Never, Never and Never Again?

With the recent wave of Afrophobia sweeping parts of the country, I wrote a staged reading taking its ironic title from Nelson Mandela's presidential inaugural speech in which he states that 'never, never and never again shall some be oppressed by others in this beautiful land.'  The reading features characters such as an anti-migrant activist, a Zimbabwean businessman living in South Africa, an NGO researcher and a humanitarian dealing with the fallout from the Afrophobic violence.  The text was translated into isiXhosa and Afrikaans with Edwin Arrison facilitating this, and then it was read in isiXhosa in Hermanus' township on 2 September, followed the next day in English in a Hermanus parish.  Both occasions showed the value of theatre as a way of raising controversial and conflicting viewpoints in order to catalyse debate and learning about contemporary issues.