The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu
There was a point during the première of Raisedon Baya’s play The Witch Hunters when there was an audible gasp from the audience. This was the moment when three members of the play’s cast, portraying three curious children, took turns to stand on each other’s shoulders as they peered at men who had seized an elderly woman accused of witchcraft.
In that moment, the audience fluttered, watching the scene unfolding in front of them with a mixture of what seemed to be awe and fear. They were not gasping at the unseen capture and “arrest” of this woman accused of being a night crawler.
Instead they were marvelling at the strength of this trio of actors, who had the strength to even break into song while their colleague hung precariously in the warm air of the Bulawayo Theatre.
For most in the audience, it was a worrying moment, as they expect the actors to collapse into a heap of flesh on stage because of some mishap. A minute later it was all over and the audience let out a collective sigh of relief. The two actors and one actress did not seem worried at all, and they did not seem to share the fear that the audience that they had come to entertain on that evening at the Bulawayo Theatre harboured.
The physical prowess of the actors on Thursday evening was perhaps one of the highlights of Raisedon Baya’s latest play, a play that more than anything would have had many questioning their long held view of witchcraft.
Baya’s wizardry with the pen has earned him respect in Zimbabwe and beyond and the multi layered play showcases why this is the case. The play shines a light on an elderly woman, Thambolenyoka, who is accused of witchcraft by a community that cannot come to terms with her prosperity amid poverty in her rural home.
The grievances against her are many. Some cite her as the cause of their poverty, questioning how the old woman, a reputed spirit medium, could prosper while they languish in poverty. Some blame her for their failure to have children. She is a bloodthirsty witch, they charge, who is able to drink the blood of children that are even yet to be born. So she is finally kidnapped by men who want to rid the village of the evil she has brought.
It is a familiar enough scene in modern Zimbabwe. It is not rare for an old woman, whose children have left the family home, to be accused of being a witch. At times it seems that the clock cannot tick fast enough on the old. When people start aging, they get despised by the community, and get gifted with supernatural powers that they perhaps did not know they possessed in their younger age. Growing old in this case is therefore a blessing and a curse. While one grows to see life in its fullness, they become despised by the very communities and children that they nurtured.
In the play, Thambolenyoka’s dilemma is captured by the curious children who squabble among themselves, as they fail to decide what the old woman actually is. One says that she is a witch whose reign of terror has brought misfortune to the village. She knows this because her father told her so. Another says that Thambolenyoka is a great seer, an asset that is the community’s spiritual compass. Without her, they would be lost. He knows this because his father told him so.
Their childish argument perhaps captures the play’s essence. A spirit medium who claims to have helped liberation fighters during the war by pinpointing where Rhodesian forces were stationed can easily be accused of witchcraft in the next by a young man who is unable to give his wife a child. When she is tied up on a baobab tree in preparation for her crucifixion, her “equipment” is brought up as evidence in what is nothing more than a kangaroo court. While her trinkets and charms might be looked at as healing by some, to others they are evidence of her evil. Clearly, the play seems to suggest, one man’s spirit medium is another man’s witch. Such is the thin line that divides the two.
While they were in top shape physically, the actors seemed to stumble over a few lines during the play, something that they might iron out with more time on stage.
Despite the few glitches, the play was a neatly interwoven tale about Christianity, African traditional religion and the desperate lengths that people will go to excuse their own shortcomings in life.
