Siyasanga Papu hopes her lead role on the award-winning stage production XOVA will highlight realities that fatherlessness bring to mothers who are left to raise children on their own.
XOVA, which returns to the South African State Theatre in Tshwane after a successful national tour, follows the life of Zukiswa, a young Xhosa woman facing the harsh realities of solo parenting inside a heavily disadvantaged family.
As someone who herself was raised without her father about, Papu hopes XOVA will break down the topic of absent fathers in the upbringing of children, especially the girl child, nitty-gritty details.
She says she draws inspiration from that reality of being raised by a single mother and from her grandmother's story.
“This is a storyline that we can never hear enough of because this is the reality that we are still facing. This time about looking at the various challenges that women would go through raising children, while also carrying a past with them,” she said.
“This story is about a woman who is forced by circumstances to be strong, raise the child by herself and have no one to lean on. Her past contributes to how she raises the child, coupled by her own personal fears. It’s about a woman's need to be resilient because they have been tossed in the deep end.”
Papu takes over from Charmain Mtinta, who also took the baton from Zimkitha Kumbaca in 2019, and appreciates that she didn’t watch the past productions.
“I am able to give it a clean slate and not look back at how it was done in the past. I get to bring my interpretation to this story, making reference to my grandmother and mother in this journey. My grandmother lived in the villages, and looking back, you are exposed to an extreme type of poverty and hardship that the women had to go through while the men went out and looked for work in Joburg or wherever.
“That was my research. That was my go-to point. Going back to that time when we had no power in the villages and how these mamas pulled through and raised these kids,” a reality she would be exposed to when visiting her grandmother.
The Gomora actress, with a career that spans 16 years, will star alongside Aphiwe Dumeko (as Thozama) in the all-female cast masterpiece written and directed by best director Naledi award winner Joseph Komani.
“If we don’t tell our stories, no one is going to do it for us. Such a story has been told so many times but the need to continue telling it is there, seeing how many absent fathers there are.
“If we don’t communicate something, society will be under the impression that all is well and that everything is fine. But it isn’t. This play exposes us to more than just the financial aspect of things, emotionally. A lot of damage is done by poverty and being thrown into circumstances where you are forced to raise a child when you are not ready. We need to tell more of these.”
Papu, who grew up in Pretoria West, admits she wishes she had listened more to her mother than being self-centred in her needs while growing up.
“I look back and wish I would have been more gentle because mothers experience so much pressure but we never give them a break.”
XOVA is a product of the South African State Theatre’s Incubator Programme, and has won various Naledi Theatre Awards including best theatre play, best script and best direction in 2020.
It has also won the Standard Bank Gold Ovation Award at 2019 National Arts festival.
Its brief exhibition will run from Wednesday to July 3.
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