The Market Theatre Foundation in partnership with the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) and Arts Alive proudly presents Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution, a play that commemorates the hundredth anniversary of Robert Sobukwe’s birth. The play runs from 13 November to 8 December 2024 in the Barney Simon Theatre.

The production aims to introduce audiences to the life and times of the former PAC leader through critical historic moments alongside his prison letters to his wife, Veronica Sobukwe. Some of the defining events central to the play include the Sharpeville Massacre, life at various prisons leading up to ‘the Sobukwe Clause’, Robben Island as well as his final days.
The production makes use of orality and multiple-point-of-view-storytelling, monologues, satire, song and excerpts from some of Sobukwe’s favourite poems as they appear in his letters. Employing orality depicts Sobukwe’s love for storytelling, while emphasising his deep-rooted identity as a pan-Africanist. Celebrate the legacy of this iconic figure in Africa’s liberation history, while appreciating a revolutionary love story that never altered in the face of oppression, violence and racism.

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Robert Sobukwe’s birth on 5 December 2024, The Market Theatre has commissioned a new play, Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution, which aims to introduce audiences to the life and times of the former PAC leader through critical historic moments alongside his prison letters to his wife, Veronica Sobukwe.

The play will open on 14 November 2024 in the Barney Simon Theatre as part of the KAZA KAMBA Pan-African Theatre Festival. It will then run beyond the festival until 8 December 2024, closing the week of Sobukwe’s birthday.

Lala Ngenxeba/Of Love and Revolution sets out to show how Sobukwe’s love-centred response to oppression fuelled his fighting spirit against oppression and racial injustice. It examines love as a driving force of the revolution and a way of practising freedom while in bondage. The brand new play, written by award-winning playwright Monageng ‘Vice’ Motshabi, focuses on Sobukwe’s relationship with his wife through their letters, prison visits and everyday life in Kimberley, Northern Cape, where the couple lived. The struggle for freedom, as well as the evolution of strategies of responding to apartheid and its escalating violence, are seen through Sobukwe’s connection to family, friends and fellow prisoners.

Some of the defining events central to the play include the Sharpeville Massacre, life at various prisons leading up to ‘the Sobukwe Clause’, Robben Island as well as life in Kimberly where he worked as a lawyer and community icon. The production makes use of orality and multiple-point-of-view-storytelling, monologues, satire, song and excerpts from some of Sobukwe’s favourite poems as they appear in his letters. Employing orality depicts Sobukwe’s love for storytelling, while emphasising his deep-rooted identity as a pan-Africanist.

The play carries a humanising motif, carefully portraying struggle heroes as ordinary people who, in addition to their revolutionary and moral courage against oppression, still found deep meaning in the pursuit of simple pleasures. It provokes reflections on the impact of colonialism and apartheid on the black family, as seen not only through the migrant labour system and land dispossession, but also the imprisonment, exile and killing of freedom fighters.

The production is directed by Palesa Mazamisa. The cast is Pulane Rampoana, Zizana Peteni and Katlego ‘Kaygee’ Letsholonyana. Throughout the play, the cast moves between narration and the voicing of various characters, including Sobukwe, in a way that grapples with a complex life and legacy.