characters > bongani linda

Bongani Linda’s story

"Rape is a man’s problem, more than anything."

• Before the film
• Bongani meets Cathy
• How Bongani uses theatre to deal with frustration

Before the film

Bongani is a South African man whose girlfriend was gang raped and who subsequently committed suicide. Bongani, in his anger, confronted one of the rapists.

"In that anger, I killed him. I was arrested."

Bongani was remanded in custody for about 24 months, during which time he started a theatre group to address men directly and help them understand that sexually assaulting women and children is not acceptable.

When the trial eventually took place, Bongani was acquitted.

Bongani meets Cathy

When Bongani met Cathy, he told her, "Thank God I was acquitted, because [the] charges were dropped against me. [But] after that, I got very worried [about] what kind of a society is this because, in fact, it just did not end then. Rape became a popular crime in our townships, and, you know, still today it’s still like that. It’s sky-high. It’s crime number one.

"The reason I ended up taking the law into my own hands in the 80s was not because I wanted to, but it was because I was frustrated.

"I was weak because I took a very short route - a short route to revenge which is something that is unacceptable. You cannot rectify a wrong with another wrong.

"But rape is a man’s problem, more than anything. It’s a man’s problem, and I’m worried because it’s still fashionable."

How Bongani uses theatre to deal with frustration

Today, Bongani believes that there’s nothing as frustrating as not trusting the law itself. He uses theatre, and has trained as a counsellor, to help get the message across: that men need to do something to stop violence against women and children.

"Theatre has played a very important role in popular education right from the days of apartheid, [when] protest theatre was used as a tool to inform international audiences [about] what was happening in the country. I was influenced so much by that era, by protest theatre, and I actually learnt from that time that theatre is the best medium to reach out, to inform, to educate, to train, to empower young people.

"You take their reality, you put it on stage, you make them feel part and parcel, you portray them on the stage and then they get entertained, they get hooked to the story. From there you speak to them, you address them in a workshop situation.

"We make them grow and realise that what they did was wrong. [The actors in my troupe] are in a family of ex-offenders that have learnt from their previous experience and they have actually grown to say what we did in the past was wrong. It takes an experienced criminal to educate a would-be criminal that crime does not pay."