Recent Radio Coverage of the Robben Island Bible

The play was also featured recently on BBC Radio Four's 'Front Row' programme. as well as the BBC World Service's 'The Strand' programme.

Recent Print Coverage on the reading at the Southbank Centre

There has been some coverage of the event on the 3rd of July. Here are some links to them: South Africa, freedom and Shakespeare and South Africa: African Freedom and Shakespeare's World and The Robben Island Bible and the SA story

Recently Published article in Anglo Files, a quarterly journal for English teachers in Denmark

I first heard about a copy of the ‘Complete Works of William Shakespeare’ known as the ‘Robben Island Bible’ when a good friend was reading Anthony Sampson’s wonderful biography on Nelson Mandela in 2002.  I was fascinated by the story and found online the subsequent article that Sampson wrote ‘O, what men dare do’ in the Observer from 2001.

The book’s owner, South African Sonny Venkatrathnam, was a political prisoner on Robben Island from 1972 to 1978. He asked his wife to send him ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare’ during a time when the prisoners were briefly  allowed to have one book, other than a religious text, with them. The book’s ‘fame’ resides in the fact that Venkatrathnam passed the book to a number of his fellow political prisoners in the single cells. Each of them marked his favourite passage in the ‘Complete Works’ and signed it with the date. It contains thirty-two signatures, including those of Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and Mac Maharaj, all luminaries in the struggle for a democratic South Africa.

These men signed passages within the text, which they found particularly moving, meaningful and profound. The selection of text provides fascinating insight into the minds, thinking and soul of those political prisoners who fought for the transformation of South Africa. It also speaks to the power of Shakespeare’s resonance with the human spirit regardless of place or time. But, as he explains it, he just wanted a ‘souvenir’ of his time in the Leadership Section of Robben Island.

After hearing this fantastic tale, I determined to write a play based on interviews with as many of the former political prisoners I could find intertwined with the chosen Shakespearian texts.  I first encountered Sonny’s ‘Bible’ in 2006 when it left South Africa for the first time to be a part of the Complete Works Exhibition hosted by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.  In 2008, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet and interview Sonny and seven other signatories of the ‘Bible’ to form the foundation of the play. I returned to South Africa in 2010 for further interviews and to workshop the research with the Market Theatre Laboratory. 

It is an honour to have had the opportunity to spend time with these most gentle of men – each one a lion in the fight against apartheid.  Many opened their homes to me, a complete stranger, for a couple of hours, shared with me a cup of tea and what their lives were like under an oppressive regime.  As Ahmed Kathrada said, ‘After being locked up for all of these years, when I get a chance to speak to someone who is interested in my story, I find it hard to keep quiet.’

I was, and continue to be, fascinated by the resonance of the chosen texts and the men’s biographies – how life imitates art and; how great art, like holy books, seems to give strength to the oppressed. 

 

In an interview, Sonny reflected on the choices the men made, ‘The things is, honestly I think, 

a lot of the people who chose particular lines in my 'Bible' very deliberately would today find it 
difficult to identify themselves with that particular line or passage.  Most of the thinking people on Robben Island leaned towards the Left ideologically.  If you look at the Freedom Charter from 1958 you will see that.  But compared to the ANC National policy today, you cannot believe that this is the same organization.  So what I am saying is that a lot of people that I thought would never ideologically change have switched horses.  Yesterday’s Communists are today’s biggest Capitalists.  I find that very difficult to reconcile.  I’m not saying that they mustn’t adapt and all of that, but to become so virulently Capitalist, I don’t think that is acceptable.  Power corrupts, you see, Shakespeare tried to teach us that   But some gave up the struggle o a softer life. I find that very unconscionable.’

This observation ran through several of the interviewees when reflecting on the Struggle.  Eddie Daniels stated, ‘We, in the Struggle, fought for what we believed in:  idealism, peace, reconciliation, dignity, respect, integrity.  These were our values.  Not values of self enrichment.  Not values of greed.  Our values were good.  Today, that cannot be said for everybody.  Many bad people have cast a shadow on the efforts of those who had died to bring about change in South Africa.  That is the difference between then and today.’

Of the many enlightening aspects of the project, the one that most strikes me as an artist are the chosen Shakespearian texts. When reading these texts, I have to disassociate my knowledge of the play and read the choices through the prism of Apartheid South Africa. This has shown a new light on the works of Shakespeare and how the plays were interpreted then and today. In an interview, actor John Kani tells a heart-rending story of one of the political prisoners, Wilton Mkwayi, who went into prison just before he married his fiancé:

‘He waited for over twenty-three years on Robben Island to finally to stand in front of the pastor to be married after he is released, so they are perpetually engaged for over twenty three years. They did visit once a month, once every three months, but a visit onto Robben Island was so irregular. They were not meant to make the prisoner comfortable. Sometimes the boat would arrive with the men's wives with the men ready to meet them; and the boat turns back. Men would come, take a look at their wives and march back to their cells without talking.’

Wilton Mkwayi chose Malvolio from Twelfth Night:

‘If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Thy Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them; and to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough, and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity. She thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered: I say, remember. Go to, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch Fortune’s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with thee. THE FORTUNATE-UNHAPPY.’

This choice, taken out of context of the play and placed in context of a Liberation activist who spent over twenty years on Robben Island, reveals another aspect of the play that has never been tapped.

Currently, I am honing the script, conducting further interviews and trying to gauge interests in theatres in the United Kingdom, United States and in South Africa to further develop this project.

It has been an honour to be associated with this South African treasure. As an artist and social activist, I have met people who have humbled me with their stories. Working on this play for so long, I am pleased to see that the names of these men are finally getting known by the public. It is incredibly important for the play that the names of Cooper, Cholo, Daniels and many others are as well know to the wider world as Mandela and Sisulu already are known. There are thousands of heroes, men and women, of the Struggle who are unsung. This is a shame and something, in my very small way, I want to change.

Alongside the play, I am also developing workshops around the themes of Social Responsibility, Citizenship and Leadership. I am basing these workshops around the chosen Shakespearian texts [‘Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more...’ / ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once...’ amongst many others] and the interviews.

To date, there have been three readings to mark the various stages of the research and development of the play: the first, in 2008 at the Robben Island Museum; the second, in 2009, at the Richmond Theatre in London which featured John Kani, his son and one other actor from the Baxter Theatre Company’s The Tempest; and the latest, in July 2012, at the Southbank Centre as a part of their ‘Africa Utopia’ season.

The South African, Issue 468, 19 June 2012

 Shakespeare’s political and historical works may make schoolchildren the world over go cross-eyed, but the leaders of Africa found in his rhetoric the inspiration to get through the most harrowing moments of their lives, and inspire legends which carry the stories on into artworks of their own.

Thabo Mbeki became enthralled by Shakespeare when he was at Sussex University, and has since quoted him at every opportunity. When Nelson Mandela celebrated his 80th birthday in 1998, just before stepping down as President, Mbeki made a speech speculating about how Madiba would retire to the country, quoting from King Lear:

‘To tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news’

J

ulius Caesar has probably the most impact on Africa. Its original translation into Swahili by the first democratic President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, marked a shift in white-dominated education. The role of the Bard continued to be strongly political in South Africa, resonating with an oppressed people realising their potential against authority.

The story of the ‘Robben Island Bible’ is a fantastic example of the imagined and real histories recreated by Shakespeare taking flight in the minds of the political prisoners of South Africa. Nelson Mandela, alongside similarly segregated prisoners Ahmed ‘Kathy’ Kathrada, Walter Sisulu, Eddie Daniels, Michael Dingake, Kwede Mkalipi, Theo Cholo, and Andrew Mlangeni, would gather together and recite long passages of Shakespeare.  Another prisoner, Sonny Venkatrathnam, kept a copy of The Complete Works disguised as a religious text in his cell. Known as the ‘Robben Island Bible’ because of this, he eventually passed it to each of his friends, asking them to sign a passage that meant a lot to them.

Julius Caesar remained the favourite, and Madiba himself chose the lines below, which he signed and dated 16 December 1977. The words exemplify Caesar’s, and his, fearless leadership:

‘Cowards die many times before their deaths

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.’

These moments were immortalised in a play by London-based playwright Matthew Hahn, The Robben Island Bible. When asked why he still thinks Shakespeare is relevant, he referred to the inmates, who he interviewed extensively to write and produce the play. “They were all still quoting Shakespeare,” he said, “And Andrew Mlangeni was saying that it is still relevant after 400 years.”

When asked why, Matthew said, “There is a universal appeal to Shakespeare: the plays can be adapted and performed in a number of different settings.” Themes such as love, betrayal, political competition, leadership and fidelity, “these are themes that never go away” believes Matthew.

Matthew’s play is being staged at the London Literary Festival at London’s Southbank Centre on Tuesday 3 July while the original ’The Robben Island Bible’ can be seen in the exhibit ‘Staging the World’ at the British Museum from 19 July.