An electrifying one-woman play inspired by the true story of a woman who served as a political assassin during South Africa’s transition to democracy. As the protagonist confronts her past, she becomes a powerful symbol of defiance and compassion in a story of resistance and survival in a conflict-torn country.

Isidlamlilo/ The Fire Eater is an electrifying one-woman play inspired by the true story of a woman who served as a political assassin in the build-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections. Zenzile Maseko, the protagonist, is a 60-year-old Zulu grandmother living in a women’s hostel in Durban. Falsely declared dead by the Department of Home Affairs, she finds herself cast into a Kafkaesque nightmare that forces her to confront her past.

Flown in on the wings of the Impundulu (the lightning bird), Zenzile’s story weaves a magical and terrifying tapestry. She draws on myth, religious symbolism and traditional beliefs as she shares the realities – at times brutal, at times forgiving – of survival in South Africa. Her story touches on what it means to live through political violence, the transition to democracy, the brutality of inequality, health epidemics like HIV/AIDS, patriarchy, and the apathetic bureaucracy of government departments.

Ultimately, Isidlamlilo / The Fire Eater offers a critical and unflinching look at the eddying cycles of violence and revenge that play out across generations. Yet it is most of all a story about regeneration and redemption that speaks to both the country’s haunted past and its present-day complexities.

Isidlamlilo / The Fire Eater will appeal to teachers, high school learners, and tertiary students in theatre, drama and English studies.

Ukufa kukaShaka is a historical drama by Elliot Zondi,first published in 1960 in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press. Its plot is based on the events surrounding the assassination of Shaka, the mighty Zulu king, by his two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, aided and abetted by his paternal aunt, Mkabayi, in 1828. The play explores the classic theme of the tragic hero’s fatal flaws: hubris and overconfidence. Shaka’s ruthless ambition led him to overstep human boundaries, kill with impunity, bar his warriors from having families and force them into endless wars. His blind spot seems to have been to put the survival and expansion of the Zulu kingdom first and the welfare of his subjects second. Against this backdrop Mkabayi, whose ambitions for a remarkable Zulu nation were more tempered, played a decisive role in his downfall. Zondi explores arguments both in favour of and against Shaka’s assassination in a way that allows the reader to sympathise with his greater vision and his thwarted plan to fight impending colonialism. His dramatisation of the conflict between Shaka and Mkabayi highlights questions of leadership and nation-building that continue to be relevant today.