Archived 2012 Articles about Freedom of Speech & Expression

ON THE STAGE: The Merry Wives of Zuma
– Christina Kennedy, Business Day, 9 October 2012

WARNING bells are sounding that our freedom of artistic expression is again under threat, this time by more covert yet no less insidious means than during apartheid.

Anyone who believes The Spear debacle was just a one-off may just be living in cloud-cuckoo-land.

The backlash unleashed by Brett Murray’s controversial painting of President Jacob Zuma, which resulted in the work being defaced and slapped with an age restriction by the Film and Publication Board, has evidently not petered out completely. The significance of that blow to free speech is now being felt by those daring to produce other works of art that ridicule or even comment on those in power.

The latest victim is celebrated playwright and satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys. After a staged play reading of his latest work, THE MERRY WIVES OF ZUMA, at the Wits Theatre on Sunday night, he revealed that this was its world premiere — and also, quite possibly, its last professional performance.

The reason was that potential funders of this large ensemble piece — it has a 17-member cast — had developed cold feet after the messy The Spear imbroglio.

Some, seemingly, were uncomfortable with the lampooning of the president’s polygamous lifestyle suggested by the title. Perhaps they were also thinking of the first citizen’s continuing defamation action against cartoonist Zapiro.

So, on the face of it, this is not blatant political interference. Instead, it’s something that’s infinitely harder to fight: companies and individuals shrinking from associating themselves with an artistic work that’s deemed “unsafe”. Publicly backing this dark-comedy horse in such a politically significant year — in which Zuma may just get re-elected to the African National Congress’s and, ultimately, the country’s presidency — is apparently simply too risky for some.

This emerging form of economic censorship is certain to make cultural practitioners jittery.

It’s not enough to boldly pronounce “stage it and be damned” — vast productions of this nature require money, and only a very brave producer would foot the full bill for a new, largely untested work in a climate in which theatre audiences are dwindling.

Uys’s play, pulled off by a game cast with only six days of rehearsal, is not yet a perfect beast: some careful sculpting by a good dramaturge and a resourceful director would coax the text to its full potential. Yet it is an important work that deserves to be seen and debated.

Artistic endeavours of this kind can make a valuable contribution to a nation’s sociopolitical discourse and, judging from the robust laughter of recognition the piece elicited, it definitely strikes a chord.

Based on Shakespeare’s comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor, the play transposes the action into a contemporary South African setting.

The high jinks unfold in the town of Zuma, and he is clearly the inspiration for the main character, Dr Gedley (Zuma’s middle name happens to be Gedleyihlekisa), an ambitious mayor who wishes to consolidate his power and wealth by taking two extra wives to add to his existing three. The problem is that the two lusty ladies in question are already married.

What follows is what Uys dubs a “political pantomime” and a “comedy of bad moves” — a not-so-subtle metaphor for the current government.

It features characters based on Julius Malema, Tony Yengeni, John Hlophe, Schabir Shaik and Zapiro.

At the core of this farce, though, is a theme similar to the one underlying the Bard’s work: a niggling sense that the affluent political elite is hopelessly out of touch with the working class and the poor, whose interests they claim so grandly to represent.

Uys has always said politicians write his scripts for him, and The Merry Wives of Zuma is flecked with the real-life absurdity that greets us on the news every day.

It’s a genuine attempt to trigger dialogue, through humour and irony, about the state of the nation — and expose it for the slapstick comedy that it is.

Hopefully, this play will not be allowed to fizzle out and die. Uys has sent his script to various university drama departments, and perhaps some will take up the gauntlet. Let’s see what young people in particular think about this cheeky, but fair, comment on merriment and morality at this critical juncture in our country’s history.