2014’s National Arts Festival celebrates its fortieth anniversary, coinciding with twentieth year of democracy in South Africa. We have witnessed the enshrining of the values of the rainbow nation as well as more and more portrayals of South African culture in festival content.
However, whilst there has been two decades since the end of apartheid, South African freedom is still not a privilege to all. This is the message of the drama Ghost of Glenmore, a true-life excursion into life of Ben Mafani, who to this day continues to fight against land re-locations and lack of infrastructure in his area of Glenmore.
“The current shape of South Africa is made up of three types of people” says writer and director Xabiso Zweni.
“It’s made up of all those people who were leading the struggle for democracy, which are now in high places and government offices; all those big names”.
“Then it’s made up of ‘Mafani people’ – the forgotten people”.
The third category, Zweni says, are the born frees who, he says, are not making good use of their voice in the new landscape of South Africa.
“Somehow there is a big divide between those three types of people”, says Zweni.
“Mafani’s story tells us that even after these twenty years that there is a big divide in South Africa, big divide in sharing land, sharing wealth; it’s all one man for himself”.
When talking about what he thinks motivates Mafani’s actions, Zweni said that “the inhumanity that Ben Mafani experienced is still happening now.”
“It’s no longer the apartheid or the ‘bad guys’, but the people are still struggling, so things haven’t changed.”
Anele Penny, who played Mafani, praised the show’s relevance in today’s South Africa. “It’s a mirror” says Penny, “it’s a mirror where people can look at themselves and ask the question: are we really free?”
It is Mafani’s fighter spirit that inspired the telling of this story. “He is a lone ranger; He knows what he wants for the people that he is surrounded by.”
WATCH: Ben Mafani profile
– By Cue Media
