Better I die here!

What a week it was!

I finally finished the script.

We started with rehearsals.

Richard Aitken from the Phoenix Restorative Justice Programme agreed to a full collaboration and put his money where his mouth was.

Jonathan Erasmus, journalist from the Zululand Fever, our local newspaper, finally made contact to give us some media coverage

and

Bongani asks “Why this tree?” on the same day that Eugene Terre’Blanche is murdered.

Choosing the Coast Coral Tree, also known as the “Kafferboom”, as the metaphor for this play was so incredibly obvious to me from the start - that his question actually startled me.

I mean, isn’t it obvious? Obviously not! Bongani wanted to know why I chose this tree, beyond what was obvious. He allowed me to explain and then told us (Ida and myself) something so beautiful and significant, that once again it affirmed everything I am hoping for and believe in for this production.

Yes, the Kafferboom is indigenous to South Africa and contains a name that amounts to hate speech in the context of a post-apartheid society committed to reconciliation. That’s the obvious part of course. What I didn’t know, was that the Zulu’s use this tree’s name… yes… THIS tree’s name; not any other indigenous tree; but THIS tree to proclaim: that they are inhabitants, residents, citizens of South Africa. In Bongani’s own words:

Ngingumsinsi Okuzimilela! I was grown here! No one can move me! Better I die here!

Umsinsi is the direct translation for the Kafferboom in Zulu.

Even as I write this; the joy bubbles up in my chest and want to escape my throat with a scream: then I think of ET, who was also grown here, who wouldn’t be moved and who now died here.

I desperately want to hold these two boys to my chest, I want to wipe their faces and bandage their scars. I want to tell them how much I love them and send them off together to play with their assegais and guns, with their passions and their pride – alive and together…