Today is the 20th Anniversary of the unbanning of the ANC and all other opposition political parties by then Present FW DeKlerk. What a great time to be in South Africa. Nine days from 2 February 199o on 11 February 199o, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison in Cape Town freely, the first time in over 27 years. That anniversary will also be a cause for celebration & reflection. On the news, there has been retrospection and appraisals of what has been accomplished & what needs to be further done.
I am off to the Market Theatre to meet with two of the four actors as well as with Vice. I want to give him a DVD of the videos & audio recordings of the interviews. Two of the actors participating in this script development phrase have worked with me before at the reading in March 2oo9 at the Richmond Theatre in London. I am looking forward to working with them again as well as meeting two new actors. I hope also to meet with Matjamela at the Lab Theatre today to re-introduce myself and make plans for the next three weeks.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Monday 1 February 2o1o:
Monday, Masie is off to work and Tod & I stay at home catching up and preparing for the interviews and rehearsal. I give Tod a crash course in the various political parties within South Africa and their basic positions along with a basic outline of the recent history of the country. We go over the quotes and the biographies of the men whom he will be interviewing. I also continue to pour over the transcripts and quotes making more notes and links between the two. I need to be as solid as possible with this source material before Monday so that the actors can feel free to create whilst I keep them grounded in the source material.
I finally get my phone successfully registered and purchase airtime, which feels like a huge accomplishment. I send some texts, speak with my lovely wife and prepare to meet the actors on Tuesday. I also make a visit to the internet cafe to email Ahmed Kathrada several follow up questions from our first interview. I don't think that we will have the opportunity to interview him again, but he wanted me to send to him some follow up questions that he could answer in an email. That done, back home for another delicious dinner including, for the first time this trip, my favourite South African dish Chacalaka, a stew of baked beans & curried vegetables. Wonderful! And homemade....
I finally get my phone successfully registered and purchase airtime, which feels like a huge accomplishment. I send some texts, speak with my lovely wife and prepare to meet the actors on Tuesday. I also make a visit to the internet cafe to email Ahmed Kathrada several follow up questions from our first interview. I don't think that we will have the opportunity to interview him again, but he wanted me to send to him some follow up questions that he could answer in an email. That done, back home for another delicious dinner including, for the first time this trip, my favourite South African dish Chacalaka, a stew of baked beans & curried vegetables. Wonderful! And homemade....
Sunday, 31 January 2o1o:
On Sunday, Masie, Tod & I meet Vice, the dramaturg for the project. He is a young & accomplished playwright who has worked in & around the Market Theatre and was recommended to me by Matjamela, the head of the Lab Theatre at the Market. We have a brief meeting where I explain what has happened so far with the project and where I see the project heading. He is very much in agreement and pleased to be working on the project. He knows well the actors with whom we will be working. He nor I know what we will have in two weeks time, but we are all in agreement that we can work together to fashion a strong piece of work based on the interviews & the chosen Shakespearian quotes.
After that meeting, we make another attempt at sorting our SIM cards, but with no luck. The government has recently introduced a law stating that all purchased SIM cards must be registered to a South African with proof of address. This seems to be in response to the use of mobile phones used in illegaal areas. Noble idea, but tough to accomplish (in any reasonable amount of time). The shop keepers are none too keen to make extra work for themselves and so really don't want to see two obvious foreigners entering their stores looking for SIM cards.
We also begin the major undertaking of booking Masie's & Tod's whirlwind tour of South Africa. Masie has scheduled interviews with Sonny in Durban & Eddie Daniels in Cape Town along with Saths Cooper back in Jo'burg on Friday. Needless to say booking one way tickets is an additional hassle that the attendants at Shoprite seem wary to participate. We are at the shop for almost two hours stringing together 6 one way tickets (Jor' burg to Durban, Durban to Cape Town & Cape Town to Jo'burg). Whew, another example of Masie's extreme patience & my drive to drink.......
Finally accomplished, we head home to another wonderful dinner.
After that meeting, we make another attempt at sorting our SIM cards, but with no luck. The government has recently introduced a law stating that all purchased SIM cards must be registered to a South African with proof of address. This seems to be in response to the use of mobile phones used in illegaal areas. Noble idea, but tough to accomplish (in any reasonable amount of time). The shop keepers are none too keen to make extra work for themselves and so really don't want to see two obvious foreigners entering their stores looking for SIM cards.
We also begin the major undertaking of booking Masie's & Tod's whirlwind tour of South Africa. Masie has scheduled interviews with Sonny in Durban & Eddie Daniels in Cape Town along with Saths Cooper back in Jo'burg on Friday. Needless to say booking one way tickets is an additional hassle that the attendants at Shoprite seem wary to participate. We are at the shop for almost two hours stringing together 6 one way tickets (Jor' burg to Durban, Durban to Cape Town & Cape Town to Jo'burg). Whew, another example of Masie's extreme patience & my drive to drink.......
Finally accomplished, we head home to another wonderful dinner.
Welcome back to South Africa.....
Saturday, 30 January 2o1o
I walk out of the airplane with a smile on my face, because I truly love this country. I have a deep sense of comfort whenever I come here. Though I don't and never will fully 'understand' it, I feel a communion with it. Much more so that the States and, increasingly, the United Kingdom. There is a simplicity to it and a straighfforwardness to it. You get what you see. There is no mask in dealing with South Africans in their country. And that is not always easy to deal with when coming from countries that have a bottom line of comfort & stability. The general public don't have that comfort. Ah, what a luxury we Americans have as we haggle over whether or not we should should have a 'Public Option' on a bill in Congress that wants everyone to be required to have health insurance.
I arrive on Saturday morning to a beautiful & sunny morning. After the grey weather of London, it is a welcome sight, even if I am four hours delayed. Masie & Tod are waiting for me at the airport and we set off right away.
After paying for the parking, I notice how much more expensive South Africa has become. Not only had the Pound Sterling devalued nearly 5 Rand since I was last in 2oo8, prices in general for South Africans had greatly increased. 'All due to the coming World Cup,' Masie says. He has seen the increase from his home in Soweto and doing business in Johannesburg.
We spend the day queing for a variety of things: SIM cards for the mobile phone, food for home & a cable for our computer. Very little luck, this first time around. But Masie has the patience of a saint as he haggles and debates and questions all with a smile on his face and a chirp in his voice. Yes, he is bothered, but he knows this is the price of business, a certain level of frustation and he doesn't let this bother him, unlike me, the greedy Westerner who is used to having service (even in London) of a better standard. After queing for a SIM card that never comes about ('The computer is offline now, so we cannot process your purchase,' says the man behind the iron cage in the shop), I tell him, 'I am driven to drink,' but the inconvience just rolls off his back and we are off to another shop in the quest of this ever so slippery SIM card. I could learn a lot from his smile & his patience.
We have a wonderful meal prepared by Masie's mother soon after we arrive at his house, where Tod & I will be calling home for the next three weeks ('And one day,' says my wonderful, yet suffering, wife, 'You are gone for more than three weeks.'). Masie's mom ('Mom-Jobie' as she is affectionity called by her son) is fretting over fixing a vegetarian meal, as now there are two vegetarians living under her thatched roof. But she pulls it off with a selection of dishes from mashed potatoes & tomato gravy to beetroot, salad & cooked vegetables with curry sauce.
That evening, I go out with a friend for a quick bottle of Castle and, much to my surprise I am re-introduced to Andrew Mlangeni, MP for Soweto, Freedom Fighter who spent 25 years on Robben Island and interviewee for my research last year in Cape Town. With contained excitement, I go over to shake his hand. It is very different circumstances than the previous time we met. Then, he came around to Ahmed Kathrada's home in Cape Town before going to work in Parliament. He was dressed to the nines with famously clean glasses. Tonight, he is relaxed in his home enjoying himself and his family around him. It was a brief meeting, but I hope to see him again soon and conduct further interviews with him during my time here.
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