Living as a white Zimbabwean in the 1990s meant a near-perfect life: your clothes were always clean and ironed, there was always tea in the silver teapot, gins and tonics were served on the verandah, and, in theory at least, black and white lived in harmony. As Mugabe’s presidency turned sour, however, this idyllic and privileged world began to crumble into anarchy. My family and I left to escape the political violence in 2002, and moved to New Zealand. My novel Ngozi draws on these experiences to tell the story of one troubled white family who struggle to stay afloat in the collapsing economy and escalating horror of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The story is told through the eyes of a young white girl, who is partly based on myself. When the farm invasions begin, the violence threatens to destroy the family’s way of life forever. They eventually leave Zimbabwe, but escaping the vengeful ghosts (‘ngozi’) of their past still seems impossible.

This dissertation for the M.A. in Creative Writing consists of a full-length play, titled Last Laugh and a mini-dissertation. The mini-dissertation explores the phenomenon of Theatre-for-Development, which differs significantly from the performance tradition of classical African drama. The study identifies ways in which Theatre-for-Development practitioners, animators or catalysts, (interchangeable names given to agents who teach target community members theatre-for-development skills) abandon the conventions of classical African drama performances, in terms of the form of plays, stage management and costumes. They find different and less formal ways to tackle the social problems which the target communities experience. The origins of Classical African drama are traced from the western tradition, from which it borrows heavily, and there is some discussion of the socio-historical conditions that prevailed during the time when African playwrights performed those plays, and the rise of nationalism in colonised African states, which in part influenced their production. This study then examines how the socio-political dynamics in the Zimbabwean post-farm-invasions era gave rise to Theatre-for-Development projects in the newly resettled farming communities that faced social development challenges. Despite the land gains peasants enjoyed, the resettled communities found themselves in places far away from schools, hospitals, shops and social service centres. That was the source of their problems. It will be shown how government sponsored Theatre-for-Development groups to mobilise the people, through theatre, to initiate home-groomed solutions to their social and economic problems during a time when the government was bankrupt and the country’s economy was shattered by the destruction of the agricultural and mining sectors, triggered by the invasions of the white commercial farms. The Ziya Community Theatre’s production of Sunrise is analysed in the light of these considerations. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / English / unrestricted