The Negroes Are Congregating, livre ebook

• First produced by PIECE OF MINE Arts for Black Theatre Network, Memphis, in July 2018.

Scene 4

We are transported to South Africa. It is 1993 and WINNIE MADIKIZELA-MANDELA (57) is addressing the country in her first presidential bid, running against Nelson Mandela. This is a fictional speech that reimagines a different outcome for South Africa’s future post-apartheid regarding the process in which apartheid related crimes were treated through the factual Truth and Reconciliation Commission that took place from December 1995 – 1998. Winnie is sharp, witty and a natural public speaker. The speech is broken up into three parts over the course of the play that is intended to continue right where it ended.

WINNIE

Many believe I love to fight, that I wake up and say, “Please Lord, grant me my daily bread and an extra serving of combat on the side.”  No, no, no. I have had enough beatings from this current government and media to last me ten lifetimes. But what I can say is, I am a woman who is not afraid to fight, and, if I decide to fight, I fight to win.

I come before my people to run for president of South Africa, to establish a political party that serves and protects the freedom of our people, our right to be sovereign. The direction in which my former husband has chosen to lead is his own undertaking, but I, myself, have experienced and witnessed far too much cruelty to accept a mere game of ‘Never Have I Ever.’

The leaked decision of Mr. Mandela to enact a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as one of the first orders of business, is the common grave mistake of our people. We are in a self-sabotaging habit of coddling our enemy. Rather than stand our ground to Afrikaaners who may pout and cry for the consequences they deserve, we are quick to forgive and absent-mindedly forget.

But consider how the white man has treated his own. Most Nazi war criminals swiftly committed suicide before they could be tried for their crimes, and those who were caught had been hanged or imprisoned. And here we are, with a leader who is willing to provide amnesty...AMNESTY for a simple confession. Not even a slap on the wrist.

Scene 5

We listen to an unconventional commencement speech, in which MVP rejects the label of being the ‘first Black’ attached to his accomplishment. He proudly lays claim to his African heritage rather than an assigned/loaded colour.

MVP

I am not Black

I am African

I am not dark

This be melanin

I am brown-brown

Brown stew, brown view

Bronze chin, gold win

Learned to float in the deep end

I am not a ‘POC’

Person of colour

Dash wey minority, visibly or other

That National Geographic anthropology

Don’t need a next label like the ones from the past

Nigger, Negro, Coloured

Let Black be the last

I may not know my roots, but I mos def know your design

Box me into social housing without batting an eye

From Flemo to Tanridge to Oakwood & Vaughan

Suspensions, carding, and raids before dawn

Bet. You’d never thought in a million years

Adversity. I still walk cross the stage of Queen's University

Throws graduation cap up in the air.