Our History at times defines us, it shapes who we are or who we will be. Ngqawuse seeks to question the decisions we have been led to believe we made in the past, and explores how those decisions affect us in the present. Borrowing aesthetics from African ritual, music, songs and dance, it is a story much influenced by Nongqawuse’s story and the cattle killing of 1856/7. It tells the story of love and sacrifice, and how the above can lead to doom and misery. In return, the gains are often vague and hard to explain. Today the country we live in bleeds from inside. The wounds from which the blood flows can’t heal because the treatment was rushed. We are left with questions. Where do we go from here? Do we need to go anywhere? Must we let bygones be bygones?

Thando’s production Nongqawuse [The Death of a Nation] will be staged in the Rhodes Box Theatre between 27 and 29 June.