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"Wie's djy?" A project seeking identity

Peter Voges* tells of an exciting theatre project, The Road to Identity

It all stemmed from two incidents: one, a statement made to me by my mother, "You are impure"; the second, a comment made by a white woman in the Monument Theatre in Grahamstown, "Wie's djy?" and repeated, "Wie's djy?"

It all set off a chain of events within myself: how to resolve my mother's statement; could I answer the "Wie's djy?" question effectively. Why, in fact, had she chosen street language to address me? I could easily come up with plenty of clichés: coloured people are picturesque; they have quicksilver responses. They are flower-sellers, street-sweepers, factory workers. They strut the streets dressed in satin with painted faces, in Cape Town on Tweede Nuwejaar.

But who are these people who raise such easy smiles from those who are not in touch with reality? What is the identity of those we call coloured? They call themselves "coloured", "so-called coloured", "black" and the ultimate: "I'm not coloured, I'm a human being."

History seemed to be the answer. My own search for my maternal grandparents was a starting point. Hannes and Georgina February, freed slaves. Why the month of the year taken as a surname? Why, in fact, were there others taken from the Bible: Moses, Abrahams, Johnannes? Why, on the other hand, were there those taken from the classics, like Hector, Cupido, Telemachus? And there was the story of a farmer who granted his surname Smit to his slaves but added the letter "h". On being questioned his reply was that the letter stood for "hottentot".

But as Dr Gabeba Abrahams (an archaeologist at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town) puts it, "There is the bondage of the chains of silence - a truth." South Africans are silent about slavery in this country. Slaves walked to freedom on Emancipation Day, 1 December 1834. Effects were felt only four years later. Today, 170 years later, in the United Nations Year of Slavery, we are silent, the date unknown and most cases forgotten, and yet the descendants of those who walked to freedom on 1 December 1834 are around us all over this country, in their thousands. The sufferings and degradation of their forebears is forgotten, their treatment as goods and chattels erased.

Yet we celebrate ten years, ten short years, of democracy - a walk to freedom - the end of 40 years of oppression. So where does the memory of those who walked to freedom 170 years ago stand in comparison?

The city of Cape Town organised a pageant to celebrate the centenary of Emancipation Day in 1934. The celebrations stood under the leadership of Mayor Louis Gardner, supported by Count and Princess Labia, together with Lion Ale. The organising committee was headed by the Rev Francis Gow. The printed programme, which I found at a fleamarket at the cost of ten cents, has been donated to the Slave Lodge.

A further discovery was an honours thesis by the Rev Michael Weeder on the life of emancipated slave Lydia Williams. The possibility of the content of this thesis becoming the basis of a play seemed real. The Road To Reality was now running parallel to The Road To Identity. The thesis had to become a script. The late Jill Fletcher started it, but the play, now called Everybody's Child, is being completed by Peter Butler, in London at present for a month's residence at the Globe Theatre. Longstanding friend Geoff Hyland, senior lecturer at UCT, will direct. The venue for this performance will be the Lydia Williams Centre, formerly the premises occupied by the Community Arts Project, before that the St Phillips School Hall, but originally the St Phillips Chapel, built in 1885. Here Lydia was confirmed. And a more prominent person, Bernard Mizeki, the first African martyr, was also connected with St Phillips. We will be celebrating Emancipation Day on 1 December 2004, but also Lydia Day, so named by the Cowley Fathers of the Society of St John the Evangelist.

Lydia Williams

Standing on the minute stage I'm reminded of a performance I saw in the school hall by the great British actress Sybil Thorndike and her husband - a potted version of Shakespeare's Scottish play. She was in a simple blue gown with a reversible shawl of green and blue; their single prop was a tall wooden chair. The second half? Amabatha.

The organising body? The Drama Centre founded by George Veldsman. Talented coloured actors gathered once a year to perform Shakespeare. Rosalie van der Gucht and Robert Mohr were but two of the directors. In the 50s and 60s I played Metellus Cimber in Robert Mohr's very stark, modern-dress production of Julius Caesar. His minimalism lives with me till today.

Once more theatre will return to the same stage on 1 December, when Denise Newman takes to the stage as Lydia Williams in Everybody's Child, emancipated, but bearing whip marks from the Donkergat in the Slave Lodge, and all because she was literate. Her other pain was that she became a concubine, at 16 years, to her owner, and bore his child which was removed from her. Lydia spent her life cooking for her child. That was her secret mission, but she had a magnetism which drew people to her, church services were held in her home in Dry Docks, and people gathered round her on her birthday when she served plaatkoek.

Much use is made in the production of traditional Cape music. Our consultants will be the Mitchell's Plain Christmas Choir Board. Our questions? What was the origin of the Cape Quadrille and commercials ending in a sopvleis, nowadays still danced at langarm dances on the Cape Flats? In my days the playing of "God Save The Queen" signalled the end of the evening, after the sopvleis.

Other questions: Why "Die blikkie se boem is yt"? Simple: the origin of the ghoema, a wine barrel with the bottom removed, and "Die blikkie se boem is yt en sie daar", the ghoema.

What was the reason for the inclusion of "Nôi, nôi, die rietkooi-nôi" in the song "Daar kom die Alibama"? Was this a song of freedom, a song of hope, and why "die rietkooi"? The story goes that reeds, which came from the Berg River, were in short supply, but they arrived and people could make beds. Or so the story goes. Was it a statement of "At last, a real bed to sleep on" or was it a dream, "One day I'll be free and I'll sleep on a bed, in my own home, like my madam's home? Oh, to be white! And free!"

At a church service held in Lydia's home, Psalm 51 was read. The content? Adultery between David and Bathsheba. Did Lydia understand her situation? Was her child white? Was being white the answer? Witwees is very common. Or "try for white". They passed the pencil test in the 60s but could never escape the tar brush. Coloured eyes would always see the discolouration in the nape of the neck. Identity is blurred, and chains of silence remain.

Everybody's Child seeks to provide an entry point to The Road To Identity. After its run in Cape Town, Everybody's Child takes to the road to become everybody's child, first playing at the Barn Theatre in Port Elizabeth from 3 February 2005, bringing theatre to those who do not see their own theatre very often. It returns to Cape Town to play at the Cape Town Festival, and then ends its run on the Grahamstown Fringe, hopefully drawing in the estranged coloured community of Grahamstown who have historically never participated in the National Arts Festival.

The story of another Cape Town woman, this time from the suburb of Wynberg, a contemporary of Lydia Williams, is the source of our second production.

The Countess of Stamford neé Martha Solomons, the coloured wife of the Eighth Earl of Stamford

Her husband, Harry Grey, Eighth Earl of Stamford and Ninth Baron of Groby

And Martha's mother, Queen Rebecca, genteel shebeen queen from Wynberg, Cape Town

An intriguing story of an unlikely marriage between Martha, a black woman and daughter of a genteel shebeen queen, and Harry, the black sheep of the House of Stamford. The story is a sequence of coincidences that occurred between Queen Rebecca and Harry Grey, that led to the marriage between Martha and Harry.

While the story of Lydia plays off in Cape Town and relates to the origins of District Six, the story of Martha reflects the gentler, more settled coloured society of Wynberg, with its close relationship with the British soldiers, giving rise to street names like Oxford, Sussex and Kent.

All within easy reach of Cape Town by bus

Here Harry could spend his time in the taverns and with different ladies by whom he fathered children. It was at her shebeen that Rebecca introduced him to Martha.

And having bought Rebecca's house, Harry brought his bride Martha to live. Needless to say, Martha's adjustment to being a titled lady was not particularly easy. The citizens had a titled lady in their midst whom they were forced to treat with deference, a situation which Martha, the then Countess of Stamford, found very discomfiting.

Preferred scriptwriters:
Vicki Bawcombe / Adrian Galley

Actors:
Martha Solomons: Lee-Ann van Rooi
Harry Grey: Aubrey Shelton
Queen Rebecca: June van Mersch (preferred)

Director:
Ralph Lawson (preferred)

This production will be proposed to the Grahamstown National Arts Festival's Main programme, to première in 2005, and it will return to Cape Town to play at a theatre still to be determined.

Sopvleis

Finally, the beginnings of a dance production have seen the light. Called Sopvleis, it will be produced in collaboration with Jazzart in 2006. Based on the music of the Cape Quadrille, or the Square, as it is known, and the Commercial with its finale, Sopvleis, Cape Town audiences will be exposed to the excitement which these dance forms produce.

The Quadrille, or Square, makes up the first half of the langarm dance function; the Commercial, also danced by four couples, is placed at the end, and finishes with a Sopvleis. The Commercial's origins may lie in the performances by slave musicians playing European instruments at European-styled dances and/or accompanying European performers during their performances.

The Commercial is done by four couples, including a leader, who calls the different movements per set. Each set in turn ends with whistle-blowing and cries of "Hystoe!", when each couple returns to their first position. After completion of the entire process the band swings into a relaxing waltz. The Commercial ends on a lively extroverted note with a free-for-all, dancers moving from partner to partner at will, with spirits and energy high. The song "So nader na die hys, so lekker die pot vol vleis" echoes, as the excitement reaches fever pitch.

And then at the end, the glistening dancers gather their belongings and head for the exits.

And so without "God Save The Queen", the reality of The Road To Identity takes form.







*Peter Voges retired from education in 1996, as a lecturer on drama and music at the then Hewat College of Education. Woven into a career in education were ventures into the dance, starting with performances in a ballet called The Square with David Poole. This led to The Sleeping Beauty (David Poole) and Romeo and Juliet (Frank Staff).

Theatre came as a surprise with performances as Kanna, Joseph in Nativity (Rosalie van der Gucht), leading to directing from The Merchant of Venice to Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena with a young Shaleen Surtie-Richards.

Woven into all this was his role as an adjudicator/judge, firstly being a pioneer as the first coloured person ever to judge the ATKV Schools Drama Competition, the Dalro Young Actors Competition (Pretoria Technicon), the Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards.

Other roles included one as visiting director for the Masjidal'quds creating Islamic theatre, artistic co-ordinator for the Eoan Group, organiser of the National Students Theatre Festival (NAF), and finally executive director of the newly-formed Western Cape Theatre Company.



LitNet: 16 September 2004

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