South Africa, a country geographically remote from the worst horrors of WWI. This play will also be performed in Durban and Cape Town. Finally, a showcase of animated short movies about WWI will be screened to provide a contemporary perspective on these events and experiences.

1914-1918 Memory

years100 of

South Africa and WWI

Director and Writer’s Note

I consider it a privilege to have had this project as a companion for the past 3 months. As harrowing as the material I uncovered was, it was both humbling and painfully illuminating to read the personal diaries and letters that our boys serving in WWI wrote home.

How to honour their thoughts scrawled in unthinkably ghastly conditions? When and how did these extraordinary young men find the time, the emotional privacy and the wherewithal to actually express thoughts on paper? … it seems unfathomable. I can only deduce that the need to tell their stories was greater than the horror they endured and in most cases, did not survive. This urge to record, personalize their own wars within the hell that they were living, is a testament to how these men needed to be heard, remembered, and held, for how we are remembered is paramount to what continues us, defines us.

A century ago may seem so very long to South Africa's younger generations who feel they may have no connection to this war. We cannot quantify its impact on our contemporary and fragile humanity, nor can we ignore the warning signs that both Great Wars have left us, as we face a world that seems to be more at war with itself than ever before.

The task to tell of Delville Wood is a huge responsibility. We can never forget these men lost by the thousands in less than seven days, men who had no personal connection to fighting this war in the first place.

My actors and I hope to immerse our audiences in a world largely forgotten; we seek to help understand the fallen, and the forever stricken survivors who quietly carried the horror with them all their lives. How does one speak of the unspeakable?

Using the battle of Delville Wood 1916 as a departure point to explore South Africa's involvement in this 4-year-long War, I have taken the poetic license to tell of the war experience irrespective of whose side we were on, or the colour of our skin. Our boys were there, English, Afrikaans and later Sotho, Xhosa, Zulu amongst many others, all of them together against unthinkable odds. Our women were there too, in all capacities, as mothers, wives, sisters waiting at home in Africa, and as nurses and caregivers on the Western front itself.

To all those who wrote, so that we could try to grasp, thank you.

Devil's Wood

Devised by Sylvaine Strike using research material obtained through the Ditsong South African Millitary Museum, extracts from private letters; diaries; articles by Ian Uys and Deon Fourie; Purnell's History of WWI volume 4; the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Love Letters of the Great War I edited by Mandy Kirby.

Performers: Thabo Rametsi, Daniel Geddes, Thishiwe Ziqubu Production manager: Orapeleng MoswaneResearch assistant with text: William Harding

Sylvaine Strike is multi-award winning director, performer and theatre maker. Her work has moved hearts and minds since she directed and co-devised the runaway success Baobabs Don’t Grow Here for the NAF 2002. Critically acclaimed creations continued to follow, earning her a list of award winning productions including: Black and Blue; The Travellers; Coupé; The Butcher Brothers; The Table and more recently The Miser; Tobacco; CARGO:Precious; Agreed; and Miss Dietrich Regrets. Sylvaine was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist for Drama in 2006, which re-enforced her role as the Artistic Director of the Fortune Cookie Theatre Company, which celebrates 15 years of uninterrupted theatre making this year.

Thabo Rametsi is a young artist committed to finding truth in his work. He is emerging as one of the most excitingly honest actors of the new generation.

Daniel Geddes is a musician, actor and dancer. He has appeared in several theatre shows, and composed music for as many. He has worked as a musical director and writer, and co-heads a theatre production company called Liquid Fusion.

Thishiwe Ziqubu is a multi-award winning actress, scriptwriter and director. She starred, amongst others, in the feature films Hard to get and While you weren’t looking, and in the international drama series Book of Negros and a number of local television series. She recently wrote and directed a 24min short film on love, contemporary dance, sexual and cultural identities.