langston and bloke are sitting on the sofas in langston's house in Harlem. They are having tea, smoking cigarettes and playing blues in the background.

BLOKE: Man, I’m really tired today. Teaching African music and rhythms means you actually have to perform. It's just like swimming: you cannot teach efficiently while standing outside the pool. You have to be in there, to demonstrate clearly what you mean.

LANGSTON: Well, as they say, the only way to learn how to jump is to jump. By the way, I’ve been getting positive feedback about your lectures. It looks like you’ll have more public speaking engagements than you were initially asked to do. I know that you’ve been focusing on black colleges, but now I’m getting enquiries from the predominantly white colleges as well.

BLOKE: I think they are more interested in South African politics than culture, so much so that even when I try to teach music, I have to inject a bit of politics.

LANGSTON: Culture and politics go hand in hand, after all. They are all about the human condition. You can't really separate the two, especially in South Africa where culture has always been a site of struggle. I hear Miriam Makeba will be addressing the UN General Assembly soon. I think this will exert more pressure on the apartheid regime.

BLOKE: Miriam's address will be a great opportunity to bring the plight of South Africa right to the doorstep of global leaders. I like the fact that she is employing her agency as a musician to ensure that her voice reverberates across the political spectrum. We all have to do our bit to make a difference. I think I am also winning in conscientising young Negroes in these colleges. With the remainder of the lectures, I might go completely political. It's a subject that I enjoy engaging in, especially now that I’m away from the prying eyes of the Special Branch.

LANGSTON: Are you gonna say anything about the Sharpeville Massacre? A lot of young Negroes are quite curious to know what's gonna happen. It's been three years now, and many political and cultural activists like yourself have been streaming out of South Africa. They want to know how are you guys planning to wage a war seven seas away from your ancestral land.

I have argued that dispossession is a continuous experience forcommunities who live in mined areas and that it includes theexperience of the living and the treatment of the remains of thosewho have passed. Thinking about dispossession in relation to boththe living and the deceased reminds me of Sol T. Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa, in which herecounts the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913, how the law revokednatives’ citizenship and, in the end, made them pariahs, with noproperty or even a place to bury their deceased. His work isimportant in tying together questions of land, nativeness,spirituality and belonging. Therefore, if we apply the same lens heused to analyse South Africa, a pertinent question arises: how arethe descendants of native Africans now citizens, without access tothe land and a place to rest? And what compels us to raise questionsabout landownership, belonging, heritage, land and cultural rights,dehumanisation and exclusion 30 years after South Africa'sdemocracy?

Gaps in the legislation that have been discussed – such as theMineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002 (MPRDA),the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996(IPILRA) and the National Heritage Resources Act 25 of 1999 (NHRA) –rob communities of their rights to access the land and places ofburial and allow the dispossession and dehumanisation of Africancommunities within the parameters of the law. This is lawfulexclusion. Lawful exclusion is, therefore, posited as the means bywhich African communities in mined areas are continuouslymarginalised through ‘reformed laws’ of the current democraticdispensation. The precise workings of lawful exclusion have beenexplicated in detail in the analysis presented around the processesof household and grave relocations wherein, notably, a cleardisregard of the provisions in the mineral, land and heritage laws,and gaps in the legislation, deny communities their rights.

In addition, the laws are also shown to intersect in ways that arecontradictory, operating within an overriding market-drivenrationale and, therefore, failing to attain their objectives toprotect ‘previously marginalised communities’.

Loss of land and the relocation of homes and black African ancestralgraves are prevalent in South Africa. The dispossession ofcommunities for coal mining is accelerated by South Africa'sdependence on fossil fuels for energy production. Coal extraction,burning and dependence remains high despite South Africa havingsigned the Paris Agreement in 2015 to reduce carbon emissions. Asthe country gears itself to decarbonise, mining corporationsscramble for mining rights to dig the abundant coal deposits in theprovinces of Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo, threateninglocal communities’ land, heritage and constitutional rights in theprocess.

At this juncture, mining corporations, which exploit gaps in SouthAfrica's heritage, mineral and land rights laws, convey tocommunities that spiritual connections to land and to theirancestors will not keep the country's lights on and will not help togrow the economy. These capitalist-driven corporations, backed bythe state, therefore force impoverished communities to give up theirland for the sake of development. They make promises to localcommunities that the areas and their livelihoods will improveeconomically. However, the true beneficiaries, economically, are themining companies. As a result, coal is South Africa's paradox. Inthis book, I attempt to deepen the understanding of loss incoal-mined areas as South Africa finds itself in a coal energycrisis and, despite the states’ commitment to decarbonise,communities still find themselves displaced and detached from theirancestral lands and graves.

The meaning of land

No Last Place to Rest partly draws frommy doctoral study, which explored the contestations over gravesiteremovals by Glencore PLC for thermal coal on the Tweefontein farm,located in the east of the town Ogies in the Mpumalanga province(for a map of the area, see figure 2.1).

In 2013, I monitored the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Billfor the Land and Accountability Research Centre, then a part of theCentre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town, and Ibecame curious about land and ancestral graves and theirsignificance to communities.

can brings another seat to add to the two seats at the coffee table, placing it at the centre of the stage and facing the audience. He takes out two bottles of liquor (whisky and brandy) and glasses from the kist and places them on the coffee table. He takes the middle seat after pouring a glass.

CAN: Talking about politics, the other day two well-known politicians from the ANC tried to recruit me into the organisation. One was a tall fellow with his hair parted in the middle, and he spoke in a heavy Xhosa accent. I knew him from the debates we used to have at Fort Hare. He used to be a regular visitor at Fort Hare when they were trying to open a branch of the ANC Youth League in Alice. He towered over his companion like a mountain over mites in the valley.

The other one was a bit older, light-complexioned and wore round glasses. The short one spoke first, introducing himself as Walter, and his fellow party man as Nelson. I offered them seats, which they duly took with the decorum of Roman senators.

‘What would be your poison of choice, gentlemen, whisky or wine?’ I asked.

They declined simultaneously, saying they don't drink. In the House of Truth? That's unacceptable! Hosting teetotallers has the potential to corrupt my morals. That's a serious threat to my dignity.

The tall one spoke like he was in court. [Nelson's voice] ‘Eh, first of all, Mister Themba–’

‘Wow, wow, wow! Hold it right there. My name is Can. Don't ever call me Mister.’

[Nelson's voice] ‘Oh, I see! You mean “can” as in a tin?’ he asked.

‘No, no, I cannot be contained in a tin. It's Can, short for Canadoce. My mother named me Daniel Canadoce Themba. Can Themba for short.’

[Nelson's voice] ‘Ha, thank you, Can Themba, my friend. We know that you are not a member, but this fight is for Africans. We want everyone to be involved in the struggle, nice-time boys, tsotsis, teachers, newspapermen, lawyers, doctors, all! The ANC is a home to all African people. This is where a man of your intellect belongs, Can Themba, my friend.’

There is a change of setting. We see a Jamaican flag on the screen. The setting on stage right is now a well-furnished space, though still small. bloke is apparently in a luxurious hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. He is busy typing and he reads aloud what he is typing.

BLOKE: My dear Langston,

I was saving this for the big surprise, but the punchline of it got sort of sour. There I was at JFK trying desperately to phone you. But alas.

Anyway, I am in Jamaica for seven weeks filming a big MGM production – an adventure story set in the Congo during the emergency. Now if you promise not to hold it against me or inform African nationalists, I’ll tell you what I play in the film. Okay? Well, I’m a mercenary fighting for Tshombe. The things people will do for money!

On my way back to London about the middle of March, I intend to spend a week in New York and see all my friends. So, I’ll be seeing you round that time, to apologise personally for not having written you for almost a year.

Pula!

Bloke

BLOKE: Modisane speaking, how may I help you?

LANGSTON: My favourite Bantu, how are you?

BLOKE: I’m good, man. Kingston is treating me so well. I feel like the ‘King’ in KING-ston!

LANGSTON: You’ve always been the king of the Bantu. And I hope you’ll bring your royal self to New York soon. I’m sure that young lady from Brooklyn will be delighted to have you back.

BLOKE: Talking about a young lady, I presume you heard from Lisbeth?

LANGSTON: Yes, thank you for the assortment of teas. I met with Lisbeth yesterday and she gave them to me, and most importantly, your telephone number in Jamaica.

BLOKE: I’m glad she did. Man, it's beautiful out here. In the first place, I was flown out here first class, the luxury was embarrassing. With all the complimentary booze they gave me, I could open my own shebeen in my good old Sophiatown.

can goes to his desk and starts typing. The sound of the typewriter is taken over by the sounds of bulldozers and the violent crushing of bricks. The entire scene lasts for about a minute.

CAN: The nausea of despair rises up in me as I step gingerly over the rubble of our Sof ‘ town. I am haunted by the dead eyes with which some of these ghost houses stare back at me.

Where Thirty-Nine Steps used to be now lies a grotesque structure of torn and naked red bricks. The bulldozed houses of my people trespass on my dreams, invade my thoughts and engulf my entire being. I see the horrific images even with my eyes tightly shut. I can't even sleep at night.

Strijdom has crushed the House of Truth. The people's life stories have been reduced to a heap of rubble. Beneath it lie their dreams and aspirations. But the will of the people will prevail. For no house is ever built on lies. It will crumble and disintegrate within no time. In another day, in another time, we will emerge to reclaim our dignity and our land. The House of Truth will rise again!

They want to rewrite the story of South Africa. They are trying to kill the truth, forgetting that it is entrenched in our collective memory. They can destroy the evidence, but they cannot destroy a people's experience.

Years might come and go, epochs might begin and end, emperors might rise and fall, but the truth will remain the same. They can delude themselves, create a different account of events in their minds, but the same minds will betray them. Truth knows its enemy. It lurks over the falsifier's head like flies over a dead carcass.

In happier times, we philosophised about those African intellectuals who leave the country just when they are needed the most. I made it clear that the last thing I want is to go into exile. I regard exile as the ultimate assault on the human soul. But right now I don't see myself being part of this bigoted society.

The phone rings. Visibly irritated, can puts the poem down on the desk and goes over to answer it.

CAN: Can Themba speaking, how may I help you? [Pause.] Hey sweetie, how have you been? Ag! You must stop working night shifts in this nursing job of yours. I’ve written this poem dedicated to you. [Pause.] Stompie? What happened to him? [Pause.]

He’ll be back, sweetie, Gladys shouldn't worry. She does not need to look for him in hospitals and police stations. [Pause.] I didn't notice him when he left Thirty-Nine Steps last night. [Pause.] Sweetie, it's a shebeen, of course there were women. I just don't recall him leaving with one. [Pause.]

No man can kill Stompie, even if he found him with his wife in their marital bed. [Pause.] No, I’m not confirming that Stompie left with a woman. Hypothetically speaking, no man in Sophiatown can have the courage to lift a finger against Stompie. [Pause.] Okay, sweetie. I’ll look for him and let you know when I find him.

Stompie is at it again. Last night at Thirty-Nine Steps he was with this fine woman. I’ve never seen her before. No one knew where she came from. But she was too fine to be dancing with Stompie. She was much taller than him and definitely more beautiful than any girl he has ever been with.

She's a figure-eight kind of girl. [He demonstrates with his hands.] They danced a bit before they both disappeared into the night. It's not the first time that a man picks up a nice-time girl from the shebeen. It's just that you’d expect him to be back before dawn.

But not Stompie: he has decided to spend the whole night wherever they went. Suddenly he rocks up at my place in his underpants. I knew he had been up to no good, and that he was going to get me into trouble too. A man's character is judged by the company he keeps.

bloke is drinking by himself. He picks up the phone to call langston. It rings unanswered. He keeps trying two more times before giving up. He picks up a newspaper to read. The headline says, ‘Hughes Dies After a Surgery’. He is in shock as he reads the article aloud.

BLOKE: On May 6, famous American poet Langston Hughes visited the New York Polyclinic Hospital and secretly got himself admitted. It appears that in hospital records, he only wrote James L Hughes, and the staff might not have picked up that this was the great Langston Hughes. He underwent a minor surgery on 12 May, and even though at some stage he seemed to be on the road to recovery, his health suddenly deteriorated. It appears that his health turned for the worse after contracting a virus in hospital. He stopped breathing on 22 May 1967.

BLOKE: So long, my American Bantu. Pula!

This volume brings together Siphiwo Mahala's two plays: The House of Truth, based on the life and writings of Can Themba, and Bloke and His American Bantu, dramatising the friendship between Bloke Modisane and Langston Hughes. On their own merits, these plays make important original contributions to South Africa's dramatic heritage. But they also work within a longer literary tradition and help ensure that earlier generations of South African writing will, in the words of Mahala's character Can, ‘never be erased from the face of history’.

By the end of the twentieth century, it felt as though erasure was a real danger and black South African literary history might lapse into oblivion. Over the previous several decades, the urgency of an ever-escalating struggle against an ever more oppressive apartheid system had made previous generations’ struggles quickly appear quaint and outmoded. Strict censorship by the white minority state had made it hard to obtain many important works of South African literature and made it a struggle for small presses to continue publishing. Then, after legislated apartheid ended in 1994, many writers, readers and audiences lost their appetite for the literature of struggle and resistance, which dominated black South African writing throughout the apartheid era.

For all these reasons, there was a moment at the turn of the millennium when the long, rich history of black writing in South Africa threatened to go out of print and disappear from public memory. Fortunately, it was kept limping along by the efforts of a few scattered academics and by anthologies such as Michael Chapman's The Drum Decade: Stories from the 1950s, published in 1989, which brought together some of the most important stories published in the Johannesburg-based Drum magazine in its heyday. These stories blurred the lines between fiction, reportage and sociology, and they gave ample evidence of the vibrancy and innovation of black South African writing in the middle of the twentieth century.

The stories published in Drum documented, for example, the dangerous romance of life in Sophiatown in Johannesburg and District Six in Cape Town, even as those black and mixed-race areas were being declared whites-only neighbourhoods and subjected to forced removals and demolition.

South Africa's market-friendly mineral law overrides the protectionof informal land rights and heritage rights, leading to new forms ofexclusion and injustice in the post-apartheid era. Prior to 1994,access to minerals was intrinsically bound to landownership,following Roman-Dutch private property law, which formed the basisof South African mineral law. This arrangement, however, was amendedthrough the promulgation of the Mineral and Petroleum ResourcesDevelopment Act 28 of 2002 (MPRDA). This law transferred thecountry's mineral resources to the state, a quasi-nationalisation.As the custodian, the state acquired the responsibility to grant,issue or terminate mineral rights. In other words, after 1994, therewas a paradigm shift towards state-authorised privatisation,masquerading as nationalisation, but the reality was that the statesought to encourage the private exploitation of minerals. As aresult, mineral law in a market-driven economy has come to trumpland rights and the protection of heritage – with mining eliminatingall other possible land uses. This is explored in detail in the nextchapter.

Understanding mineral law and its historical development in SouthAfrica is important insofar as it illustrates how power isdistributed, through the MPRDA, away from the state to privatecompanies, reducing the state's role in resolving disputes andcreating procedural anomalies that limit the impact of otherlegislation. Consequently, in a country with an unfinished landreform project such as South Africa, communities who were oncedispossessed continue to experience injustices.

Mineral rights in Roman law and Roman-Dutch law

Ownership of land under Roman and Roman-Dutch law was regarded asalmost absolute and unencumbered. Some minerals were regarded asfruits of the land and could only be separated by the owner. TheRoman-Dutch law system lacked legislation regarding mineral rightsand, as a result, Roman-Dutch jurists followed Roman law andaccepted the principle that the owner of land is the owner ofeverything built upon the land and everything below the surface. Theidea of mineral rights as separate real rights developed during theMiddle Ages.

The music plays and can starts dancing. Suddenly there is a violent knock at the door and he shouts nervously.

CAN: POLICE! POLICE!

The police, like fleas in our blankets, are always with us. You carry a dangerous weapon, the cops get you. You go without one, the tsotsis get you. You try to have fun with your friends, the police come and raid your home. You walk mindlessly on the streets, they arrest you for loitering.

As a black man, you live the life of an object of prey, with the police always on a hunt for anyone possessing your pigmentation. Everyone you know has been to jail for one reason or another. We have become accustomed to living on the edge.

The whole atmosphere is charged with the white man's general disapproval, and where he does not have a law for it, he certainly has a grimace that cows you. Only five years ago, the government enacted the Group Areas Act of 1950, which prohibits different races from residing together. All this is done just to keep us apart.

I read English at Fort Hare not to be a black Englishman, but to prove that I can beat Europeans at their own game. I never allowed my skin colour and my circumstances to determine my future. We should not impose limits upon ourselves.

The white man enacts laws to suppress our potential. Where he cannot control our brains, he controls our movements. Is it not absurd that people who proudly call themselves Europeans come to this land – the African continent – and tell me, an African, that I do not belong here? They tell us where we should live, how we should drink and what we should write. God, they even tell us where and how to worship, as if there's a superior white God and an inferior black God.

After seeing his visitors out upstage left, can moves back to centre stage. The light dims to focus on him.

CAN: My weapon of struggle is my pen. I am committed to challenging the status quo, but that does not make me a political writer. I am a writer who explores the human condition, including politics.

Much of the literature of protest sacrifices its sincerity for the cause. I cannot allow the apartheid government to set the agenda for me. They can't be in charge of the rhythm of my heart. In the midst of all the apartheid atrocities, we still laugh, party hard and fall in love.

Have you seen my wife yet? Here's her picture. [can shows the picture to the audience.] She's beautiful, isn't she?

She is the pillar of my strength, cartographer of my dreams, bone of my heart and petiole of my soul. She is the flower that gladdens my heart, the moon that shines in my universe. I married high, I know, but somehow she fell in love with me. Destiny itself guided my wanderings to this beauty, so I can now lay my troubles on her bosom.

She doesn't want me to write love poems for her because she thinks that my kind of romance is outdated. I keep telling her that love is a universal human emotion, and it's got no expiry date. Neither is there an offseason for love. As long as we write about human beings, even the animal kingdom for that matter, there will always be love.

The question is how you write about love. As for me, I write the Can Themba way. My writing is always fuelled by love. The love of writing, the love of the subject matter, the love of my country and the love of my readers.

Readers are not fools. They can tell when you are not writing from the heart. So I’ve written this poem dedicated to Anne, my Annetjie. Let me read it to you. Don't be afraid to say it's rubbish. This is the House of Truth, after all.

The screen in the background shows the Statue of Liberty to indicate that the scene is set in in New York. langston is busy typing at his desk. The Statue of Liberty is replaced by snippets of the letter on the screen. His voice can be heard reading the letter as he types.

LANGSTON: Dear Bloke,

I had a fine flight across the Atlantic and got to Harlem at about 10 p.m., and all unpacked before bedtime. Today I put the snapshots in to be developed, and in a few days they should be ready, and I will send you some of yourself and Paul in front of the hotel.

I am still remembering that delightful little party at your place, and I enjoyed meeting Todd, Jimmy, Sonny and the others very much. It was fun.

I’m sending you my blues record today. And when the African one is ready, it will be along, too. I’m also looking into the matter of the overcoat tomorrow.

So, best of luck.

Sincerely yours.

LANGSTON: Dear Bloke,

Man, I had good luck today in looking for things in the basement. I found a nice blue overcoat, left here by a Harvard student two or three years ago, and he never came back after it, so I am sending it to you, as I think it might be just about your size. In the box with it will be a tweed jacket and a sweater.

It is dark. A match is struck and a paraffin lamp lit – bring up stage lights. can themba is wearing a white shirt, with his tie slightly loosened. He puts on his spectacles as he sits at his desk, getting ready to write. A typewriter is in front of him, and books are piled up on the desk, some open as if for reference, with sheets of manuscripts topping the pile. Next to the typewriter is an ashtray filled with dogends. He starts typing. The sound of the typewriter echoes for two minutes. He lifts his head, takes off the glasses and faces the audience.

CAN: My name is Can Themba. Those who know me call me Can von Themba. Never call me ‘Mister Can Themba’. There are certain names that do not go with ‘Mister’, and I don't have a clue why. Surely you cannot imagine a Mr Charlie Chaplin or a Mr William Shakespeare, or even a Mr Jesus Christ. My name operates in that sort of class.

I’m a graduate of the University of Fort Hare, where I majored in English and passed with distinction. I’m a teacher by profession, a writer by inclination and a journalist by trade. I’m a living exemplar of the modern, educated African's dilemma. I read English and trained to be a teacher, but you never know which government department is going to expel you and pitchfork you into which other government department. So, I also took Native Administration as a safety option.

I was born and raised in Marabastad, Pretoria, but I am a naturalised Sophiatonian. My writing is all about the celebration of life. Sophiatown represents the strength and the will to survive of ordinary masses of African people. Klevas, big shots, boozers, bamboos, coat hangers, hole diggers, bullets and blondes, wash planks and two-ton trucks all traverse the streets of our beloved Sof ‘town.

In Sophiatown the moments of splendour are splendid indeed. White Johannesburg cannot match the swarming, cacophonous, strutting, brawling and vibrating life of our township. Life here is strangely complex, interestingly challenging and absolutely dangerous. It is a shadow life in which we wander as spectres, seeking meaning for ourselves.