Amakhosi Theatre

Origins and development

The group's origins go back to 1979 when Mhlanga and his Dragons Karate Club colleagues turned up one day for their training session at Makokoba's Stanley Hall and found the hall booked for a theatre workshop. The karate club members attended the workshop out of curiosity, and it was during this experience that their enthusiasm for theatre was first ignited.

Cont Mhlanga began to attend theatre workshops in Bulawayo and Harare in 1980 and 1981 (in the newly independent Zimbabwe), from which he would return to share newly acquired skills with his karate club. In 1981, the Dragons Karate Club officially renamed itself "Amakhosi Productions".

The performers became highly active in the township of Makokoba and beyond. By 1990 the group had performed 295 times on stage, and grown to 110 active members. Initially Cont Mhlanga was the sole writer, director and producer of all the plays. However, later other Amakhosi playwrights, such as Cont's brother Styx Mhlanga, were to make contributions to the company's extensive repertoire, while the company expanded and diversified.

Historical and cultural context

Amakhosi was founded within a unique historical and cultural context. Prior to Zimbabwe's 1980 attainment of political independence, Rhodesian cultural and social life was polarised.

The Senior Drama Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, Owen Seda, notes that "as a conquest society, colonial Rhodesia was in dire need of legitimacy in its values and existence as a domineering settler society…Through theatre and other arts, western civilisation was contrasted with the lives of indigenous people who were regarded as uncivilised and without a culture."

It was inevitable that after independence this segregation of Zimbabwean theatre would continue. Indeed, for the first decade following Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, the National Theatre Organisation (a colonial establishment) continued its support of exclusive white amateur theatre companies. In this context, Amakhosi emerged as a strand of revolutionary black nationalist theatre, critical not only of colonialism, but also of the post-independence leadership which it characterised as hypocritical and corrupt.

The Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatres (ZATC), established six years after independence, promoted indigenous township theatre, with the aim of encouraging cultural equality. However, black and white theatre traditions remained confrontational throughout the 1980s. At the onset of the 1990s, the attempts by various cultural activists (such as Cont Mhlanga) to break racial divisions in the arts resulted in a "process of transculturalism and hybridity in post-independence Zimbabwean theatre; leading to production of plays that resonate with traditional forms of African theatre infused with elements of western drama…(producing) theatre works of outstanding cultural and artistic merit."

In the play Workshop Negative (see below) in 1986, Amakhosi showed its willingness from early on to collaborate across the divide (in this case with Chris Hurst, a white Zimbabwean actor from the exclusive white theatre tradition.)

Cont Mhlanga has been described by theatre expert Jane Plastow as "a product of urban township life", in contrast to many other African playwrights who hail from the elite classes.

Mhlanga's first plays – Children Children (1983), Book of Lies (1983) and Diamond Warriors (1983) – were performed in English, with little dialogue and extensive use of karate. Their themes were political – about colonisation, the theft of Africa's cultural heritage and its natural wealth.

Ngizozula Lawe (1984) was the first play in isiNdebele, the local language of Matabeleland, and was consequently a breakthrough for Amakhosi. It involved elderly dancers from the Bulawayo Traditional Dancers' Association, whose participation in the performance, according to Professor Caleb Dube, "legitimised Amakhosi's existence".

The theatre group had an agenda, as Mhlanga recounts: "The intention was to make the group known in Makokoba, make it a local institution…We wanted what we did to be of significance to a local audience, and they should be able to recognise themselves in what we were doing. So the lines in the plays were to a large extent based on what I heard people saying and the way they talked, in the workplace, in bars and so on."