[from http://www.apc.uct.ac.za/gazette/current/?id=198&t=int]
PHOTO: FARANAAZ VRAAGOM
The APC’s special event, ‘A Conversation on
The Robben Island Bible’,
attracted a large audience and lively debate. We felt especially
honoured to welcome ex-prisoners, Khwedi Mkhaliphi, who attended with
his wife, Ruth Mkhaliphi, the artist Lionel Davis (also a formerly
banned person) and Yasien Mohamed. Both Davis and Mohamed are well-known
tour guides on Robben Island. The event was organised and chaired by
APC Honorary Research Fellow, Dr June Bam.
The presentation evolved around the play,
The Robben Island Bible, by
British playwright and lecturer at St Mary’s University in London,
Matthew Hahn. Hahn also presented video clips of the interviews he did
with former political prisoners of the Island, as well as clips of
staged readings of scenes from his play. These included the passages of
Shakespeare’s Complete Works, which were marked by the prisoners as
meaningful for them, on request of Sonny Venkatrathnam. The book was
brought to Venkatrathnam by his wife, Theresa, during his time of
incarceration. While on the Island, he disguised it as a ‘religious
book’ with Hindu religious motifs pasted onto it. According to
Venkatrathnam, the warders feared two things: ‘the authorities, and
God’. Hahn introduced his work in conversation with Robben Island
CEO Sibongiseni Mkhize, and global Shakespeare scholar David Schalkwyk.
In recalling his ‘first encounter’ with the book, Hahn recollected the
detail of the scent of eucalyptus leaves that emanated from between the
pages, carrying the trace and scent of the Island. Speaking of the often
controversial memories the interviews with ex-political prisoners
brought to the fore, Hahn said that the genre of drama is especially
able to embrace the multidirectional and, at times, conflicting memories
of the ex-political prisoners – ‘since this is (also) what
makes a good drama.’
Hahn sees the book as a repository of traces, resonating with hints of
the thoughts and concerns of the prisoners at specific moments in time,
which he then translated into the staged readings, which we viewedviewed
– for instance, SB Benghu’s choice of a passage in
Henry V that
speaks of tolerance, of different elements that constitute a whole, or
Chuk Iwuji’s reading of Wilton Mkwayi’s choice of Malvolio’s utterances
from
Twelfth Night.
At the APC event, Khwedi Mkalipi read his selection of Puck from
A MidsummerNight’s Dream.
Of course, Nelson Mandela’s choice was included in the clips, which, as
we hear it today, resounds profoundly with his Rivonia Trial speech:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
The CEO of Robben Island Museum, Sibongiseni Mkhize, drew the
audience’s attention to the question of how we think of and represent
Robben Island today, especially in the light of the deeper history of
the Island: ‘Robben Island is not reducible to the Robben Island of the
political prisoners under apartheid,’ he said, and spoke of the Island’s
first-known political prisoner, the Khoisan leader and interpreter,
Autshumao. He also spoke of the location’s history as a place of
banishment for people infected with leprosy, and as a place of exile for
early political prisoners, including women (such as the Khoisan
interpreter, Krotoa), and unwanted persons as far back as the 17
th century;
of Imam Sayed Abdurahman Moturu, who was exiled to the Island in the
1740s, and imprisoned religious and political leaders from the Eastern
Cape during the Frontier Wars of the 19
th century – including
the much revered Xhosa prophet and leader, Nxele Makana, who drowned
while trying to escape with others from the Island.
Mkhize reminded us that, even when speaking of the recent past, we
often exclude political prisoners, like Robert Sobukwe, but also
internees from Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique. Who, he asked, is
honoured as a political prisoner today? In illustrating this point, he
drew attention to the large number of detainees under apartheid, many of
whom (women and white male political prisoners) were
not
incarcerated on the Island but on the mainland. Mkhize’s insightful
interventions led to a robust discussion of the politics of
representation.
The second respondent, David Schalkwyk, distinctively put into
perspective the meaning of the ‘Robben Island Bible’ for the political
prisoners: firstly, he made clear that it does not appear in any of the
memoirs of the political prisoners he knows. Secondly, he recalled the
position of an ANC politician, who asserted that the prisoners at the
time were: ‘inspired by the Freedom Charter,
not by Shakespeare…’
Lionel Davis, who has been a visitors’ guide at Robben Island’s
educational centre for many years, asked: ‘What do young South Africans
take from the Island?’ He posed a further related question as to whether
this World Heritage Site was still an important point of identification
for young South Africans.
In answer to this, Khwedi Mkhaliphi spoke of the past struggle as an
anchor for identification, of the bravery, faith, deprivation of the
prisoners, of ‘not reading the newspaper, not knowing what was happening
in the country and in the world’. He also pointed to the role of women
in the struggle, as fighters, yet also as the wives and girlfriends of
those confined to the Island; of these women being followed and spied
on. ‘How come [is it],’ he asked, ‘that now the
only person who played a role in the struggle [at least in international discourses] is Mandela?’
Hopefully, as Hahn’s staged readings and play circulate, it will become
clearer and clearer to audiences around the world that this was not the
reality of South Africa’s broad-based struggle against the injustices
of apartheid.
