Johannesburg - Watching this stage play evokes many memories, both sad and pleasant, among them the realisation that many people outside apartheid South Africa were friends of the freedom struggle. But pared down to its barest essence, it is a tour de force extolling the absolute beauty and magic of friendship.
“Bloke and His American Bantu”, the play currently on circuit at the State Theatre in Pretoria is a tale of friendship - brotherhood, in fact, between equals, former Drum scribe William Bloke Modisane and American poet Langston Hughes.
It will get you thinking: with friends like these, who needs family? Their bond was thicker than blood.
The friendship between these men of letters is struck on the back of their mutual respect for each other’s craft.
On stage, Bloke is played - to scintillating effect, by a young actor called Anele Nene opposite Josias Dos Moleele, who brings Hughes to life, also to the absolute delight of the audiences.
You then hear Bloke reciting a Hughes poem and, in return, the latter reading an excerpt from Bloke’s autobiography, “Blame Me On History”, which was banned in apartheid South Africa. They recite and read, respectively, like these simple acts had never been done before! It is like they are caressing the words.
Make time to go hear Bloke recite the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and return to this review.
They speak on trans-Atlantic calls, Bloke at his wits’ end trying to leave South Africa and Hughes in his native Harlem. The Sophiatown-Harlem connection is thick with empathy, love and respect.
Like many of the flamboyant Drum writers of the 1950s, Bloke finally manages to leave his land of birth, albeit via a frustrating detour to grey and cold England, where they continue to exchange letters, gifts and valedictions. When they meet, the chemistry is electric, like long-lost brothers setting eyes on each other after aeons.
No pair was better suited to be buddies, one calling the other “my most favourite Bantu writer, oops, favourite Bantu” while the other was, as in the title, “my American Bantu”.
The dialogue is cerebral, as can be expected from scholarly political activists with ink in their veins. They talk of writers and writing, whiskey, women and many things under the sun of interest to black men in the 1960s world where the jackboot of oppression is firmly on the black man’s neck.
Yes, they talk about sex but it is in leading cutting-edge tones, like when they banter about what Maya Angelou was due for when she contemplated marriage with South African exile Vusi Make.
Maya and Make, the subject of the biography by Mike Muendane titled “The Leader South Africa Never Had”, are but just two of the names that pass through the lips of this duo. Many other friends cross the threshold into Hughes’ home on the recommendation of Bloke. Lewis Nkosi visits Hughes because Bloke insisted on the meeting.
But it is still to Bloke that the American poet remains drawn until Hughes dies in May 1967.
The dialogue is top-drawer stuff, as is the music accompaniment. This is clearly the result of the hard work put in behind the scenes by director Sello Maake Ka-Ncube in this work written by novelist Dr Siphiwo Mahala.
The turn of phrase is to die for. The two friends speak of “the sum total of blackness” and bring tears to your eyes talking about missing a 3-year-old child.
Mahala says: “I came across the correspondence by sheer accident while researching Es’kia Mphahlele at Yale University in New Haven, US. I was intrigued, first, by the sheer volume of the letters (they exchanged over 50 letters between 1960 and 1967), which suggested that they wrote to each other frequently. Then I was amazed by how seriously they took the art of letter writing. The choice of words and the lyrical manner in which they wrote shows that they knew that their epistolary was for posterity.”
“I am first and foremost interested in the human story. I am fascinated by the lives of journalists of the 1950s because they are a good measure for that historic moment. They had their finger on the pulse of the society, so their experiences are in many ways a reflection of the epoch. That’s why I looked at, for instance, how Modisane was affected by being separated from his family, not witnessing the growth of his daughter who was only a year old when he fled from his country of birth.”
“I thought this is a very important story to tell because there is a lot to be learned out of a story of brotherhood. I think it is an inspirational story of love and care between man and man, something that we don’t often celebrate. The relationship between Hughes and Modisane stands out as an iconic bromance that through the art of letter writing minimised the distance between England and America, and metaphorically between apartheid South Africa and the civil society movement in the United States.”
“Politically, the camaraderie between Modisane and Hughes highlights the role of intellectuals and cultural workers in the fight against apartheid. Our freedom was not won on the battlefront, but through negotiation. International solidarity played a very important role in exerting pressure on the apartheid government, and the transnational relationships that the likes of Modisane established were integral in our liberation struggle.”
“Bloke And His American Bantu” runs at the State Theatre from July 7 - 24, from Tuesday to Sunday.