The Story I Am About to Tell

Last updated February 28, 2019

The Story I Am About to Tell was a successful South African play by Duma Kumalo. Produced by a support group for survivors giving testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and starring three of them,^[1] it ran for five years both at home and abroad.

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline of Southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini (Swaziland); and it surrounds the enclaved country of Lesotho. South Africa is the largest country in Southern Africa and the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and, with over 57 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different African languages, nine of which have official status. The remaining population consists of Africa's largest communities of European (White), Asian (Indian), and multiracial (Coloured) ancestry.

Duma Joshua Kumalo was a South African human rights activist and one of the Sharpeville Six. He was condemned to death under the 1984 law of "common purpose", which allowed a person to be convicted for having been in the vicinity of an offence, without personally committing it. In 1988, he received a stay of execution the day before sentence was to be carried out. Following his release from jail in 1991, Kumalo became involved in many human rights activities, including discussions about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and work with Amnesty International. He was a founder member of the Khulumani Support Group for victims of apartheid-related violence.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the end of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution.

Concept

The play was designed for travel around and between communities small and large to spread awareness about the Commission and engage citizens in debate around the questions that it raised. The first of the three genuine TRC witnesses was the mother of a lawyer whose head had exploded after his boobytrapped Walkman detonated. Her testimony included a description of a hands-and-knees crawl into the room in which the bloodied mess of body and head remained. The second, a man, described his three years on death row, waiting to be hanged for a crime that he did not commit, while the third, a woman, recounted her arrest, interrogation and rape at the hands of security police.

Walkman is a series of portable media players and some Sony Ericsson mobile phones manufactured by Sony. The original Walkman, released in 1979, was a portable cassette player that changed listening habits by allowing people to listen to music on the move. It was devised by Sony cofounder Masaru Ibuka, who felt Sony's existing portable player was too unwieldy and expensive. A prototype was built from a modified Sony Pressman, a compact tape recorder designed for journalists.

Death row is a special section of a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after a person is found guilty of a capital offense in death penalty states, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to a jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several years.

These testimonies formed the central element of a play, set mostly in a chocker taxi on its way to a TRC hearing, that embraced manifold others. The three witnesses were supplemented by three professional actors who played small roles, offered comic relief and argued about the TRC's merits and proceedings.

Taxicab type of vehicle for hire with a driver

A taxicab, also known as a taxi or a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice. This differs from other modes of public transport where the pick-up and drop-off locations are determined by the service provider, not by the passenger, although demand responsive transport and share taxis provide a hybrid bus/taxi mode.

Reception

The Story I Am About To Tell featured alongside two other TRC-related productions, Ubu and the Truth Commission and The Dead Wait , at the Laboratory in Johannesburg's Market Theatre. William Kentridge, director of the former, held it in high regard but believed that it formed "only a partial solution to the questions raised by the Commission. Because what the 'real' people give is not the evidence itself, but performances of the evidence. There is a huge gap between the testimony at the Commission and its reperformance on stage. And these are not actors."^[2]

Ubu and the Truth Commission is a South African play by Jane Taylor first performed under the directorship of William Kentridge at The Laboratory in Johannesburg's Market Theatre on 26 May 1997.

The Dead Wait is a play by Paul Herzberg which tells the tale of a young South African athlete, conscripted as a soldier in the Angolan Civil War, who tries to own up to a crime on arriving back home. Partly autobiographical, it draws on Herzberg's similar experiences prior to his leaving South Africa. It was aired for a spell on BBC Radio.

Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and one of the 50 largest urban areas in the world. It is the provincial capital and largest city of Gauteng, which is the wealthiest province in South Africa. While Johannesburg is not one of South Africa's three capital cities, it is the seat of the Constitutional Court. The city is located in the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills and is the centre of large-scale gold and diamond trade.

On the other hand, he continued, it was often precisely this awkward lack of professionalism on the part of the witnesses which lent their performances their power:

One is constantly thrown back, through their awkwardness, into realising these are the actual people who underwent the terrible things they are describing. The most moving moment for me was when one of the survivors (survivor of three years on death row) had a lapse of memory. How could he forget his own story — but of course he was in that moment a performer at a loss for his place in the script. I have no clear solution to the paradoxes this half testimony, half performance raised. But describe it as one of many possible ways of dealing with the material.^[3]

Following one performance, a German spectator found herself in desolate tears. They were not only for the witnesses and their heart-breaking narratives, she said, but also out of anger and regret: she had never in her life in Munich heard similar testimony about her own country's blighted history.^[4]

Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the shared mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans.

Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, the second most populous German federal state. With a population of around 1.5 million, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, as well as the 12th-largest city in the European Union. The city's metropolitan region is home to 6 million people. Straddling the banks of the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps, it is the seat of the Bavarian administrative region of Upper Bavaria, while being the most densely populated municipality in Germany. Munich is the second-largest city in the Bavarian dialect area, after the Austrian capital of Vienna.

Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.

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References

Kentridge, William. "Director's Note." In Ubu and the Truth Commission , by Jane Taylor, viii-xv. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2007.

Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa, colloquially named the Mother City. It is the legislative capital of South Africa and primate city of the Western Cape province. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.

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Notes

↑ These three returned every night to repeat their TRC testimonies on stage.
↑ Kentridge 2007, p. xiii.
↑ Kentridge 2007, pp. xiii-xiv.
↑ Kentridge 2007, pp. xiv-xv.

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[1] These three returned every night to repeat their TRC testimonies on stage.

[2] Kentridge 2007, p. xiii.

[3] Kentridge 2007, pp. xiii-xiv.

[4] Kentridge 2007, pp. xiv-xv.