Zimbabwe’s most prominent theatre director arrested over plays

By Lance Guma
09 May 2006

Police in Bulawayo arrested Zimbabwe’s most prominent theatre director Cont Mhlanga on Tuesday. He is facing allegations of conducting political meetings in the high-density suburbs without police clearance. Authorities allege he is doing so under the guise of plays and workshops. Officers from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) picked up the Amakhosi Theatre productions founder at around 8:30am before releasing him later in the day.

Mhlanga is also facing further accusations of externalising foreign currency via a pressure group called ‘Isikathi Sewatshi.’ Police say the group has a foreign currency account in Botswana and is using this to externalise their earnings. The police allege Mhlanga is either a co-ordinator or Director of ‘Isikathi Sewatshi,’ and through this group is pretending to be conducting plays and workshops while actually holding political rallies.

Prominent academic and commentator Brilliant Mhlanga who has worked with Cont Mhlanga in the past says his colleague is facing the same persecution as Kenyan playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Ngugi was imprisoned under Kenya’s Public Security Act for a year without trial for his involvement in the 1977 play ‘I Will Marry When I Want’, written with Ngugi wa Mirii. Mhlanga on the other hand has courted trouble with the politically charged productions of Workshop Negative and Double Up (a play touching on the plight of youths running away to South Africa to earn a living.)

By Tuesday afternoon Mhlanga had been released and was said to be teaching at his academy in Bulawayo when Newsreel tried to get comment from him. An intriguing fact is that the police officers that picked up Mhlanga, Sergeant Ngwenya and Munjayi are notorious in Bulawayo circles. A source who refused to be named says it’s very much a given that all arrests to do with Law and Order are carried out by the two and in most cases rather over-zealously.