(Above: "In Search Of Our Humanity" image,
courtesy of JOMBA! and Val Adamson)
By Thembani Ngxelo
(JOMBA! Khuluma Dance Writing Residency Participant for 2025)
Edited by Clare
Craighead
They say art reaches places that politicians cannot — and this is true. Art knows no borders; it crosses boundaries and connects lands. As a vessel for honesty and confrontation, art removes the veil of deceit, misinformation, and ignorance that prevents us from seeing our world as it is, and what it is becoming. In times of uncertainty, we turn to theatres as sacred spaces for truth-telling and meaning-making, where artists help us distance ourselves from the lies and lead us on journeys of uncovering what is, and what is not.
In this present moment — where so many of us feel compelled to look back in order to understand how we arrived here — Durban-born choreographer Sbonakaliso Ndaba offers us her deeply moving work, In search of our Humanity. This piece takes us on a bitter-sweet journey into memory, tracing both the beauty and brutality that shape who we are.
Ndaba begins by returning us to the ancient times of the Khoi and San people, evoked through traditional dances, chants, and music. The dancers imitate animals and wield kudu horns, embodying how indigenous movement forms emerged from the land itself. A projected backdrop strengthens this imagery: Khoi-San men sit around a fire, one dancing with horns made of weapons, another sharpening his arrows. It is a moment of cultural affirmation, honouring a people too often neglected in our histories.
But this celebration is soon disrupted. With crashing waves and the sound of sails, we are transported to the violent rupture of colonisation and slavery. The dancers, tightly packed and in constant motion, become bodies on ships — commodified, dehumanised, reduced to specimens. Pain courses through the imagery, and the performers’ movements — shifting from soft to frantic, from lyrical to aggressive — embody the brutal reality of a people stripped of humanity.
From here, Ndaba charts the arrival of settlers in the Cape and the destruction of what fragments of dignity remained. The dancers, now clothed in ragged garments, embody the lives of farm workers — both African and Coloured — forced into plantations under inhumane conditions. In one searing moment, the performers give voice to these histories, recalling how the notorious dop system remunerated labour not with wages, but with alcohol, fuelling cycles of exploitation and despair.
Later, the staging shifts: dancers enter in formal suits, with a chair and table brought into focus. The atmosphere changes to one of authority, policy, governance — and with it comes the haunting question posed by dancer Lathitha Nomgca: “Who are we as a people?” This question echoes as both lament and challenge — a yearning for belonging after centuries of trauma, erasure, and dispossession.
The layers of history and memory Ndaba unearths in this piece could fill volumes of research. To witness it is to feel as if one is sitting with an elder, hearing painful truths about what was endured, and what continues to shape us. In search of our Humanity is not only a journey into the past, but also a demand that we reckon with the present — and a call to remember who we might still become.
By Thembani Ngxelo (JOMBA! Khuluma Dance Writing Residency Participant for 2025)
Edited by Clare Craighead
JOMBA! Khuluma
The JOMBA! Khuluma is a Dance Writing Residency that runs
as part of the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience. The residency has taken on many shapes and
forms since its inaugural edition under the mentorship of Adrienne Sichel in
2010, including international and local participation and inter-university
engagement including institutions such as UKZN, DUT and Wits University as well
as The University of East London in the UK.
The aim of the Khuluma is to nurture the next generation of dance
writers in South Africa.
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