Prophetic discourses on the realities of post-apartheid South Africa in the plays of Zakes Mda

Abstract

Zakes Mda’s plays have always mirrored his scepticism of post-Apartheid South Africa. Majority of the themes in his plays tend to suggest that South Africa’s post-independence era will be marked by high levels of corruption, leadership insensitivity to the plight of the masses and oppression just as it occurs in many other African counties who have enjoyed decades of independence but whose citizens live in abject poverty and neglect. This paper examines Mda’s mistrust of the predicted “promised land” that was imagined for majority of South Africans before independence in his plays written before and after independence with a view to unearthing concrete evidence of his scepticism of the political realities in post-independence South Africa. The analysis is underpinned by post-colonial theorists such as Franz Fanon. For the purpose of this paper, I have chosen a number of Mda’s plays including We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, And the Girls in their Sunday Dresses and Mother of all Eating. I have also made references to Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s This Time Tomorrow, The Black Hermit and George Orwell’s Animal Farm because of the thematic similarities existing between these plays and those of Zakes Mda

Keywords: Prophecy, Betrayal, Post-colonial, South Africa, Political/Economic, Realities