Itsoseng is the name of a small township in South Africa and it is a place without hope. Voiced by a young man called Mawilla, this monologue charts the years since the end of apartheid, chronicling how the promise of each fresh beginning has led only to despair. For Mawilla, this despair is personal, as circumstances force Dolly, the girl he has loved since primary school, into prostitution and an early grave. On the day of her funeral, Mawilla waves his fist at the sky and nothing happens. "I wonder whether those up there know how we live down there," he rails.
Written and performed by the astonishing young South African actor Omphile Molusi, Itsoseng is a cry from the heart, depicting a post-apartheid South Africa that gives the lie to the image of a happy rainbow nation. The brutal message of this show is that, for the people of Itsoseng, life is no better than it was in the early 1990s, as -politicians' promises of a better future for the forgotten townships go unfulfilled. An entire generation has succumbed to despair. As Mawilla makes clear, the people themselves have played a part in this, looting and -torching the local shopping centre that was the town's economic foundation, but he is also living proof that political inertia breeds personal inertia.
Perhaps Mawilla tells us something that we already know, but by -reminding us that the end of apartheid has not meant the end of despair for many black South Africans, he stops us turning a blind eye. In the 1980s, South African plays helped to raise awareness of the horrors of the apartheid regime. This one reminds us that the pain is not over yet.
