The Sunday Mail
Takudzwa Chihambakwe —
“As a mother of four daughters I am very passionate about the girl child and the youth in general. When I read the script it hit me instantaneously that I won’t be alive forever, someone has to speak out and hence I agreed to take part in the play,”
“THIS ideology of letting the authorities in the country or non-governmental organisations to be the voice against abuse of the girl child has to stop. It will kill our nation. I believe every father or mother should arise and condemn the abuse of the girl child if we are to curb this menace, this is why I wrote the play,” said writer and director of “Nyembezi”, Lewis Ndlovu, which premiered at Theatre in The Park last week.
The one-woman play, which features the peerless Sarah Mpofu, tackles issues to do with the abuse of the girl child. This topic has been heavily interrogated by most productions produced in 2016 such as “Untikoloshi”, “Lamentations @12”, and “Mama Africa” among others, proving that there is a lot that needs to be done within our society to stop child abuse.
However, what makes this production standout is the simplicity in which Ndlovu presents his case, yet managing to expose the gruesome challenges Nyembezi goes through. Raped at a tender age and consequently impregnated by her father, Nyembezi decides to start a new life in the city and heads for Harare. She leaves her child in the village, never to see him until it is too late.
Life in the city is tough at first but she finally finds her footing after changing several jobs among them, prostitution.
The aforementioned excerpt from the play is a path that has been walked by many within our society, where one has to hustle to make their life worth something after being abused and those around could not do anything to put away the offender as they feared to have nobody else providing for the family.
“Some of the scenes in the play are based on true life events. I wrote this play 10 years ago but have been fine-tuning it as the years went by and at the time carrying out extensive research on this subject of abuse,” revealed Ndlovu.
With life now moving on well for Nyembezi, she falls in love for the first time since she was raped by her father. Sadly, like is the case nowadays, people are not honest with each other about their past — Nyembezi does not tell the young man who marries her about her dark past.
Years later, the all sweet marriage becomes abusive and it is then that Nyembezi discovers that her now husband is actually her son whom she had left in the village and now she has a child with him, how about that for a twist.
“As a mother of four daughters I am very passionate about the girl child and the youth in general. When I read the script it hit me instantaneously that I won’t be alive forever, someone has to speak out and hence I agreed to take part in the play,” said Sarah Mpofu.
“I was afraid at first because this is my first-time to do a one hander but am glad that we managed to pull it off.”
On how she managed to pull off her seven different roles Mpofu said, “It takes a lot of emotion to sink into the different characters and with the expertise of the director merged with my experience in the game, we managed to find ways to bring out the best in each character I performed.”
