Another One’s Bread at The Market Theatre

As you walk into the Mannie Manin Theatre, at the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg, you are taken on an expedition of the late Brenda Fassie’s music. Fassie was a larger-than-life singer who had several nicknames. Her fans usually called her ‘MaBrrr’, but some referred to her as ‘Madonna of the Townships’ or ‘the Queen of African Pop because of her stimulating stage act, offstage frolics and vibrant personality meant that she regularly appeared on the pages of local newspapers, just like the Madonna of America who was a female outlandish pop singer who used flashy shock to promote herself as a brand, so is Fassie in Africa.

The preset music is Brenda’s hit song Istraight Lendaba which was released in 1992 and most of her albums became multi-platinum sellers in South Africa. Here are some lyrics from her song Istraight Lenda

 Indaba yam istraight

 Ayifuni ruler 

Kanti wena ung'number bani 

Andifuni naks!

No doubt that she was "fierce, often controversial, always beloved and an incorrigible envelope-pusher onstage and off, Brenda Fassie was the grande diva of South African pop from the 1980s until her death in 2004" as remarked by Rachel Devitt a veteran music critic. Her music still sounds relevant many years later.

Another Ones’s Bread is the latest stage production written by Mike Van Graan who is a theatre writer and producer, is the Executive Director of the African Arts Institute. and directed by Pamela Nomvete, a veteran actress born in Ethiopia and known for her manipulative character of Ntsiki Lukhele on popular soapie, Generations. The music, which pays homage to the iconic songbird Brenda Fassie, promises a thought-provoking narrative that is real and relevant. 

Another One’s Bread, is a four-hander play performed by Motlatji Ditodi as Andiswa who is an estate agent when not professionally mourning, Awethu Hleli as young Brenda with a luscious voice of a songbird, Faniswa Yiswa as MaPhumla – a retired diabetic teacher and Chuma Sepotlela as Karabo who is a poet when not adorned in their mourning apparel. 

One of the cast takes to stage to welcome everyone in the auditorium sarcastically saying "Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the show". The gestures of the cast began to express human will and take one into a journey. The set is composed with extraordinary skill and ingenuity. The play is set in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town and it is based on the real life day-to-day of women survival and the humility of giving back to their community without a help from government.

My initial engagement with Van Graan’s work was almost a year ago with his hard-hitting play When Swallows Cry, which was staged at the same theatre which dealt largely on the migration and refugee as a subject. In Another One’s Bread, Mike Van Graan’s comments on human rationality – almost invariably the rationality of the township hustlers and survivors – are never malicious. What strikes us at once is the sympathetic gusto, the uninhabited enjoyment with which he depicts each plan of survival by these great women. Their tales may be thought-provoking but they are delivered with a good humour and an occasional outburst of unrestrained laughter. They are professional mourners, ever brainstorming better ways of improving this noble profession.

A great admirer of the South African literature is reminded by the towering character called Toloki in Zakes Mda’s Ways Of Dying work of fiction. Toloki is a "professional mourner" in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa. Day after day he attends funerals in the townships, dressed with dignity in a threadbare suit who go to funerals to comfort the grieving families of the victims of the city's crime, racial hatred, and crippling poverty.

They are hired to cry at the funerals or show up at the funeral in case no one shows up. After mourning and whipping and comforting the bereaved, they then pocket wages home where they will split certain percentage into a feeding scheme for children – depending on how big the funeral was, they will round up this but taking the leftover food home.  

Another Ones Bread is a rare for great work of art to be based on an acute sense of the challenges and humours of everyday life, yet no one could deny that the directorship of Pamela Nomvete through the acuteness of talented four black women and their great presence on stage is beyond doubt the most innovative way of reflecting on our social ills. The unemployment rate in South Africa is 27.7% in the first quarter of 2017 from 26.5% in the previous period. With this being the highest jobless rate since the first quarter of 2004 as unemployment rose faster that employment and more people joined the labour force, Mike Van Graan brings us to this painful reality with the portrayal of this challenge though the little Brenda who just came back from prison for shoplifting the sanitary pads for girls in her community who could otherwise not afford them. 

Conversations among these women are captured with gusto. When they are not assessing the funeral or burial invitations, they are rehearsing for the next funeral. When they sing, one cannot help but see a great talent that when nurtured, will grace our local screens in a form of comedy or sitcom series. They talk through the letters of invitations with a great humour. There are invites that they dismiss, say for instance funerals of children. “We don’t do children’s funerals” they remarked in unison.

There are political undercurrents in this play as it deals with range of socio-political and economic issues. Say, for an instance Andiswa as an estate agent she works to ensure that black people are able to purchase low cost houses not far from where they work. 

MaPhumla despite suffering from diabetes, she still has unwavering patriotism towards the education of Brenda, helping her to improve her reading skills. Brenda on the other hand comes to MaPhumla’s rescue when her diabetes reaches high levels. This play is more of a tragic comedy than simply a comedy. It is not all laughs and guffaws. 

Khehla Chepape Makgato is a Johannesburg-based independent artist and arts writer, regularly contributing articles to ART AFRICA and The Journalist. He works at Royal Art House studio at the Constitution Hill in Braamfontein and is the founder of Samanthole Creative Projects & Workshop, a community-based art organisation focusing on arts and literacy youth programmes. Chepape is the ImpACT Award WINNER for Visual Arts 2016 from the Arts and Culture Trust of South Africa and The Mapungubwe Visual Artist of The Year 2016. He is the recipient of Zygote Press International Artist Residency 2018 in Cleveland, USA.