- The play interrogates African complicity in oppression, raising uncomfortable questions about responsibility and agency.
- It presents betrayal as rooted in family, community, and leadership structures.
- It leaves a bleak conclusion about liberation, leadership, and the future of economic justice.
Isitha saBantu is three hours long, with only a 15-minute break before the final 45 minutes. It is the detailed account of the complicated, complex and chaotic non-thinking process of how dispossessed Africans are collaborators in their own oppression and exploitation.
I think there is something both right and wrong with that view. Maybe it is neither a race nor a moral question. It is just what happens in man’s encounter with modernity or whatever is considered development, the things that must be done in the name of human progress. It explores the inherent greed and selfishness in people.
Worse, it explores the nature of how the brightest minds or those with intellectual potential are sent to the best schools abroad, only to come back home to betray their own people. People do not go to the best schools, tertiary institutions and, later, join multinationals, to be heroes that fight for economic liberation, or equality, or justice. They are trained and conditioned to be pawns of exploitation in the name of human progress and economic advancement.
The anatomy of African self-betrayal
The nature of human relationships is complicated, complex and chaotic. The African family is portrayed as the cornerstone of the betrayal of Africans’ vision for freedom and self-determination. This is a narrative of African self-betrayal. The place, space and interface where betrayal happens is between mother and son, brother and sisters, the chiefs, and lovers.
It then spreads to the clan, the community, and ultimately the nation. All the characters in the African community are involved in their own betrayal. They are nothing but mindless and myopic, irrespective of their positions, status or class. They are just pawns in a white man’s game.
The interplay and engagement are between and among Africans themselves, while racist white multinational power is invisible. The play highlights how personal self-interest, preservation and protection supersede everything. It is a mixture of fear and greed that shapes and influences African behaviour, and fear and manipulation rule the country.
A bleak reflection on leadership and liberation
The point about the play is that it makes one indifferent to African misery and suffering. One realises that we get the leadership, if any, that we deserve, and the point about leadership is that we have no leaders. I left the theater feeling empty in the soul.
It is a great show to condition to take responsibility for what does not happen to the attainment of so-called liberation, in fact, to resign themselves to their fate. The struggle for the return of the land or economic redistribution and sharing of the wealth is a pipe dream. It will not happen, as it has not happened in the post-democracy era. Africans must blame themselves for their dispossession, brutal subjugation and meaningless lives. Those who dare stand up against oppressors and exploiters shall be killed like their dogs.
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