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Acting and Truth
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, a play set in apartheid South Africa, suggests that documents are rarely reliable tools for understanding marginalized people’s lives. The play opens with a Black South African photographer, Styles, reading newspaper headlines aloud. When he reaches a headline about a new automobile plant, he comments that he used to work at an automobile factory—and while he read a lot of headlines about factory owners planning to better the conditions in which Black employees worked, those headlines never resulted in real changes, like raises. Though Styles takes photographs both for official documents like passbooks and for personal keepsakes like family portraits, he argues that his real calling is documenting the existence of “my people. The simple people, who you never find mentioned in the history books.” Yet Styles isn’t trying to document the strict reality of the people he photographs; instead, he uses props and backdrops to record their aspirations and “dreams.” Moreover, he’s running a business; while he may photograph the simple people, he’s photographing simple people who have enough money to pay him, which suggests that there may be another population of people too poor to be documented at all. Thus photographs, which may seem to record visual reality, can invent alternate realities and exclude impoverished realities. In the same vein, another character, Sizwe Bansi, uses a dead man’s passbook—an identity document the government uses to monitor and limit Black South Africans’ movements—to steal a new legal identity; though the passbook is supposed to document reality, it ends up serving as a tool to hide Sizwe Bansi’s identity. The play thus calls into question the legitimacy of seemingly trustworthy documents like newspapers, IDs, and photographs for understanding the lives of oppressed people.
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Documented Reality vs. Lived Reality ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Documented Reality vs. Lived Reality appears in each chapter of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Sizwe Bansi Is Dead
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Documented Reality vs. Lived Reality Quotes in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead
Below you will find the important quotes in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead related to the theme of Documented Reality vs. Lived Reality .
Sizwe Bansi Is Dead Quotes
STYLES: I worked at Ford one time. We used to read in the newspaper . . . big headlines! . . . ‘So and so from America made a big speech: “. . . going to see to it that the conditions of their non-white workers in Southern Africa were substantially improved.”’ The talk ended in the bloody newspaper. Never in the pay packet.
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While reading the newspaper, the young photographer Styles has come upon a headline announcing a new automobile factory opening in South Africa. Talking directly to the audience, Styles explains why the news annoys him: money invested in South African factories never trickles down to “non-white” South African workers. This quotation establishes three things about Styles. First, although Styles lives in apartheid South Africa where Black people are legally discriminated against, he sees “improv[ing]” the “conditions” in which Black South Africans work and live not only as a matter of changing laws or media attitudes, subjects for “the bloody newspaper,” but Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusa
STYLES: This is a strong-room of dreams. The dreamers? My people. The simple people, who you never find mentioned in the history books, who never get statutes erected to them, or monuments commemorating their great deeds. People who would be forgotten, and their dreams with them, if it wasn’t for Styles. That’s what I do, friends. Put down, in my way, on paper the dreams and hopes of my people so that even their children’s children will remember a man . . .
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Speaking directly to the audience, whom he calls “friends,” Styles explains his vision for the photography studio he opened after he quit the Ford factory. A “strong-room” is a safe place, usually fireproof, used to store valuable items. When Styles says that his studio is a “strong-room of dreams,” then, he’s claiming both that his studio protects people’s dreams and that dreams are inherently valuable. Styles contrasts the “simple people” he photographs with people who get “statues” and “monuments” dedicated to them; thus Styles is implicitly also contrasting the photographs he takes with official memorials and documents like the newspapers Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum
STYLES: Something you mustn’t do is interfere with a man’s dream. If he wants to do it standing, let him stand. If he wants to sit, let him sit. Do exactly what they want! Sometimes they come in here, all smart in a suit, then off comes the jacket and shoes and socks . . . [adopts a boxer’s stance] . . . ‘Take it, Mr Styles. Take it!’ And I take it. No questions! Start asking stupid questions and you destroy that dream.
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Styles has broken off in the middle of a story about a customer at his photography studio to explain his philosophy of photographing people: he believes the photographer should “do exactly what” the customer desires, even if it doesn’t seem to conform to reality. For example, if a customer who comes in “all smart in a suit,” implying that he’s a well-to-do office worker, wants to be photographed as a boxer, Styles will photograph him as a boxer. Previously, Styles has suggested that his photos represent marginalized people’s dreams and constitute an alternate history that includes marginalized people in a Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Duc
STYLES: Here he is. My father. That’s him. Fought in the war. Second World War. Fought at Tobruk. In Egypt. He fought in France so that this country and all the others could stay Free. When he came back they stripped him at the docks—his gun, his uniform, the dignity they’d allowed him for a few mad years because the world needed men to fight and be ready to sacrifice themselves for something called Freedom […] When he died, in a rotten old suitcase amongst some of his old rags, I found that photograph. That’s all. That’s all I have from him.
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Styles is explaining a photograph of his father to the audience. His language suggests that official histories of the Second World War (1939–1945) fail to account for the experiences of marginalized people like his father. South African soldiers fought with the Allies against the Nazis in Africa and Europe; in official histories, this fact aligns South African with “stay[ing] Free” and “something called Freedom.” Yet shortly after the war ended, South Africa’s white supremacist government began passing apartheid laws to limit the legal rights of its non-white citizens, especially Black South Africans. South Africa’s turn from fighting for freedom to Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium
STYLES: Always helping people. If that man was white they’d call him a liberal.
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A potential customer who identifies himself as Robert Zwelinzima has just entered Styles’s studio. When taking the man’s information, Styles recognizes his address and asks whether the man is staying with Buntu; when the man says he is, Styles praises Buntu and quips, “If that man was white they’d call him a liberal.” Though a joke, Styles’s comment suggests that South African racial hierarchies mean people’s behavior is interpreted differently according to their race. Because Buntu is a Black man, his “always helping people” is interpreted as a merely personal characteristic. If Buntu were white, on the other hand, his Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accu
BUNTU: It’s your only chance!
MAN: No, Buntu! What’s it mean? That me, Sizwe Bansi . . .
BUNTU: Is dead.
MAN: I’m not dead, friend.
BUNTU: We burn this book . . . [Sizwe’s original] . . . and Sizwe Bansi disappears off the face of the earth.
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Buntu, now in possession of both the dead man’s passbook and Sizwe’s, goes home with Sizwe and begins transferring Sizwe’s photograph into the dead man’s passbook. When Sizwe protests, Buntu tells him, “It’s your only chance!” This statement of Buntu’s reveals something about Buntu and about the play’s worldview. First, while pessimistic Buntu has previously suggested that Sizwe return home and accept his miserable fate, Buntu now takes action to help Sizwe trick white authorities and subvert apartheid law. Buntu’s actions here reveal that although pessimistic, he is not emotionally resigned to Black South Africans’ racial oppression and poverty under Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Ac
MAN: A black man stay out of trouble? Impossible, Buntu. Our skin is trouble.
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When Sizwe asks Buntu how long Sizwe can get away with pretending to be Robert Zwelinzima, Buntu tells him that as long as he “stay[s] out of trouble” and the police don’t fingerprint him, he can be Robert indefinitely. Sizwe replies that it is “impossible” for him to stay out of trouble because Black people’s “skin is trouble.” This response suggests that Sizwe can’t escape the racist official identities imposed on him by apartheid even when using another man’s passbook—so Sizwe can only achieve his dreams permanently if apartheid ends. Sizwe has taken a dead man’s passbook, an apartheid-era identity Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex consequatur magnam. Aliquid iste enim. Sequi aut maxime. Adipisci voluptate
