Extraordinary theatre producer Zodwa Shongwe laid to rest at the weekend

By Edward Tsumele

Colleagues, friends and family over the weekend came together and gave the extra ordinary theatre producer Zodwa Shongwe a fitting and dignified send off, first holding an emotion embedded memorial services in the almost packed John Kani Theatre at the Market Theatre on Thursday, April, 24, 2025, and a funeral service on Saturday, April 26, 2025. Shongwe who passed on, on April 14, 2025 at her Johannesburg home after battling an undisclosed illness was laid to rest at the NASREC Memorial Cemetery in Johannesburg on Saturday, April, 26, 2025.

The funeral services, was held at Naturena Primary school, after which the proceedings left for the NASREC Memorial Cemetery, which became Zodwa’s final place to rest.

The death of this iconic theatre producer saw colleagues, friends and family on Thursday, exchange on the podium stories of their interaction with Zodwa as both a much loved and admired friends and colleague, as well as her own abundant love for those close to her, including friends and her family. To many who may jot have witnessed Zodwa’s warmth and love for fellow human beings in general, and those she worked and interacted with for the past 53 years that she lived on this earth, the memorial service may have indeed revealed the human side of Zodwa that they did not know.

Among those that spoke fondly of Zodwa were dancer and choreographer Nomsa Manaka, who narrated how she met the then young thespian at the Playhouse in Durban when she worked with her late husband poet, playwright and thinker Matsemela Manaka.

“It is my late husband in fact who introduced Zodwa to Walter Chakela (the late former Chief Executive officer of Windybrow Theatre). She ended up working there, and I later worked with her at the Theatre.

Lusanda Zokufa the barnd and marketing manager at Market Theatre Foundation and Thuli the facilities manager for the institution, spoke of how close they were with the late producer, beyond the collegiality among colleagues that is necessary for the smooth running of an organization.

Instead, their was a tight relationship that extended to socializing together after hours, often in bars where Zodwa and Lusanda imbibed the brown holy water white Thuli, a staunch Church going Christian, ironically accompanied them on several occasions only to settle for coffee, while her two friends helped themselves to acholic beverages, the audience was told in one of the several tinges of humour that characterised the service.

The humour by the speakers though was clearly intentional, meant to blunt the sharp mood of agony, sadness and mourning that permeated the walls and the floor of the almost fully packed John Kani Theatre.

Even though in tears, Market Theatre Foundation Artistic Director Greg Homann described the occasion as both honour and celebration of Zodwa’s contribution to the theatre sector for the past 30 years, it was clear by looking at the faces of the audience that there was more mourning than celebration.

Well known filmmaker and activist and Bevie Ditsie, may have noticed the sadness in the room for when the film producer went on stage, she injected her own sense of humour obviously aimed at loosening the sad mood in the room. Both of us had the same health challenges, and Zodwa appeared to be the braver one. When Zodwa told me recently that her health situation was getting more complicated, I panicked because she was the braver one between the two of us.

I have known Zodwa since the 90s as we worked together to build organisations, and she is the one who created spaces for that. She really loved people. For example, when I had my first heartbreak, I found myself, heart broken and crying in her kitchen, having bust in. She woke up and listened for sometime, after which she simply said, I am going to sleep now as she had to wake up early for work,” Ditsie said.

Many spoke how Zodwa always expressed empathy when dealing with artists in an environment where budgets for productions are getting tighter and tighter, but Zodwa handled the challenge in a way that did not make the life of artists emotionally worse by knowing that they had to put up productions at the Market Theatre within the constraints of tight budgets.

“I have Zodwa to thank for trusting me with the directing of The Cry of Winnie Mandela. She was amazing,” said the talented emerging young theatre director MoMo Matsunyane. The Cry of Winnie Mandela, adapted from essayist, fiction writer and academic Njabulo S. Ndebele’s book of the same title by Alex Burger when it first ran last year at the Market Theatre became a run-away success story that saw the production enjoying several extensions, something not witnessed on stages in recent years, and again this year on its return leg it also enjoyed another extension as it filled the theatre day after day.

If anything, this production, it propelled MoMo into the big leg black female talented theatre directors, a path that in someway has also been travelled or is being travelled by others such as Lesedi Jacob and Nsthieng Mogoro.

And so, MoMo has every reason to thank Zodwa for trusting her that she would pull off this historically significant production, which looks at the socially disrupting issue of migrant labour and how that teared apart African families resulting in some cases in extra-marital affairs and divorces as especially women could not endure waiting for ever their men to come back from where they worked in the mines. Some in fact either never came back and if they did, they came as different people.

And so, the stakes in this production were high and only a trust director could be trusted to bring this story alive. Zodwa saw the young MoMo as the one, and she was right.