This publication is republished in the WITS PRESS RE/PRESENTS series. Wits University
Press celebrates its centenary in 2022. Since its inception, the Press has been
curating and publishing innovative research that informs debate to drive
impactful change in society. Drawing on an extensive backlist dating from 1922,
WITS PRESS RE/PRESENTS is a new series that makes important research
accessible to readers once again. While much of the content demonstrates its
historical provenance, it remains of interest to researchers and students, and
is re-published with new introductions in e-book and print-on-demand formats.

An intellectual history of considerable subtlety and richness … lucid and richly suggestive …
beautifully written.
—Professor Karin Barber, University of Birmingham

An excellent and important book moving with great ease in very tricky terrain… I must confess
that having finished it, I wanted to start reading it again, immediately.
— Professor Liz Gunner, University of Natal

Much of the work in the fi eld of African studies still relies on rigid distinctions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’. This book moves well beyond these frameworks to probe the complex entanglements of different intellectual traditions in the South African context, by examining two case studies. The case studies constitute the core around which is woven this intriguing story of the development of black theatre in South Africa in the early years of the century. It also highlights the dialogue between African and African-American intellectuals, and the intellectual formation of the early African elite in relation to colonial authority and how each affected the other in complicated ways.

The first case study centres on Mariannhill Mission in KwaZulu-Natal. Here the evangelical and pedagogical drama pioneered by the Rev Bernard Huss, is considered alongside the work of one of the mission’s most eminent alumni, the poet and scholar, BW Vilakazi. The second moves to Johannesburg and gives a detailed insight into the workings of the Bantu Dramatic Society and the drama of Herbert Dhlomo in relation to the British Drama League and other white liberal cultural activities.

Keywords: Mariannhill Mission; Bantu Dramatic society; African Theatre; Missionary education, colonial education, evangelical drama, pedagogical drama, black theatre in South Africa, African intellectuals

Preface and Acknowledgements
Note on Zulu Orthography
Introduction: Staging the (Alien)nation: African Theatre and the Colonial Experience
Chapter 1 ‘All Work and No Play Makes Civilisation Unattractive to the Masses’: Theatre and Mission Education at Mariannhill
Chapter 2 ‘I Will Open My Mouth in Parables’: Accounting for the Crevices in Redemption
Chapter 3 Parallel Time, Parallel Signs, Discordant Interpretations
Chapter 4 B.W. Vilakazi and the Poetics of the Mental War Zone
Chapter 5 The Bantu Men’s Social Centre: Meeting the Devil on His Own Ground
Chapter 6 The Bantu Dramatic Society According to a Gossip Columnist
Chapter 7 Contesting ‘The Bantu Imagination’: The British Drama League and the New Africans
Chapter 8 H.I.E. Dhlomo: Measuring the Distance between Armageddon and Revolution
Chapter 9 The Black Bulls: Assembling the Broken Gourds
Chapter 10 Hegemony and Identity: What a Difference ‘Play’ Makes
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Bhekizizwe Peterson is Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has been active since the 1970’s in Black cultural practices in South Africa and is the writer/producer of internationally acclaimed films. He has published extensively on African Literature, Performance and Cultural Studies as well as Black Intellectual Traditions in South Africa.

An intellectual history of considerable subtlety and richness … lucid and richly suggestive …
beautifully written.
—Professor Karin Barber, University of Birmingham

An excellent and important book moving with great ease in very tricky terrain… I must confess
that having finished it, I wanted to start reading it again, immediately.
— Professor Liz Gunner, University of Natal