Nama history, folklore on opera stage

IMAGE the click of Nama songs criss-crossing through Wagner, the Nama stap tiptoeing through military marches, the fantasy of Nama folklore flowing through the tribe’s bloody history and the Khoi god Heiseb flirting with the freedom-fighting spirit of Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi.

That’s what await arts festival audiences in South Africa next year when the curtain raises on ‘Don’t Call Me a Rebel’, an opera about Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi, who led the Namas in their war against German colonisers in 1893-94, and great-grandfather of Namibia’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Reverend Hendrik Witbooi.The unique project, currently being brainstormed at the University of Stellenbosch, is the creation of the award-winning Namibian artist Hentie van der Merwe.Van der Merwe grew up on a farm in the Naukluft, where, in 1894, Kaptein Witbooi eventually conditionally surrendered to Major Theodor Leutwein. Their letters to each other, combined with the Namas’ rich tradition of storytelling, inspired Van der Merwe.He teamed up with Marthinus Basson, South African box office hit director, and acclaimed composer Philip Miller. Van der Merwe not only wrote the libretto, or lyrics, of the opera, but also made a short film with three-dimensional animation of Heiseb, which will be used in the production.’Witbooi was a visionary, an intelligent and complex man and the first real Pan-Africanist,’ Van der Merwe told The Namibian from Durban yesterday.He started working on the concept two years ago, scrutinising Witbooi’s letters to Leutwein. His research then took him to an archive in Berlin, where some 800 hours of recorded Nama folk tales, collected by German anthropologist Sigrid Schmidt, are stored. Traditional music clips from the archive are included in the opera.’Don’t Call Me a Rebel’ is ‘music theatre’, Van der Merwe said. It will be filled with fantasy as well as the harsh reality of the Nama-German war – including visuals of Nama beheadings.In a recent interview with Die Burger in Cape Town, Van der Merwe said the period reminds him of ‘the Americans thinking they could commit the most barbaric acts at Abu Ghraib without anybody noticing – the same happened here to Witbooi’.However, he is not trying to give audiences a history lesson, Van der Merwe told The Namibian.Those lucky enough to be in Cape Town can get a glimpse of what is in store for them. The Goodman Gallery Cape is hosting Van der Merwe’s latest exhibition, ‘figuring II: Heiseb’, which contains the short film on the Khoi god, until Saturday.