There is intimacy,
empathy and unity in this gathering - you really do believe each commiseration,
each barb, snort and knowing nod. (Review by Shannon Kenny)
The
Cry of Winnie Mandela - of sacrifice, grief and triumph of the spirit
The Cry of Winnie Mandela is another dramatic adaptation of a literary work. This time, Alex Burger dramatises Njabulo Ndbele’s novel. The cleverly-titled story places front and centre the cry of generations of South African women whose stories have never been heard. The iconic Winnie is the lightning rod for their accounts of waiting and all its attendants: pain, loss, abandonment, desire, betrayal, isolation, hope, resilience, despair - and triumph over adversity. Maya Angelou’s And still, we rise lingers in the mind throughout.
Directed by MoMo Matsunyane, Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo, is in the title role, alongside the fabulous quartet of ladies in waiting who are connected by Winnie’s story. Mannete (Rami Chuene), Delisiwe (Ayanda Sibisi), Marara (Siyasanga Papu) and Mamello (Pulane Rampoana) - take it in turn to share and reflect on their own complex experiences of waiting. Les Nkosi is in the role of our author who plucks these characters from his imagination, animates them - and leaves them to tell their stories.
The play opens on a warmly lit set - a writer’s study with desk - with some audience seated at stage left and right. Njabulo Ndbele is seated at his desk.
An SABC newsreel is played, featuring Murphy Morobe denouncing Winnie as complicit in Stompie Seipei’s murder. If anyone had ever forgotten this aspect of our painful past, it was thrown back into full view - and left with us to cook.
Njabulo Ndbele then casts his thoughts to Winnie and asks (us) to consider her as Penelope, queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus who waits faithfully for 20 years for her husband’s return.
The characters conjured by Ndebele’s imagination enter stage and over the tea-time ritual of sharing stories, open up about their experiences as women, waiting for men for and with whom they have sacrificed much. Sometimes more. While the stories recounted by our characters are at times searing and heart-wrenching, it is the power of the women’s resilience and their gallows humour that provides the levity that simultaneously creates the space for serious reckoning of the heart and mind.
Each performance is masterful, each character lovingly teased out by the actors: Mannete’s deep longing and determination; Marara’s sass and resignation; Delisiwe’s heartbreak; Mamello’s self-blame and desperation.
There is intimacy, empathy and unity in this gathering - you really do believe each commiseration, each barb, snort and knowing nod.
The musical moments - with the most wondrous voices sometimes in unison, sometimes in close harmony - are the breath of the scenes, at times dirge, at times protest, at times comic relief.
Writers, Ndebele and Burger do not shy away from the complexity of Winnie’s flawed humanness - though Ndebele is adamant she is heroic, precisely because of this. MoMo Matsunyane - delicately and sometimes with a sledgehammer - drives home this complexity in a manner that compels us to wrestle with it.
In the second half, Winnie joins our quartet of raconteurs to recount her own story - of marriage, motherhood, activism, banishment, resilience. Mdoda-Nxumalo delivers a full-throttle portrayal of a woman at once acclaimed for her heroism and villified for decisions political and personal; a woman both strong and vulnerable. Winnie is given space to recount her story of detention, the emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the brutal Swanepoel, her jailer and interrogator - and her survivor’s guilt upon hearing of others’ torture even more horrific than what she endured.
The play concludes in part with footage of Caroline Sono’s testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And as our characters are committed to memory, we, the audience, are left to ponder and wrestle further with the what Winnie describes as “the three pillars of a South African woman’s life: Departure, Waiting, Return.” Kudos, MoMo Matsunyane and kudos to the ladies-in-waiting, the Mannetes, Mararas, Delisiwes and Mamellos of South Africa, so wonderfully brought to life by an excellent cast of actors. – Shannon Kenny
The Cry of Winnie
Mandela was presented by the Playhouse Company and appeared as part of
Women’s Month on August 8 and 9, 2025, in the Drama Theatre.
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