Isitha saBantu is an exploration of how unthinking Africans are collaborators in their own oppression

By Sandile Memela

The play Isitha saBantu is three hours long with only 15 minutes break before the last 45 minutes to the finish.

It is the detailed account of the complicated, complex and chaotic non-thinking process of how dispossessed African are collaborators in their own oppression and exploitation.

I think there is something both right and wrong with that view. Maybe it is neither a race nor a moral question.

It is just what happens in man’s encounter with modernity or whatever is considered development. The things that must be done in the name of human progress.

It explores the inherent greed and selfishness in people.

Worse, it explores the nature of how the brightest minds or those with intellectual potential are sent to the best schools abroad only to come back home to betray their own people.

People do not go to the best schools, tertiary institutions and, later, join multinationals, to be heroes that fight for economic liberation. Or equality. Or justice.

They are trained and conditioned to be pawns of exploitation in the name of human progress and economic advancement.

The nature of human relationships is complicated, complex and chaotic.

The African family is portrayed as the cornerstone of the betrayal of Africans vision for freedom and self-determination. This is a narrative of African self-betrayal.

The place, space and interface where betrayal happens is between mother and son. Brother and sisters. The chiefs. Lovers.

It then spreads to the clan, the community. And ultimately the nation.

All the characters in the African community are involved in their own betrayal. They are nothing but mindless and myopic, irrespective of their positions, status or class,

They are just pawns in a white man’s game.

The interplay and engagement is between and among Africans themselves. Racist white multinational power, is invisible.

The play highlights how personal self interest, preservation and protection supersedes everything.

It is a mixture of fear and greed that shapes and influences African behavior. Fear and manipulation rules the country.

The point about the play is that it makes one to be indifferent to African misery and suffering.

One realizes that we get the leadership, if any, that we deserve. And the point about leadership is that we have no leaders.

I left the theater feeling empty in the soul.

It is a great show to condition to take responsibility for what does not happen to the attainment of socalled liberation. In fact, to resign themselves to their fate

The struggle for return of the land or economic redistribution and sharing of the wealth is a pipe dream. It will not happen, as it has not happened in the post-democracy era.

Africans must blame themselves for their dispossession, brutal subjugation and meaningless lives.

Those that dare stand up against oppressors and exploiters shall be killed like their dogs.