The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa tried to acknowledge responsibilities and find solutions in the post-apartheid attempt to rebuild the country and re-establish trust. Pieter-Dirk Uys and John Kani both address the present situation after the “end” of segregation and racial violence. Foreign Aids and Nothing But the Truth offer two different technical stage approaches.
Their plays show how problems have not been solved, racism still exists, coated with post-apartheid hypocrisy, and education does not reach the poorest—black—strata of the population. Foreign Aids is Pieter-Dirk Uys’s one-man show; it sees the author/actor transform on stage into a myriad of characters that embody different South African types: the middle-aged, high-class liberal white woman (Evita Bezuidenhout), the old mistress of an ex-Nazi general, Nelson Mandela, P.W. Botha, and even Desmond Tutu. John Kani’s Nothing But the Truth is a more traditional play that shows the divide between those blacks who kept fighting in South Africa, and those who fought the press battle, safely living abroad.
Both plays state loudly that theatre is not just a bourgeois past-time, that it can be informative and an active part in the struggle for a better quality of life. While nostalgic revivals of Grease occupy Broadway’s stages, in some parts of the world artists still feel that theatre can be the most direct and effective means of political information and struggle, the loudest voice of protest for human rights, without losing sight of its artistic value.