“So Take This Magic Flute and Blow. It Will Protect Us As We Go”: Impempe Yomlingo (2007–11) and South Africa’s Ongoing Transition

This Long Walk

Having delivered a chilling ultimatum to her daughter, the Queen of the Night departs—leaving the corpses of Sarastro’s bodyguards littering the stage and Pamina clutching a dagger.¹ Sarastro enters. He seizes the knife from Pamina and throws her to the floor. As she pleads clemency for her mother, the until now imperturbable leader snaps. Grabbing the girl’s hair and wrenching her head backward, he holds the blade to her throat. A low, vocal bass drone interrupts—music brings Sarastro to his senses. Chastened, he rests his hand on Pamina’s head as if in blessing, and begins—sotto voce—the melody of “In diesen heil’gen Hallen.” But in a startling departure from Schikaneder’s text, wherein the leader claims a sacred space for his brotherhood untainted by retribution or hate, Sarastro sings:

Impempe Yomlingo	Schikaneder’s original in English translation
Each one of us has suffered	Within these sacred portals,
Each one of us has fought the fight,	Revenge is unknown.
Each one of us is angry,	And if a man has fallen,
Each one believes he’s right.	Love guides him to his duty.
But guided by each other’s hand,	Then, with a friend’s hand, he walks
We travel to a better land.	Glad and joyful, into a better land.

As the third line of this verse (“Each one of us is angry”), Sarastro kneels beside Pamina, broken. His councillors hum a subdued vocal accompaniment. These voices, substituting for Mozart’s strings, open into multi-part harmony as Sarastro stands for his second stanza:

Impempe Yomlingo	Schikaneder’s original in English translation
On this long walk we are going,	Within these sacred walls
We must walk without fear,	Where man loves fellow man,
For many tears have fallen,	No traitor can lurk
But we must keep going ahead.	Because enemies are forgiven.
We cannot drown, we cannot burn	He who is not gladdened by such teachings,
For then another takes their turn.	Does not deserve to be a man.
That is the lesson that we learn	[Does not deserve to be a man.].

In this gritty “raised-stakes” scene from The Magic Flute: Impempe Yomlingo (2007), a production by Cape Town–based theater company Isango Portobello, we witness a transition from aggression to quiet determination. In an obvious “Truth and Reconciliation” moment, the pervasive culture of violence—a legacy of conflict—is shown to touch even the most apparently virtuous. Sarastro’s words echo those of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Nelson Mandela, both of whom memorably observed that reconciliation and forgiveness are reciprocal processes, that no one is above reproach, and that there is no position of absolute moral authority.² Sarastro repeatedly implicates himself (“we”) in the arduous transition ahead and, with his reference to the impending trials of fire and water, stresses the imperative for change. His song complete, the somber accompaniment lingers. He lays the dagger beside Pamina, entrusting her to choose the path ahead.

The Flute Leads to the Truth

This article reflects upon the many ways in which Impempe Yomlingo performs transition or has been heard to perform transition. Fraught political debates regarding the ongoing transition from apartheid South Africa to the “new” democratic order (instituted in 1994) are inflected in Impempe’s portrayal of the turn from the malevolent world of the Queen of the Night to the benevolent dispensation of Sarastro’s realm. In this production, that shift in regime is played out in pained, difficult ways. The performers’ reading of the score troubles the plot’s central or supposedly unproblematic “reversal,” to borrow Karol Berger’s term for the “break” occurring around midpoint in Mozart’s opera.³ The miraculousness of that turn—vouchsafed by the sanctified sounds of Tamino’s flute—has been thrown into question. How “magical” might this transformation be said to be? Or, to put it another way, how has this transition, this Flute, been heard?

Transition is played...