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Having previously appeared as a swan (Swan Song) and the zebra clown Angela Solie (RAW Performance Dinner Series) during the 2022 Festwochen, South African performer Buhle Ngaba is now returning to Vienna in the role of the largest diamond ever found. The diamondess Phatsima (the Setswana word for ‘sparkling’) has spent the last century in royal captivity at Buckingham Palace. Born in a mine near Pretoria in 1905, dug out, divided and polished, she was sold to the British monarchy in 1907 and became one of the crown jewels. Now the diamondess is becoming an Instagram star and lets all her bevels shine as she tells the complex story of her return to South Africa. Between press conference and manicure salon, the exhibited treasure escapes her display cabinet and asks: where is home at all? By playfully addressing issues of restitution and the sharp edges of the past, Ngaba looks at the present and designs a future with utopian sparkle.
DIAMOND – THE HARDEST, THE SPARKLIEST, THE MOST DESIREABLE; THE CATALYST FOR THE COLONISATION OF SOUTH AFRICA, AT THE ROOT OF APARTHEID, THE VERY REASON FOR OUR MULTI-CULTURAL SOCIETY (…), AND THE MOTHER MINERAL, WHICH LAUNCHED T HE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY, WHICH TO THIS DAY IS HIGHLY PROBLEMATIC AND A SOURCE OF A GREAT AMOUNT OF SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND PHYSICAL SUFFERING.
17 / 18 June, 7 pm, 19 June, 6 and 8.30 pm, 20 June, 8.30 pm
Theater Nestroyhof Hamakom
English and Setswana
German surtitles
approx. 65 mins.
Q&A
18 June, following the performance
Please note
Age recommendation 13+
Concept, Text, Performance Buhle Ngaba Direction, Dramaturgy, Scenography, Sound design Ilana Cilliers With Buhle Ngaba and the voices of Tyson Ngubeni, Sandi Dlangalala, Tshallo Chokwe, Zain Gomba, Mukundi Mudau, Inathi Zimase, Jackson Stage management Amber Fox-Martin Choreography Shaun Oelf Clown provocateurs Klara Van Wyk, Kate Pinchuck Translation surtitles, surtitles Teresa Linzner
Production Maru Factory In cooperation with Nicolette Moses Coproduction Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien Supported by The Market Theatre Laboratory, The Barney Simon Trust executed by the team of the Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wiener Festwochen
Premiere June 2024, Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien
With special thanks to Rehad Desai, Eli Weinberg, Tsele Nthane, Marco Du Plooy, Jandré Van Heerden, Shaun Oelf, Zain Gomba, Mukundi Mudau, Inathi Zimase, Klara Van Wyk, Kate Pinchuck, Uwc Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, Uwc Centre For Humanities And Research, Babalwe Solwandle, Mariki Victor, Wesley Francis, Matsepang, Sandi Dlangalala
GLOSSARY
Black Diamond: a term coined by UCT Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing to refer to the fast growing middle class in South Africa. In South Africa, the term has become a pejorative and paternalistic term with bitter and negative connotations
Marikana massacre: the Marikana massacre was the killing of thirty-four miners by the South African Police Service on 16 August 2012 during a six-week wildcat strike at the Lonmin Platinum Mine at Marikana near Rustenburg in South Africa’s North West province.
The Big Hole: a large, defunct, open-pit diamond mine located in present-day Kimberley, South Africa. Considered to be the largest hand-excavated hole in the world and one of the deepest The Big Hole (which was initially known as the Kimberley Mine) played an important role in South Africa’s diamond boom of the late 1860s and ’70s.
“Born Frees”: the first generation of South Africans that have lived all or most of their lives in a democratic country
Egoli: The city of Johannesburg is also known by its isiZulu name, “eGoli”, which means “the place of gold”.
Toyi-toyi: a Southern African dance used in political protests in South Africa
Cubana: a nightclub
AUTHORS NOTE
By Buhle Ngaba
How do we open up discussions about our past that are dialectical and multi-faceted? How does one use performance as a vehicle to shed light on the multilayered complexity of the present that has been shaped by our shared and painful history of colonialism, imperialism and Apartheid? Could restitution be an opportunity towards healing these scars of history? A step towards repairing our identity and empowering future generations? These are some of the key questions that led me to ask: What would it mean to return the Cullinan diamond to its original home, South Africa? For her to return as a piece of our tangible heritage; an interactive member of society who rebels against Western trends that dictate the logistics of returning artifacts to their countries of origin. Who would she be as a character, a spirit, a point of view? I was excited by the multiple perspectives she would hold, billions of years of observing the earth and humanities unfolding.
The Cullinan diamond – who later became Phatsima – provided a wild and probing lens that would allow me to actively delve into the archive and to investigate human histories with naivety and bursts of unexpected wisdom. The play and critical distance Phatsima inspired, led me to use principles of clowning in engagements in public spaces to create video content as well as a digital platform @southafricasdiamond to open up discussions with global audiences about everything from colonisation to current events.
Researching Phatsima’s history opened up worlds that contained the struggle for power, restitution and its impacts on a fragile democracy and the reverberating and tragic impacts of colonialism that can be traced through South Africa’s mineral history. Similar to the multiple
facets of the diamond, the diverse histories colliding into a present moment, invites us to hear the echoes of mineworkers, to reflect on the lives of the individuals sent down into the depths of the earth in harrowing conditions to find riches, yet barely surviving themselves. Most recently this has culminated in the bloodshed and tragedy of Marikana massacre in 2012, where police gunned down 34 mineworkers after an intense week-long protest in which the miners were demanding a wage increase at the Lonmin Platinum Mine in a wildcat strike.
In this production Phatsima, the clown character walks the tightrope between fiction and reality, past and present, reality and fake news with the hopes of shining a hall of mirrors to an audience. Extending an invitation to look and to laugh with the hopes that the laughter may be followed by a moment of reflection, an acknowledgement of the pain felt. Through her reclaiming herself and her story, we may achieve a sense of levity and hope for the future.
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
By Ilana Cilliers
When Queen Elizabeth II passed, I heard a rumour that she had been buried wearing diamonds. “Not the ones in the crown jewels! Not our diamonds!” was my first thought. And my second thought was, “I’m white. They are not mine.” We would joke that ‘our’ jewels, should be returned, imagine “how many potholes could be fixed with the money from just one of those diamonds”, and laugh. As we do in South Africa about things that we can’t afford to cry about. In all seriousness, the return of South Africa’s minerals could have a major social and economic impact.
As a European-South African, whose first ancestors came to Africa 300 – 400 years ago, colonialism, as part of the very fabric of my identity, is never far from mind. And it’s not a fun thought. Being a white South African, means living with the consequences of colonialism on a daily basis, not as victim, but as descendant of the perpetrator, which can so easily lead to the paralysis of ‘white guilt’ – something I have certainly suffered from at varying intensities at different times in my life. Nevertheless, South Africa is my home and I can’t/don’t want to be extricated from it, innocent or guilty, the same way that Africa can never be ‘uncolonised’, as much as so many are working towards decolonising it. It turned out that the Queen was, in fact, only buried with her wedding band and a pair of pearl earrings, but about six months later a petition existed to return specifically the Cullinan diamonds (the original diamond was bruted into several different diamonds) – those in the crown jewels – back to South Africa. The argument for why this could never happen is that “the history is too complicated” – what is done cannot be undone. Buhle Ngaba, like many Africans, feels differently.
When Ngaba approached me with the mad idea to help her create a theatrical production centering on a clown personification of the Cullinan
Diamond returning to South Africa, I wasn’t sure how it would work, which is always a great reason to do something. I was drawn to how many subjects were encompassed in this character’s mere existence – colonialism, mineral history and ‘the rape of Africa’; exoticism, negrophilia and ‘human zoos’; the South African mining sector and the lives of miners; Apartheid, exile, South Africa’s democracy and current politics; the black ruling class and ‘black diamond’; social media, the court of public opinion and the rise and fall of celebrity. By placing an innocent, a clown, in the middle of it all one could examine these heavy topics through laughter. As we do in South Africa about things that we can’t afford to cry about.
As Ngaba was writing it became clear, however, that we could not remain in laughter. Not when our subject is diamond. Diamond – the hardest, the sparkliest, the most desireable; the catalyst for the colonisation of South Africa (along with gold, of course), at the root of Apartheid, the very reason for our multi-cultural society (and my own existence), and the mother mineral, which launched the South African mining industry, which to this day is highly problematic and a source of a great amount of social, economic and physical suffering.
The process of putting Phatsima Thee Diamond and Ngaba’s extraordinary talents on display has been a rollercoaster of irreverent laughs and both sympathetic and personal pain. Phatsima is, after all, both mineral and human and so our hope is that an audience can laugh at her delusion, and with her witticism; but also identify and empathize with her, imperfect (unlike the diamond she represents), alone in her display case, dealing with the violence that was done to her, mourning the violence she incites and the people that have lost their lives and continue to suffer in the name of what she represents.
Buhle Ngaba is a multi-award winning South African actor, writer and theatre activist.She studied Acting and Contemporary performance at Rhodes University and Processes of Performance at the University of Leeds in the UK. She was a member of Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Company and performed several productions at Makhanda National Arts Festival, and across South Africa. In 2016, Buhle was a recipient of the prestigious Brett Goldin Bursary, with the opportunity to expand her knowledge and acting ability of Shakespeare at The Royal Shakespeare Company.As director of the non profit-organisation KaMatla and author of The Girl Without A Sound, Buhle seeks to promote diversity in children’s literature and aid the development of the arts in underprivileged communities. Another initiative she supports is The New Girl Code, which is aimed at girls and young women, providing visible role models to highlight the po- tential of working in tech. In 2016, Buhle Ngaba was acknowledged with a Gauteng Youth Premiers award for excellence. She also won two South African Kanna Theatre Awards including best upcoming artist for her first play, Swan Song, part of the programme of the Wiener Festwochen 2022. PUBLICATION DETAILS Owner, Editor and Publisher Wiener Festwochen GesmbH, Lehárgasse 11/1/6, 1060 Wien P + 43 1 589 22 0, festwochen@festwochen.at | www.festwochen.at General Management Milo Rau, Artemis Vakianis Artistic Direction (responsible for content) Milo Rau (Artistic Director) Text credits Original contribution by Buhle Ngaba and Ilana Cilliers, 2024 Picture credit Cover © Tsele Nthane Produced by Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH (Bad Vöslau)
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