SHE WAS SO many different things to so many people: a wife, a mother, a hero, a witch, an icon, an enemy, but what was she to herself? This was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela, a name that still evokes strong emotion and bias, several years after her death. Njabulo S Ndebele’s shattering 2003 novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela comes to articulate life under the hands of director Momo Matsunyane at the Barney Simon Theatre. Having already enjoyed full houses in Johannesburg and Cape Town, its current season has been extended until 30 March 2025.

This important tale skirts between abstraction and harsh political mysteries. It’s about the women, since the time of classical Greek narrative, who have patiently awaited their absent men for hundreds of years and sometimes forever, learning new things about themselves in the process. And it is also about men who go out into the world to create lives for themselves, make love and war, and render political change, knowing – or maybe forgetting – about the domesticity born of innocent love, that waits for them in a rural place.

Like the novel, the work is phrased from within the writing process of Ndebele himself (played by Les Nkosi), in a beautiful domestic interior replete with stained glass windows and an environment conducive to writing. The audio-visual aspect to the work is handled with an astute hand and an intelligent understanding of the dangers of AV becoming either laboured in their illustrative role or obscure and abstract detractions from the work itself. Here, the AV speaks to the work and its performance with guttural simplicity and a focus that will wrench your heart.

There is a use of strobe lights in this work, but the warnings posted by the theatre feel a little heavy-handed. Under the direction of Wilhelm Disbergen, the strobes are used with wisdom and the kind of brevity that touches the nerve centre of the story line, but not that of the internal workings of your brain.

And as part of the writing process are the characters, Mannete (Rami Chiene), Delisiwe (Ayanda Sibisi), Mamello (Pulane Rampoana) and Marara (Siyasanga Papu). Each with her own tale to tell, these women are, like Sdudla, Mambhele and Mampopo, the characters in You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock, South Africa’s everywoman. They are the ones who birth, bleed for and oversee the nation. Without their men, they are alone. They are like the women in for colored girls who have considered suicide//when the rainbow is enuf, who tell their story of damage in a way that cocks a snoot at containment, while it still succeeds in remaining decent in polite society. It’s about the levels of sadness and brokenness that you can keep in your tight fist, while drinking a cup of tea with the gals. The stories are tough and bitter, funny and dark, made theatrical with choreography that reminds you this is a performance.

And then there’s Winnie (Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo). A dervish of a performer with voice and heart, she and her character embrace the work with an energy that pays fitting and raw tribute to the eponymous historical personality around which it is crafted. It’s a tale of being Winnie in the abstract sense – a wife to a man of very high profile, an elderly woman who looks back on her complicated life in the world, a prisoner subject to humiliating abuse at the hands of the law.

It’s a work which sees Momo Matsunyane come of age in her sophisticated understanding of what makes a work sing and its audiences weep. Balancing between history and concept, domesticity and the difficult act of portraying a life in words, The Cry of Winnie Mandela should be mandatory viewing, across the board.

The Cry of Winnie Mandela was written in 2003 by Njabulo S. Ndebele and adapted for stage by Alex Burger. Directed by Momo Matsunyane and stage managed by Asiphe Lili, it is performed by Rami Chiene, Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo, Les Nkosi (Made), Siyasanga Papu, Pulane Rampoana and Ayanda Sibisi. Featuring creative input by Wilhelm Disbergen (set and lighting); Onthatile Matshidiso (costumes); and Vangile Mpumlwana (sound and AV), it is on stage at the Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre complex in Newtown, Johannesburg until 30 March 2025.