Abstract
Going as far as to discuss political violence and funerals alongside poetry and
theatre, this article adopts an inclusive approach to culture and explores the
changing nature of performance in 1980s South Africa. Focusing initially on
trade unions and worker culture, before widening the discussion, it is shown that
those marginalised by apartheid society were able to work at the boundaries of
established genres to perform messages of mobilisation that simultaneously
created temporarily liberated areas inscribed with new forms of authority and
agency. The article considers poetry by Alfred Qabula and Mzwakhe Mbuli; new
developments in theatre; and fundamentally political events and argues that each,
by blurring the distinction between performer and audience, similarly acted as
popular tools of communication. They replaced the literary imaginary of previous
decades and created new public space.