Waiting for Freedom

It all happened in the name of freedom. The struggle, the defiance, the rebellion, acts of courage that brought the Apartheid system to its knees and led to a negotiated settlement. No torture, no exile, no jail term, no teargas, no bullet, no mass murders could stop the wave that pounded on the system, all wrapped in the garment of freedom.

Mbongeni Ngema’s song, “Freedom is Coming Tomorrow” expressed a deep seated yearning, a cry lying in the deepest layer of a people’s soul. A yearning for a better tomorrow. A confidence that freedom will come tomorrow. Tomorrow then happened. Or did it?

Post 1994, the age of the constitution, was officially defined as a tomorrow that a people had hoped for. The struggle has ushered in an era of freedom. All the messages from mainstream society changed Ngema’s song into “Freedom is here today.”

See freedom is here, we are now all equal before the law; there is, essentially, no black nor white, no female nor male, no working class nor bourgeoisie; perceptable differences are like mere colours of a rainbow that adds to the beauty of a whole.

See we are equal, we are one, we are united, we are South Africa, we are a rainbow nation, essentially equal before the law.

Equal? Now there are groans everywhere. Expression of dissatisfaction with the current status quo.

Groans are even heard within the ruling party. The historic liberation party. Too many things have remained the same.

Freedom as equality before the law is now questioned everywhere. Too abstract for a people. How does it restore the dignity that a people were robbed of when their relationship to their environment, their land and all their resources was forcefully altered.

Human dignity does not come from an abstract statement like “equality before the law.”

The claim to equality needs concrete evidence to stand. It crumbles in the face of stark realities of inequality that people have to live with on a daily basis. It becomes utter meaningless when whiteness and all its signifiers remains a qualification for access and success.

It collapses when only a few from the ranks of the dispossessed access the resources they were formerly denied. It becomes an embarrassment when these few are window dressed to give the impression that things have changed and are changing for the better. It becomes a mockery when these use the toys they have acquired from the system to terrorise their own.

Freedom as used in South Africa, with its concomitant concept, equality, becomes a lie and indeed an opium to the people. In quest of their dignity, their humanness, the people raise their voice, in their own way, and if they are not heard, for the system is too English and too sophisticated, they resort to violence and destruction.

The play, Waiting for Freedom, written and directed by Tshepiso Konopi, succinctly drives the point home.

Through the creative interplay of action, music, dance, sound and silence the play struggles with the question of freedom in post Apartheid South Africa.

It is literally staged in the underground. It is thus free from the decorum and the correctness required from plays staged on the ground. The message conveyed by the play is that freedom is an ideal that continue to elude the people.

The play makes use of space, objects, music and action to convey freedom as something that is swinging above people’s heads; something that is desired and can almost be perceived but remains unreachable. Though they produce sounds, the characters do not speak in an intelligible human voice. They are stripped of their humanity in their own Africa and their voice(s) and actions are reduced to that of subhumans.

They are a cheated people. Cheated by a discourse of democracy, that promises them “freedom” of expression but refuses to hear them when they speak in their own terms to express their own needs. Though they are embodied in space, the characters are faceless, reduced to living things rather than “recognized” as human beings.

They are a cheated people; cheated by a negotiated settlement that promises to recognize their humanity and restore their dignity but then treats them as so much rubble and noise.

The play succeeds in conveying a deep sense of betrayal coupled by emotions of anguish, despair, frustration and rage. Plunged into the abyss of despair, the people resort to using any means possible to restore their dignity; their very humanity.

The people will stop at nothing to achieve this end. If their voices are not recognized by the current dispensation, if their form of expression is not accorded any currency in the system, the people will explore all means possible including terror, violence and destruction. They will make a statement at all costs. They will seek to bring about change by all means.

It was a people’s philosopher, Frantz Fanon, who insisted that a people will have to destroy all the barriers of old in order to achieve true emancipation. The truly new, fresh and humane is born out of the ruins of the old and stagnant.

“We are Everyone, We are Everywhere,” reads a placard. The message is sent that the voiceless and faceless have immense powers of destruction that will, in time, be unleashed to a society that refuses to recognize them.

The ultimate message sent by the play is that we are, as a nation, sitting on a time bomb that will, in time, explode should the necessary measures not be taken to urgently address the plight of the historically dispossessed and dehumanized.

Freedom remains an elusive ideal. The people remain voiceless and faceless in post Apartheid South Africa. Their situation is a permanent state of loss, anguish and despair that will result in the destruction of everything if not urgently responded to.