Patience Bambalele

Patience Bambalele

Egoli - City of Gold, a play written by the late Matsemela Manaka, is making its return to the Windybrow Theatre in Hillbrow.

Now directed by Itumeleng Motsikoe, the show opens for a brief season - from June 5 until June 22.

Egoli is one of the oldest plays, and is a story about how people strive to achieve material comfort and security at great personal cost. Sometimes this cost is realised long after people have lost what was ultimately important.

Featuring a top-flight cast of Kholofelo Khola (as Hamilton) and Phillip Thindisa (as John), the show will bring back old memories.

The two actors portray fictional characters who initially met when they were both detained in separate incidents as young activists. The play tells of a prison farm where men are made to work like slaves.

Born in 1956, Matsemela Manaka was one of the best playwrights and has written many productions. He began his career as a playwright in the mid-1970s. He was responsive to the ideas of black consciousness and took a leading role in the Soweto uprising of 1976.

Manaka also participated in many of the cultural developments of the time. In his works, he set out to reconstruct what apartheid had disobeyed, if not destroyed.

He sought to revitalise African tradition in the contemporary urban context and to rediscover South Africans' roots in the culture and history of Africa.

Manaka was born in Alexandra. Some of his popular plays include Beyond the Echoes of Soweto and Pula.