Doing Plays for a Change

These five plays by one of South Africa’s major black playwrights were written between 1979 and 1986, a period in the country’s history marked by intense repression and escalating violence. Several of Maponya’s works fell foul of the censorship system. Gangsters , for instance, was restricted by the Director of Publications and could only be performed in South Africa with the approval of the Publications Control Board. The works included in this collection - The Hungry Earth , Dirty Work , Gangsters , Umongikazi/The Nurse and Jika - are introduced by Professor Ian Steadman, former Head of the Drama Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, now Dean of the Faculty of Arts.