Jika

Jika is a one-act play by Maishe Maponya (1951-2021).

The original text

In this play two student leaders, who have escaped death in a police raid on a schools boycott meeting, take hold of their own future and risk their lives. Hiding out in a hostel, they befriend an old man who takes them to the "little villages of the Northern Transvaal". From here they return matured - and political activists. One of them challenges a priest and it becomes risky to stay in the hostel. In an attempt to skip the country, they are arrested. One-act. Cast: men.

Published in Doing Plays for a Change by Wits University Press.

Performance history in South Africa

1991: A re-worked version presented at the Funda Centre, with Vusi Kunene and Alfred Lekalakala. Staged in Soweto as part of a project to forge links between Funda Arts Centre and the University of the Witwatersrand.

2015: 969 Festival.

Sources

Advertisement in the programme of the Wits student production of See How They Run in 1991.

Andile Xaba. 2021. 'Collective memory and the construction of a historical narrative, analysis and interpretation of selected Soweto-based community plays (1984–1994)'. Unpublished PhD thesis.

Sunday World, 19 July 2015.

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