Complexity of migration well ventilated by The Last Country at the Market Theatre
By Jojokhala Mei
The Last Country, is warm rewarding storytelling by four driven Durban immigrant and migrant women, staged in-the-round at Joburg’s Market Theatre all May Africa Month long by Durban’s Empath Theatre.
The Last Country experience for me uncannily stretches the University of Johannesburg 16th March 2025 Moth Mainstage storytelling presentation of ‘real and accomplished activist’ experience, be it on a separate theme of ‘Power & Possibility’.
All standout performances are well cast South African actresses Mpumi Mthombeni as the industrious elderly maThwala from deep KwaZullu Natal rural hinterland; Nompilo Maphumulo as the graceful burdened Congolese immigrant Ofrah; Faniswa Yisa as the reticent cancer-struck Somali immigrant Aaniina; and then the youngest actress Andile Vilakazi as sprightly Zimbabwean immigrant Aneni. All the characters are drawn from 30 interviews held with real immigrants and migrants after the 2008 Durban xenophobic violence.
It is worth remembering outbreaks of xenophobia end up affecting both foreigners as well as South Africans no matter how strong we make the distinction between internal migrants and cross-border legal or illegal immigrants.
Anyway, gogo Mpumi Mthombeni’s maThwala is wo well-drawn and a heart-felt performance that naturally outshines the other three.
The Sunday 18th May performance is the last until the run ends on 1st June that is followed by an audience dialogue, moderated by The Last Country producer and Sociologist Dr Dylan McGarry of Durban University of Technology and Rhodes University.
The first comment from the eloquent audience is as pointed as “we are all we have as women.’ Then a gentleman says he is from Zimbabwe and laments that the production doesn’t get to tackle the question of government policy which it provokes in the first place.
The question “Does home not shift … the longer time you spend away?” pops up before someone else muses that the play highlights that “the smallest act of kindness makes all the difference,” What of the telling quip that: ’Hope and faith keeps us stuck in the same thing,” referring to gogo’s dream of building her own village house.
When another audience member says she was also struck by the violent commotion all the characters had to periodically enact, I am reminded by how that pity was amplified was for the elderly maThwala. And the Somali and Congolose characters could have been more boldly differentiated.
Not to mention how well the trauma of South African bureaucracy I beautifully enacted by literally flying papers in The Last Country, I had to personally give up collecting my medicine from the hospital.
.The Last Country performs at the Market Theatre until the 1st June 2025.