Monarchs, Missionaries, and African Intellectuals: African Theatre and the Unmaking of Colonial Marginality (review)

Monarchs, Missionaries, and African Intellectuals: African Theatre and the Unmaking of Colonial Marginality, by Bhekizizwe Peterson. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1999; Trenton: Africa World P, 2000. xi + 300 pp. ISBN 0-86543-813-7 cloth; 0-86543-814-5 paper.

In the last decade, historical research in South African literature, theater, and performance in the first half of the twentieth century, a period of neocolonial modernization but also of attempts at re-traditionalization by the state as well as the emerging African elite, has transformed the field from a terrain of sketchy if pioneering books to a "dense forest" (to quote a favorite metaphor of Peterson's primary subject, Herbert Dhlomo) including studies of literary, theatrical, and musical figures, from Dhlomo to his cousin, composer and impresario Reuben Caluza, as well as a range of cultural forms, from ragtime to marabi, vaudeville to agit-prop, izibongo to protest poetry. Bhekizizwe Peterson's book draws on this research as well as his own investigation of as yet underused archives to contribute a nuanced historical account and analysis of the role of dramatic texts and theater practice and criticism in the education of African intellectuals and in their negotiation with the hegemony of English neocolonial culture in a South Africa still tied, as a Dominion, to the British Empire. Peterson focuses on two case studies, drama education at the Marianhill Catholic Mission (ch. 1-4), and the debates around the cultural, political, and social role of drama among educated Africans in Johannesburg, such as Dhlomo (ch. 5-9), but his framing arguments about the impact of drama on the social relations of "practitioners, audiences and critics" as well as the "intellectual, moral and cultural horizons that shape identity and agency" (p. 9) resonate with ongoing debates about the present role of theater in South Africa.

Father Bernard Huss, head of St. Francis College at Marianhill outside Durban, was not the first to introduce drama to the mission school, as it had been in the curriculum at Lovedale since the mid-nineteenth century, but his use of drama as an instrument of "civilization" as well as Christianization was very influential. Concerned about what he (and many converted Africans) regarded as the pernicious influence of urbanization, especially the entertainments of marabi halls and alcohol, Huss composed "dramas of high quality" (imidhlalo epambili—progressive plays, 33) on biblical themes, like Joseph in Egypt (1904) or Job (1907). Performed by students in English or Zulu, these plays preached obedience, self-restraint, and perseverance in adversity, which favored not only the formation of good Christians but also of "African gentlemen" (41). Although an agent of assimilation and subjection, the plays also gave African students and teachers an opportunity for reinterpreting the scripture, and neocolonial culture more generally, in their own terms. The ambivalence of this reinterpretation is clear in the work of the school's famous alumnus, poet-academic Benedict (or Bambatha) Vilikazi. As implied in the tension between his Christian and "nationalist" names, Vilikazi, who died of meningitis at 41, inhabited a "mental war zone" (87); Peterson's close readings of his poetry, novels, and contribution to the so far only serious English-Zulu dictionary testify to Vilikazi's power to "modernize the past" (91) while rekindling the "ancient power of the word" (103), as well as to the cost.

Where the first half of the book deals with essentially one institution and two exemplary but very different representatives, the second half tackles several interrelated institutions, the Bantu Men's Social Centre (ch. 5), the Bantu Dramatic Society (ch. 6), and the local branch of the British Drama League (ch. 7), sketching the roles of various players, before focusing on playwright, journalist, director, librarian, and general impresario Herbert Dhlomo (ch. 8-9). Dhlomo, whose collected (but not complete) works were published in 1985, is certainly an exemplary player in the South African literary scene...