By Jonathan Ancer and Charles de Olim
Their names are similar and the names of their plays are the same - but that, according to one of the country's top playwrights, is where the coincidence ends.
Not so, says Cape Town woman Linda Mabena who says playwright Bongani Linda cribbed her school play.
On Sunday, Bongani's Skin Deep ended a successful five-week run at the Market Theatre. His play is about a white Jewish family who raise their domestic worker's daughter, providing her with a middle-class lifestyle, while her siblings languish in the township.
Mabena insists Bongani plagiarised her work and has gone to lawyers, but Bongani on Monday denied this and is considering suing for defamation.
Mabena, 22, a Cape Town law student, said she wrote the play three years ago while studying drama at the National School of the Arts. It was staged at the school's Original Works Festival.
"My play dealt with a domestic worker's daughter, a teenager in post-1994, who is 'adopted' by a white Jewish family. She considers herself to be the madam's daughter. She is rude to her mom because she's embarrassed by her.
"It's too much of a coincidence."
Mabena hasn't seen Bongani's play, but her mother Pindiwe has: "There are slight variations but more than 80 percent of his play is derived from my daughter's original work."
Mabena wants financial compensation.
But Bongani threatened to sue, and said: "This was a residency project at the Market. I spent months with actors workshopping a concept inspired by my own mother, a domestic worker. We had no script. We just brainstormed.
"I'm a creator and a writer. I don't need to take a student's work."