The Baxter
26.02 - 22.03.2025
♪ ♫ Morena o tseba//Mathata a rona/Morena o tseba/Le seo re se hlokang
Re bine hosanna/Hosanna hodimo/Hosanna hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate♪ ♫
It is impossible to sing this hymn and not feel moved. Perhaps in the same way that it is impossible to sing Senzeni Na — the song that became synonymous with the struggle for liberation in South Africa. Or to put it bluntly, synonymous with death…with Black Death — and not feel tears welling up.
I associate the first time I heard the melody ‘Morena o tseba//Mathata a rona’ in ‘Faustus in Africa!’ with a procession. Bodies marching in a straight line, following a leader, in a manner not too dissimilar to how thinker Homi Bhabha1https://www.artforum.com/features/processional-ethics-william-kentridges-more-sweetly-play-the-dance-230792/ spoke of “processions for saints and politicians; processions of protest and prayer; wedding processions and public demonstrations.”
An unsteady cadence strides to the rhythm… ♪ ♫hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate♪ ♫.
Foot step 1 (left) and 2 (right)
break
1-2
break
1-2….eventually intensifying to 1,1,1,2 break 1,1,1,2 break 1-2. ♪ ♫hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate♪ ♫.
This Sesotho hymn — [The Lord knows, Our troubles. And what we need. Let us sing hosanna. Hosanna in the highest] — is called upon in the play in the form of a brass band. The song is not just about its meaning or Christian religious beliefs. Rather, it is about the traditions and the conditions under which one would hear such a song —often in community, amidst the deepest, darkest grief, often rooted in communal and spiritual expression. The accelerated cyclical rhythm with simple notes and lyrics that echo and build — ♪ ♫hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate…Re bine hosanna/Hosanna hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate ♪ ♫— mirroring the rising tension of grief and hope and love and hate and greed, enjoyment, laughter and sorrow and death…..Mirroring the journey of ‘Faustus in Africa!’
Faustus — doctor, poet, explorer, lover, scholar, slaver, man of great knowledge and power— is in Africa and he is entangled in the production and maintenance of the Empire.
Staged at The Baxter Theatre, between 26 February and 22 March 2025, ‘Faustus in Africa!’ brings together theatre and puppetry under the direction of William Kentridge, alongside associate director Lara Foot in collaboration with puppetry directors Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of the Handspring Puppet Company. Kentridge, of course, is best known in the contemporary art world for his drawings, printmaking and animated films. His work is best described as a loose gathering of possibilities through converging mediums and material: scraps, paper, envelopes, documents, floating heads, traces of history, beheadings, loud banging sounds and song.
The second time I hear the hymn in the play, the Empire has fallen. Plunder. Dig. Loot. Pillage. Ransack. Repent. Repeat.
For me then, song becomes an entry point to how I read the work. Song as opening. Song as seed. Song as risk. Song as possibility. Song as change. Song as freedom. Song as prayer. ♪ ♫hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate. ♪ ♫. It is the way a sequence of notes moves one through time (read memory) and space (read dance).
I was 15 years old when I first heard gospel singer Sechaba’s iteration of this hymn, which he retitled ‘Thapelo’—prayer. I was eavesdropping on my mother and her friends as they chatted over Sunday lunch, the song playing softly in the background. The moment I heard it, I instinctively knew—felt—that it connected me to long histories of sorrow, grief, resilience and joy. Hearing it again, in the form of a recorded brass band at the Baxter Theatre, reconnected me not only to that moment but perhaps to even earlier moments in history.
It is 1808 when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe writes and publishes the first part of Faust, the original text on which ‘Faustus in Africa!’ is based. Goethe’s Faust (1808, 1832) tells the story of a man who, disillusioned with life, makes a pact with the devil, Mephistopheles, seeking deeper meaning. His journey leads him through tragic love, political journeys and the possibility of redemption. Filled with themes of ambition and man’s quest for purpose and power, Faust is a great metaphor for coloniality, oppression and the plunder of African lands. With satirical writing elements and the chilling lyricism of Lesego Rampolokeng, ‘Faustus in Africa!’ originally premièred in South Africa at the Grahamstown Festival (now the National Arts Festival in Makhanda) in 1995, a time characterized by unsheltered and naive optimism.
Now reworked, the play retains historical resonance, as a material archive would. The stage set, designed by Adrian Kohler and constructed by Dean Pitman, evokes this experience of the archive. The material archive—buildings and the many documents and objects found in it — forms the foundation of the theatre set. Yet, this material archive also records events, proof that something did happen: bodies are documented on paper, money counted and stacked, contracts of extraction filed away. In these documents lives the hidden, marginalized narratives described by Françoise Vergès2Vergès, A. 2015. “A Cartography of Invisible Lives”. Elropic, 14(2) as mapping of precarious and disposable lives.
Someone once told me that theatre is about creating ‘the perfect image’—in the way Roland Barthes3https://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Barthes-Rhetoric-of-the-image-ex.pdf described how an image holds the unique power to convey meaning beyond language. He argued that an image functions as both a denotation (a literal representation) and connotation (allowing for an interpretive reading). I think about this when I see the image of Helen’s frock violently flipping in the wind as she delivers a self-important speech, the light falling on the devil’s face when Faustus isn’t looking, and Faustus running in the wild, gasping for air. The puppetry, brought to life by Atandwa Kani, Jennifer Steyn, Wessel Pretorius, Asanda Rilityana, Buhle Thembisile, Eben Genis and Mongi Mthombeni, adds weight to these images, enhancing their impact. The play becomes a performance grounded in the negotiation of language, meaning and breath.
In a way similar to Goethe’s Faust, which was once criticized for its lack of coherence due to its blend of lyrical, epic, dramatic and operatic elements, ‘Faustus in Africa!’ uses a variety of styles to create fragmentation and discord. This deliberate fusion of forms serves as a powerful commentary on coloniality and the current state of affairs. The play is inherently African—not just because it is set in Africa, but because it draws on African art forms; music, movement, logics and storytelling methods. Goethe incorporated an array of cultural materials spanning theology, mythology, and politics. Similarly, Kentridge taps into diverse artistic modalities to reflect the complexities of a not-yet-post-colonial Africa. Light and shadow, silence and noise, hum and echo, amplify the disjointedness of narratives. Melody carries the weight of history. ♪ ♫hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate….♪ ♫ Morena o tseba//Mathata a rona/Morena o tseba/Le seo re se hlokangRe bine hosanna/Hosanna hodimo/Hosanna hodimo/Hodimo ho Ntate♪ ♫
