What: Return of the Ancestors by Mike van Graan
Performers: Rondo Mpiti-Spies and Sikhuthali Bonga
Director: Walter Strydom
When: October 6-13, 2024
Where: The Wave Theatre, 44 Long Street, Cape Town
Tickets and bookings: R145, book at https://catchthewave.co.za

Mike van Graan’s satirical two-hander, Return of the Ancestors is on for a short season at the Wave Theatre in 44 Long Street, Cape Town from October 6-13, 2024. Van Graan wrote the play in 2014 to mark 20 years of democracy”. In early 2024, during a writer’s residency at the University of Free State, while writing a new play he was “offered the opportunity to update” Return of the Ancestors script to a 2024 context. Van Graan was impressed with actors, Rondo Mpiti-Spies and Sikhuthali Bonga who presented three scenes at the launch of his residency. He decided to present a season of the full updated text at the Wave in Cape Town. Direction is by Walter Strydom.

In Return of the Ancestors, van Graan plays tribute and homage to the seminal South African protest play, Woza Albert, written by Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon in 1981 (first performed in 1983, at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg). In Woza Albert, Jesus returns to South Africa at the pinnacle of apartheid. The prompt was “What if, the Lord, Morena Jesus Christ comes to earth now, here in South Africa under Apartheid?  What will happen?” In van Graan’s Return of the Ancestors, it is 2024 and Steve Biko and Neil Aggett return to South Africa “to determine whether their sacrifices have been worth it.  From pillar to (no) post, from Nkandla to Phala, from darkness to more darkness, the struggle icons traverse the rainbow nation in search of the pot(holes?) of gold”. The two legendary anti-Apartheid struggle activists were brutally murdered by Apartheid police, while in detention.

Return of the Ancestors is classic Van Graan with his outrage of the nation. In 2024, Apartheid legislation no longer exists but inequities and ruptures fester. Actors Rondo Mpiti-Spies and Sikhuthali Bonga deliver energised and finely textured performance, harnessed by dynamic physical performance and voice. Using caps (as in hats) and a few props, they seamlessly shift between characters and situations, with tight direction by Walter Strydom.

In addition to the flummoxed Biko and Aggett, Mpiti-Spies and Bonga portray a range of people that the esteemed ancestors encounter on the road to Nkandla. Plot spoiler. They must bribe their way to gain guest access to Nkandla. In the Rainbow Nation, politics and money rule with the mantra: “I didn’t join the struggle to be poor”.  The ancestors muse that as soon as leaders are ready to things for the people, a new leader comes along and inevitably there’s yet another commission of enquiry. Democracy has become about “waiting for a miracle” and is “about serving yourself – not the people…”  Biko encounters a grave yard. Looking for his grave stone, he muses that all the buried people where in their 20s and 30s and that the “heroes and martyrs are turning in their graves”.

For me the crunch point in Return of the Ancestors is when it is suggested that families of struggle heroes should be asked if they want the struggle icons names to be associated with broken streets, schools and hospitals. Within the sorrow and grief of Return of the Ancestors, as he does so well, van Graan gives us space for us to laugh and find release.

✳ Rondo Mpiti-Spies and Sikhuthali Bonga in Return of the Ancestors by Mike van Graan, The Wave Theatre, 44 Long Street, Cape Town, October 6-13, 2024. Pic by Stephen Collett, supplied.