Is Anti-Apartheid ‘Sarafina!’ Still Relevant? : ‘SARAFINA!’: Is Its Message Still Relevant? : Stage: Despite recent changes in South Africa, the musical, set in 1976, still reflects the harsh realities there, say its author and cast.

When South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema conceived “Sarafina!” in 1984, Nelson Mandela, new president of the anti-apartheid African National Congress, was serving a life prison sentence. By the time “Sarafina!” opened July 18 at the James A. Doolittle Theater in Hollywood, Mandela had been out of prison for more than a year.

And, just a month before opening night, South African President Frederik W. de Klerk made headlines by repealing hundreds of apartheid laws, including the Population Registration Act, ending 43 years of laws requiring all South Africans to register by race--and to accept a different definition of freedom depending on the classification. In response to those actions, the United States lifted its 5-year-old sanction and ban on imports from South Africa.

While the laws have changed, however, Ngema and members of the “Sarafina!” cast say the situation for blacks in South Africa has not. They assert that the harsh realities depicted onstage in “Sarafina!” still show an accurate picture of life in the black townships of South Africa.

Ngema sees more bloody days ahead. “It will finally be OK,” said Ngema the day “Sarafina!” opened at the Doolittle. “But there is going to be a lot of pain. The spell of violence that has kept that country--you are going to see more of that when (blacks) begin to vote.”

Thamsanqa Hlatywayo, a cast member, agreed with Ngema during a discussion several days later. “This show was first done when Mandela was still in prison, and (Ngema) foresaw that one day he would be free,” Hlatywayo said. “He was released, but he is not free--those are two different things.”

Hlatywayo added that the repeal of the Population Registration Act means virtually nothing without economic power for South African blacks. “It doesn’t matter if I am now permitted to sleep in a Johannesburg hotel, because I will not sleep there if I don’t have money,” he said. “We want to be able to control our country.

“It’s not a question of who wants to marry a white person, who wants to sleep in Johannesburg, who wants to live next door to a white person. That’s not the problem, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the economy of the country.”

“Sarafina!,” set in April, 1976, re-creates a student uprising in Soweto in which the children of seven junior high schools boycotted classes to protest the government’s program to establish Afrikaans as the language of instruction in South Africa.

As Hlatywayo explains it, black students considered Afrikaans, only spoken in South Africa and Namibia, to be a language of oppression. “That’s mainly what they (white South Africans) wanted us to do, not to learn English, so we would be isolated from the outside world,” Hlatywayo said.

By the end of 1976, hundreds of schoolchildren had been killed; Act I of “Sarafina!” ends with a brutal machine-gun attack on children in the schoolyard by the police. “Sarafina!” tells the story of one group of students who survived, ending their year with a triumphant school musical about the release of Nelson Mandela. In the show, the role of Mandela goes to a girl named Sarafina (portrayed by 21-year-old Leleti Khumalo), who returns triumphantly to school following a term in detainment.

“It is difficult to separate the play from reality,” Hlatywayo said. “What we are portraying is not even half of what is really happening. There is more happening that is not even in the newspapers. Talk to some of the girls who were arrested around that time in 1976--the things they went through in prison, the things the white people did to them in prison.”

The policemen who turn their guns on the students in “Sarafina!” are black. Policeman is the only job in South Africa it’s easy for a black man to get, Hlatywayo said wryly. “They show you how to shoot your own sisters and brothers,” he said. “But if you are a black policeman and shoot a white person, then you know what the law is all about.”

Dumislani Dlamini, another cast member, said the release of Mandela and the repeal of some apartheid rulings does not alter the relevance of “Sarafina!”

“In South Africa, even a child, 10 years old, has seen so many things--has heard so many things, about being in jail, about running away from the bullet, about hiding in the bush or something,” Dlamini said. “They have experienced so many things--helping to carry someone who is dead. I grew up like that, seeing those things too.”

Dlamini said his role in “Sarafina!” makes him feel like an “ambassador of South Africa.” “I feel so proud to be in the show and to be here,” he said. “We have no one who goes around and tells what’s going on in the townships. We have waited so long for Nelson Mandela to come out, and now we see him walking in the streets, I feel even more proud. But we can’t just change the show, because the message is still the same message. We have to see more changes.”

Ngema and cast members liken the new situation in South Africa to the situation in the United States today. “I look at the black man in America, and it’s a very pathetic case,” Ngema said. “The Bill of Rights was introduced, but it meant nothing to the black man, because he has no economic power.”

And sometimes he can’t even get a taxi. “I can’t talk about Los Angeles, because here I am always in my hotel room or in a car,” Ngema said. “But, for instance, New York is a very wild city, a very racist city. It’s hard for a black man to stop a cab in the street, especially if it is night and he is going uptown.”

Dlamini said watching the videotape of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles is a disturbing reminder of police activity back home. “The way they were beating that guy, it was very scary,” he said. “It was a human being; it is very scary to see somebody beaten like that. I can’t explain the feeling.”

Cast member Thandi Zulu said she is sometimes surprised and disappointed by the reception she has received on the streets and in hotels the United States. “When we first came to America, to New York, we knew we were coming to a free country, where it is free for all--freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of everything,” she said. “It would take us by surprise at first--in the country we come from, we expect those things.

“(But) I think it has made us even stronger,” she said.