Money for Shoes

The artist agency lies in her ability to play with the nuances and subtleties of culture. She illuminates the intricacies and complexities of the everyday, and is forever bent on exploring the taken for granted. She sharpens aspects of lifestyle that are often ignored, and undermines the most cherished ones. At her best, the artist underplays aspects of culture that are promoted by mainstream society for the expedient purpose of maintaining a particular hegemony.

In the play Money for Shoes, by Ayanda Khala and Refiloe Lepere we encounter a play dealing with the world and its people in a subtle, witty, subversive, intelligent and informative manner. The play is interactive and allows the audience participation throughout its unfolding.

In this play we are exposed to interesting but difficult transformations in the lives of two black women coming of age, Dineo, played by Refiloe Lepere and Thando played by Ayanda Khala. Juanita Azanai plays the character of a show host Stella. She facilitates discussions on issues emanating from the play and she manages to engage the audience to bits.

The lives of the characters are placed within an evolving South African black socio-cultural context. A context that is mostly ignored, and when attended, is often portrayed in a manner that perpetuates the stereotype of uncontrolled sexuality and unbridled criminal behavior.

Through the lives of two women, we are exposed to the often ignored aesthetic texture of township vernacular culture and its complex relationship to mainstream white patriarchy. We are exposed to the women’s multiple experiences and relations at different stages of their lives. We are exposed to their authorities, their networks, their routines, their games, their joys, their frustrations, their politics, their aspirations, their resentments and their rebelliousness. We are exposed to the pains and joys engendered by transitions in their lives. We are exposed to ways in which the various transitions and changes in life are negotiated.

The women are friends since childhood and they take their friendship to adulthood. They play and love. But they also harbor aspirations beyond where they are at any given stage of their lives. They encounter major conflicts and contradictions in their games, their relationships, their sex lives and their aspirations. By virtue of being friends, they are involved in the same kind of games. But they play their cards differently. Their understanding of what it means to be a black woman differs. As a result they react differently and come to different conclusions about living life as a black woman in a “free” South Africa.

They agree on something though and that one thing becomes a rallying cry against the one force they feel the most; patriarchy. Their pact Men are nothing but Money for Shoes. With this “declaration” the two women attain to some measure of agency, some form of power, even under circumstances aimed at humiliating them. For conquest achieves its fullest effect when its victims admit defeat.

Most black men, just like white men, are sick creatures who derive their sense of manhood from their sexual conquests. This inflates their egos; their sense of self worth and importance. The women in the story find agency in their power to define. They might not change men but they can change what they think about them. For, meaning is also a zone of struggle. A terrain of power. The women dare define their relations with men differently, and in their own world men are “nothing” but Money for Shoes.

Men might think that they have conquered them, but in so far as they are not conceding to this they deny them a sardistic delight in absolute conquest. Agency is, however, something to constantly struggle for. The women fail to recognize the power of patriarchy and therefore the urgency and immensity of their struggle and the constant alertness and commitment it is calling for, and, in the end, a man comes in between them and they part ways. A tragedy indeed!

Perhaps the greatest strength of the play lies in its capacity to engage the audience. The audience is involved in the resolving of serious ethical challenges facing women coming of age, such as abuse, harassment, xenophobia, sexism, tribalism, racism, love, betrayal, marriage, choice, commitment and so on. Though the nature of the play is such that it does not present simple solutions to these challenges, the audience is left with something to think about and, perhaps, projects to commit to in a quest to change the world to a better form.