Students and residents of Tshwane will experience a theatre and cinema double blockbuster with the screening and staging of Kalushi and Sarafina on Friday 10 March 2017. Both these productions are a must see for students, especially because the story lines resonates with the recent #feesmustfall campaign in South Africa.
Student Times in partnership with the ETA Prestige Card is offering a one package ticket for the first 1000 students to pre-book online through this booking link.
Whist Sarafina is a fictional character of a Soweto girl activist who inspired the 1976 Soweto Uprisings, Kalushi is based on the real life story of Solomon Mahlangu who skipped the country to join Mkhonto-we-Sizwe in the midst of the 1976 student protests in the township of Mamelodi.
One of this country’s most iconic symbols of the struggle for social and political freedom and justice, Sarafina! was conceived and directed by Mbongeni Ngema, who also wrote the book, music and lyrics with additional songs by Hugh Masekela.
The Broadway hit musical is a musical experience with songs performed in the tradition of Mbaqanga, fused with jazz, rhythm and blues and gospel. This proudly South African musical, set during the 1976 uprisings in Soweto, deals with the radicalization of a young school girl who becomes embroiled in the riots and is tortured by the South African Police.
The musical is set in the Morris Isaacson High School against the backdrop of students revolting against Afrikaans being used as a medium of instruction. The play, which depicts students involved in the 1976 Soweto Uprising against apartheid, was created in June 1986 and premiered at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg in June 1987, with Leleti Khumalo in the title role as the school girl activist, Sarafina.
Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu was born in Pretoria on 10 July in 1956. He was the second son of Martha Mahlangu. His father left him in 1962, and from then on only saw him infrequently. His mother was a domestic worker and took sole responsibility for his upbringing. The Kalushi film is about the nineteen-year-old hawker, from the streets of Mamelodi, a township outside Pretoria in South Africa.
Kalushi is brutally beaten by the police. He goes into exile following the 1976 Soweto uprisings to join the liberation movement. He returns from military training in Angola, en route to their mission, his friend and comrade, Mondy, loses control and shoots two innocent people on Goch Street in Johannesburg. Mondy is severely beaten & tortured; Kalushi is forced to stand trial under the common purpose doctrine.
The state seeks the highest punishment from the court, DEATH by HANGING. Kalushi has his back against the wall and uses the courtroom as a final battlefield. His sacrifice immortalizes him into a hero of the struggle and an international icon of June 16, 1976.
