Remembering black people’s suffering and presence in the Anglo-Boer War with The Parrot Woman - A new version of Charles J Fourie’s critically acclaimed play The Parrot Woman is on at Joburg’s Market Theatre.
, on at the Market Theatre, Venter the soldier tells the captive woman he’s guarding to stop speaking in her native tongue, in an irritating refrain. This repeated irritation in the play can be likened to the constant attempts and successes at erasing and dehumanising black lives throughout history.
“This play was written from fear and danger. I was brought up in an Afrikaans home. So, it comes from that Afrikaans/boere world that I was busy disenfranchising or disorienting.” In his article, “To fully reconcile The Boer War is to fully understand the ‘Black’ Concentration CampsPeter Dickens notes, importantly, that it was not only black men who supported the Boers – black women supported Boer women in providing food to the commandos on the frontlines. He writes that when the concentration camp system started, set up by the British, black women and their children were also gathered up and often lived in the tents with the Boer families.
In addition, when commissions of enquiry, such as The Fawcett Commission, were established to investigate the problems and death rates in the concentration camps, the plight of black people in the camps was ignored. “As an actor, I deal with things spiritually now and I combine that with my training. I’m rekindling the soul that lives in many and that has lived for so many years. This is the story of a woman who is saying, ‘I was there, I saw what was happening and I’m retelling it.’
For Lotter, the play is about exploring the human condition. Both actors bring something personal to the stage – with Ntshegang being a Motswana, like Itatoleng, and Lotter having Afrikaans and English lineage, like Venter.
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