Abstract
This chapter reviews the normative construction of colonial resistance by analysing how white theatre practitioners, in Rhodesia, resisted and defied official practices of separate development and racial segregation. It explores how the field of cultural production provided an opportunity for intercultural and interracial synergies, which dismantled the official binary construction of social relations in Rhodesia. Using a post-colonialist gaze, the chapter reveals how contamination, hybridity and interculturalism were used as strategies of resistance which in turn defined notions of whitehood from within. The chapter, therefore, argues that the colonial project was resisted from within yet this aspect of colonial resistance has received scant academic attention. The paper looks at the works of prominent directors such as Ken Marshall, Adrian Stanley, Monica Maarsden and Daniel Pearce, among others.
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Notes
- 1.
We locate this study in this period because at this time Rhodesia witnessed the development of a white liberal community that was opposed to the hard-core racial and separatist policies of the state. Moreover, most dramatic associations became autonomous, relying on their own theatre houses which gave them the liberty to violate discriminatory policies. There is a lot of evidence of such from this period. It precedes and incorporates the era of the liberation struggle, which makes it interesting to investigate resistance in a period that was politically charged.
- 2.
Anyone, whether black or white, who was a citizen of Rhodesia between 1890 and 1980 was referred to as a Rhodesian. However, ‘Rhodesian’ is used in this chapter in the way that it is now commonly used in Zimbabwe as a descriptor for any white person who had Rhodesian citizenship. Rhodesianness is not a singular category which accommodates only English white people. ‘Rhodesian’ is broad enough to include Jewish, Afrikaner, continental European immigrants and whites retreating from decolonisation elsewhere in Africa and Asia, who came to reside in Rhodesia. Rhodesian is still used to describe a white person who lived in Rhodesia during the colonial period and still believes in a discourse that sustained Rhodesia (i.e., an unrepentant white person). The colloquialism ‘Rhodie’ is still used for the same purpose.
- 3.
We deliberately give examples from the 1890s to illustrate the keenness of the state to control fields of cultural production in the formative years of Rhodesia. This allows us to demonstrate the changes that took place in the 1950s when settler theatre was reasonably well established.
- 4.
‘Contamination’ is a term we borrow from Diana Brydon (1995). It is a strategy of disrupting the purity of the ‘self’ as a cultural entity.
- 5.
Pearce (1972, p. vii) notes that the storyline was based on the real-life story of Evison Muti, who starred as the lead actor in 1973. The generational conflict between Sebastian Chiridzo and his parents, Moses Chiridzo and Lena Chiridzo, over the control of his future after educating him is a story or theme with which most students could identify.
- 6.
The play was openly political as it quoted verbatim Prime Minister Smith, Minister of Information Pieter Kenyon Flemming, Minister of Justice Pieter van der Byl and Minister of Law and Order Desmond Lardner.
- 7.
Adapted from an anti-apartheid novel written By Alan Paton. The play highlights colonial oppression and the need of blacks to liberate themselves.
- 8.
Bill Louw (2011) indicates that after the staging of Julius Caesar in which Charles Mungoshi acted as Trebonius, Adrian Stanley was asked to come and explain himself to Prime Minister Smith as to why he had allowed Africans to see and act in a play that talked about insurrection against the political establishment.
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Chikonzo, K., Ravengai, S. (2021). Negotiating Whitehood: Identity and Resistance in Rhodesian Theatre 1950–1980. In: Ravengai, S., Seda, O. (eds) Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_3
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