ABSTRACT
In July 1972, the South African Black Theatre Union (SABTU) was announced during a festival sponsored by the Theatre Council of Natal (TECON) at Orient Hall in Durban. The program included South African drama, such as The Coat (1966), devised by the Serpent Players in collaboration with Athol Fugard, The Lahnee’s Pleasure (first performed 1972; published Govender 1977), by Ronnie Govender of the Shah Theatre in Durban and poetry presented by the Mihloti Group from Alexandra Township near Johannesburg, and Dramsoc of the University of the Western Cape (UWC), as well as significant additions from abroad, such as the University of Natal (Black Section) production of Encounter, about the Kenyan Mau Mau, by the Indian/Ugandan writer Kuldip Sondhi and TECON’s production of Requiem for Brother X, by the AfricanAmerican playwright William Wellington Mackey. The organizers, the Black Peoples’ Convention (BPC) and the black South African Students’ Association (SASO) intended the program to highlight the range of cultural production dismissed as “non-white” by the state and to promote political unity of Africans, coloureds, and South Africans of Indian descent under the banner of black identity. They challenged not only apartheid but also the presumption of well-meaning whites, especially students associated with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), to lead the struggle against it.
