Ngema, Mbongeni

▪ 1996

      With the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1994, a new era dawned for the theatre in that nation. As proof, there was Mama! The Musical of Freedom, a 1995 work by the Zulu playwright, composer, director, and choreographer Mbongeni Ngema. Mama! was based on Ngema's experiences with Committed Artists, a theatre troupe he founded in Johannesburg in 1983; it was a story about the youngsters who joined the troupe, and the determined title character from the all-black urban complex Soweto was based on Mandela's wife, Winnie, who had helped Committed Artists. Most of all, Mama! was packed with songs and vivacious dancing. If some of the purportedly Zulu-inspired music resembled contemporary African-American music, and if the dancers included one Indian and three white women, these too reflected the changes in today's South Africa. After a six-week run in Durban, Mama! went on tour to Germany, Switzerland, and The Netherlands.

      Mama! was the first nonpolitical production for Ngema, whose previous works reflected the spirit of South Africa's blacks under apartheid. Born in Natal, South Africa, in 1955, Ngema worked as a manual labourer and guitarist before he began acting in local theatre groups in the late 1970s. With actor Percy Mtwa he wrote the satirical play Woza Albert! (1981), which imagines the second coming of Christ, this time in South Africa; the government first tries to exploit him and then banishes him to a notorious prison for blacks. Ngema's next show, the musical Asinamali! (1983), dealt with police violence, forced separations from families, and constricting racist laws as experienced by five prisoners; soon after it opened, police raided a performance and arrested Ngema's actors. Despite its serious theme, Asinamali! is filled with music and comedy.

      The success of both productions in the U.S. paved the way for Ngema's international triumph with the musical Sarafina! in 1987. The title character is a black teenager who at first wants to become a superstar; instead, inspired by a teacher, she becomes a revolutionary in the 1976 student uprisings in Soweto. Ngema and Hugh Masekela (q.v.) wrote the score, which features mbaqanga, the fusion of traditional South African music with modern American gospel, jazz, and rock. In 1990 Ngema, inspired by a violent strike by South African railway workers, wrote the musical Township Fever. "When I did Township Fever, I was moving away from protest to the theatre of enlightenment," he said. (JOHN LITWEILER)

* * *