SAMANGIKA by Benne Banda @ TITP 20th - 30th MARCH 2002 nightly at 7.30pm Theatre in the Park is next to the National Art Gallery, Harare

The play is set during elections in a newly democratised state. The idea of democracy and it's benefits has eluded many an electorate, especially the have-nots, whose enthusiastic hopes and aspirations have no chance of seeing the light of day. The candidates in whom the people entrusted their mandate have forgotten their promises, some have become greedy and others just hopelessly drowned in the machinations of governance. The electorate is fast losing faith in the vote - their only avenue of determining their political future. The play features three prominent Zambian actors. Further details from Daves Guzha rooftop@zol.co.zw Tel: 774945

A review by BART WOLFFE....

SAMANGIKA WARNS ARTISTS OF THE DEATH OF FREE SPEECH
IN DICTATORSHIPS

How many of you remember the story of the Taliban regime's destruction of
the thousands of year old buddhist statues before the war began in
Afganistan? - Like so many examples in history, dictators and regimes unable
to accept opposition or criticism have sought to destroy all dissent by
banning freedom of expression, especially in the arts. Artists and their
works have been murdered and desecrated by history for daring freedom of
expression whether from the days of Cromwell to Hitler to the present. Not
much has changed as history is in the habit of repeating its unlearnt
lessons from the past. Civilisation has not really progressed and culture
that changes and is dynamic and growing threatens the status quo that so
desperately clings to its past icons of glory and religious fundementalism
of one sort or another. As we all know, in Zimbabwe today, to challenge the
way things are is to become a criminal by default as the laws of suppression
have been imposed on freedom of speech and asssociation.

The Zambian play, Samangika, finishing on 30th March in Harare's Theatre in
the Park tells this story. It is not agit-prop or protest theatre at all but
a grand black comedy in the tradition of Wole Soyinka's early work where the
opposing forces of freedom and suppression collide through the main
protaganists of the rotten establishment represented by one Major Uko, head
of internal or national security and the griot or poet, Samangika himself.
Samangika is not even a great poet. He is, in fact, somewhat of an innocent
whose work touches the nerve endings of a sick society and reallly is
representative of the voice of the nation struggling to deal with things not
being right in the state. Like Marechera, Samangika can only be himself and
do what he is burdened to do, whether good or bad as long as he is being
true to his calling as an artist and a poet. In fact, as a poet, he is not
even bound by any political agenda. It is his naievity that will cost him
his life and forms the basis of this dark tragedy with its comic
contradictions. Benne Banda, the Zambian auther, has penned and directed a
great work here. Samangika, at times stammeringly and always convicingly
played by Hamala Hamala, is no hero but what some would call one of those
long-haired opposition who smokes mbanje and as Major Uko points out, sleeps
with white women from Scandanavian donor agencies. On the other hand, Major
Uko is the face of the tyrant, charming when he needs be, deadly when action
calls for it. Augustine Lunga is chillingly convicing in his role as the
official from the special branch. His lieutenant, Jonathan, is possibly the
most impoirtant character in the play as he represents the family man whose
salary is paid for by the system and therefore is seen to be a ruling party
cadre and card holder and is caught between his conscience at the graft and
corruption that keeps him and his family fed and his own truthfuness and
inner integrity that he must sacrifice in order to help protect a rotting
establishment he knows he cannot believe in any more. The madness this
causes him reflects the social damage caused by sick governance. Benne Banda
is unexpectedly surprising in this role as his mask of good neighbourliness
as the informant falls apart and he becomes the anger and voice of those
cheated of their political mandate in the end. The climax of the play is
unexpected and shocking, totally believable. Revenge is both sweet and
terrible to behold.

This play born out of the aftermath of the Zambian presidential elections is
great theatre with a human face. The characterisation is superb, every
member of the three man-team being so much more than a stereo type. Certain
leaders of our community-based theatre could learn a trick or two about how
to avoid shallow and hollow colonial and imperialist rhetoric in the name of
drama and begin to emulate real art where fulfilling the political agenda of
donors and politicians is not what serves the community or the future.

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