The Orange Earth

By Adam Small

This drama, a lyrical and dreamy but at the same time searingly painful piece about reminiscence and injustice, was written in 1978, in the heyday of apartheid and two years after the Soweto uprising. It has been staged several times, but this is the first time it has been published. It is essentially a piece of resistance theatre, but its artistic strength and lasting relevance lie in the way it demonstrates how painfully intimate resistance and loyalty are entangled.

The Orange Earth is regarded as Small’s most personal literary work; he himself described it as a fictionalised autobiography. The title of the text is in fact the name of the hamlet near Robertson where Small grew up. The drama tells the story of a coloured man who plants a bomb in a supermarket and is then prosecuted and jailed for this deed of terror. During the trial and in his prison cell he has an ongoing conversation through flashbacks with the past, specifically the key moments that determined his identity and his resistance. The climax of the drama is a conversation – a confrontation – in the prison cell in which the detainee, his wife and his father, as well as the Afrikaans warden, participate. This climax revolves around the perception that the captive and warden are separated but also joined by that which determines their respective identities. What is at stake is our language, our church, our land. It is therefore very significant that this drama, originally written in English, is now being published in Afrikaans. The writer’s protest against his subjugation by his language compatriots hereby becomes confirmation of a fundamental loyalty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Sep 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780624065401

Adam Small

Adam Small is op 21 Desember 1936 op Wellington gebore. In 1953 matrikuleer hy aan die St Columba-skool van die Christian Brothers in Athlone op die Kaapse Vlakte. Daarna studeer hy aan die Universiteit van Kaapstad vir ’n graad in Tale en Filosofie en voltooi in 1963 ’n MA cum laude oor die filosofie van Nicolai Hartmann en Friedrich Nietzsche. In hierdie tyd studeer hy ook aan die Universiteite van Londen en Oxford. In 1959 word Adam dosent in filosofie aan die Universiteit van Fort Hare, en in 1960 word hy een van die akademiese grondleggers van die Universiteit van Wes-Kaapland (UWK) toe hy as die eerste hoof van die Departement Filosofie aangestel word. Hy raak in die vroeë sewentigs betrokke by die Swartbewussynsbeweging. In 1973 bedank hy onder druk by die UWK. Hy woon daarna in Johannesburg, waar hy die hoof is van die Universiteit van die Witwatersrand se studentegemeenskapsdienste. In 1977 vestig hy hom weer in die Kaap en is tot 1983 werksaam as direkteur van die Wes-Kaaplandse Stigting vir Gemeenskapswerk. Hy keer in 1984 terug na die UWK as hoof van die Departement Maatskaplike Werk. Einde 1997 tree hy uit diens. Adam Small het in 1957 met Verse van die liefde gedebuteer. Van sy ander bekende digbundels sluit in Kitaar my kruis (1961) en Sê Sjibbolet (1963). Sy bekendste toneelstuk is Kanna hy kô hystoe (1965).

Book preview

ADAM SMALL

The Orange Earth

TAFELBERG

Dedicated with love

to my long-deceased parents

and to my children

John and Leon, Zaidee and Peter

First performed on stage at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town, in 1978.

Directed by Jo Dunstan, with Bill Curry as Johnny Adams.

Also broadcast as a full-length radio drama by the BBC in 1984.

The Orange Earth is an on- and ongoing, relentlessly angry denouncement of the evil political system of Apartheid with its heyday in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties of the previous century – what the playwright in his native Afrikaans calls the aan- en aanhoudende verbete, woedende aansegging van ’n bose politieke stelsel.

Set in those hard and bitter days of coloured and black people’s resistance to Apartheid, the drama’s Afrikaans version is somewhat tighter than the full length BBC text. Whether in English or Afrikaans, Small is in any case sceptical of polygraphy, and believes that a competent director of either The Orange Earth or Goree will compare the two scripts, no doubt with a beautiful and professionally mature outcome.

The play opens with the terrifying sound of the explosion of a powerful home-made bomb. With the stage and house lights still off, all the audience experiences for a while are the unsettling voices, in the dark, of witnesses to the explosion. The on-stage action begins only when Johnny Adams appears on the stand and light floods on him.

MAIN CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY

• Johnny Adams

• John (Jan) Adams, (Johnny’s father)

• Babie¹ Adams (Johnny’s wife)

• Bokkie Visagie (Prison Warder)

1 Preferably pronounced Baby.

(PANIC AND CONFUSION ON A SOUTH AFRICAN STREET)

PRESS REPORTER: O my God! Can you . . . Could you tell . . . what happened? (PAUSE) Could you . . . tell what happened here?

WOMAN: Standing . . . over there . . . I was . . . standing over there . . .

PRESS REPORTER: Over there?

WOMAN: Then . . . it happened . . . It sounded like . . . Oh my God . . . I screamed, I just screamed . . . like . . . it sounded, I don’t know how . . . like . . . (SHE SCREAMS)

WOMAN: O my God . . .

MOTHER: Deirdre! Deirdre!

WOMAN: I just . . . screamed . . .

LITTLE GIRL: (FILLED WITH PAIN AND FRIGHT) Mummy! Mummy-y-y . . .

(MANY VOICES OVERLAPPING. THEN THE VOICE OF THE SHOPPING CENTRE’S SECURITY OFFICER, WITH LOUDHAILER, SPEAKING OVER CHAOS)

SECURITY OFFICER: Multimarket Security here . . . Security Section speaking . . . Ladies and gentlemen, please … please would you keep calm, and clear the building now, immediately, in an orderly way, please! Multimarket Security Section requests you to leave immediately . . . in an orderly fashion, please . . . I repeat …

(VOICE DROWNED BY A WOMAN’S SOBBING. THEN)

VOICE: (OF A PASSERBY) Hey, what’s happened here?

VOICE: Jesus God! What the . . .

VOICE: The police . . . please, please, someone call the police . . .

VOICE: They’re coming . . .

VOICE: . . . and ambulance . . .

VOICE: Yes.

VOICE: Okay.

VOICE: Oh dear God! Look! Look! Oh no, no . . .

(THEN SIRENS OF MEDICAL AND POLICE VEHICLES. TYRES SCREECH TO A HALT, CAR DOORS SLAM)

POLICEMAN: Almal, staan trug! Stand back now, everybody! Back! Please, back! . . . (THEN SPEAKING TO HIMSELF) Urban bloody terrorism!

(A WOMAN, SERIOUSLY INJURED, SOBS)

POLICEMAN: Ek sal hier kyk, Sakkie! Praat jy met die mense. On the loudspeaker, Sakkie! Just get all these people out of here!

SAKKIE: (TALKS ON AS HIS COLLEAGUE STARTS TO ADDRESS THE CROWD. AS IF SPEAKING TO HIMSELF) Bloody terrorists! Where did it explode? This is the police. Everybody, please leave this building now. In the interests of your own safety. Everybody please leave the building now!

POLICEMAN: Donnerse terroriste!

REPORTER: Sergeant, would you say this was an act . . . of urban violence?

POLICEMAN: What?!

REPORTER: I mean, was this an act of terrorism?

POLICEMAN: Write what you want to write, my friend! Just get out of the way, now! Please, we haven’t got time to waste now, there’s work to do here! (THEN TO ANOTHER POLICEMAN) Hennie! Come give me a hand here!!

POLICEMAN 2: Ek’s nou daarso.

(WOMAN SOBBING)

SPECTATOR: (FROM CROWD) But Sergeant . . . there’s a woman . . .

MAN: And a little girl . . .

POLICEMAN: Yes, we know, man . . . It’s not the first time we see a … something like this . . .

AMBULANCEMAN: Can we turn her? We have to . . .

POLICEMAN: That’s your job, man!

REPORTER: (TO EYEWITNESS) And then, madam, what happened next?

SPECTATOR: Please, the child can’t just lie there.

WOMAN: Then I saw her go . . . up . . . up . . . into the air . . . the air . . . There right in front of . . . my eyes . . .

REPORTER: How old . . .?

WOMAN: Six, seven years . . . A small child . . . girl, little . . . still holding her mother’s hand . . . Oh no . . . no . . .

REPORTER: You heard the blast?

WOMAN: (BETWEEN SOBS) I heard . . . saw . . . the explosion . . . It was . . .

REPORTER: Yes . . .

WOMAN: . . . was . . .

REPORTER: It was . . .

WOMAN: Horrible . . . She landed . . . the little body . . . there, I