Having a voice, either at the level of the individual or the community, has been one of the atavistic ways of defining or asserting humanity. This allows for the inscription of the twin-capped hegemony of successes or victories and frustrations at both the private locus and the public sphere. The disruptions of this possibility by rifts between natives in pre-colonial South Africa were aggravated in the heat of the colonial suppression it suffered, and was compounded by the operation of apartheid rule. By reason of this misrule, voices were suppressed, with a few cacophonies of dissention breaking forth. The culmination of these disenchantments into the demise of apartheid significantly presaged the need for reconstruction and redefinition of citizenship and cohabitation, and hence the necessity for establishing a public sphere, or put alternatively, a public domain in the form of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This paper, therefore, seeks to interrogate the dramatic world(s) created using the material properties of the TRC in John Kani's Nothing but the Truth and Zakes Mda's The Bells of Amersfoort. The paper argues that the domination and manipulation of this public realm by the state at the expense of the individual is not only counterproductive, but constitutes a denial of the relevance of such spheres. The paper, going by indices in the plays, therefore, concludes that every individual should not only be: given a voice, and be heard, but be allowed equal unbiased participation. Otherwise, the public sphere would not just be impotent, but the idea of nation-building and desirable citizenship would be a mere ruse.

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Revenge, as an instance of oppositionality, typifies past wrongs, evils, violations and disregard for human dignity which have been imputed and for which the offender must be reprimanded. The foregoing sequence is remindful of the dastardly apartheid dispensation in South Africa, which is a strong metaphor for strife and ‘ruptured’ human interactions. While the transition of South Africa to constitutionality was substantially heralded by the negotiating preponderances of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a number of people have adjudged the TRC to be a mere attempt to draw a curtain on the past - in sharp contrast to the spirit and letter of the commission. By so doing, there is a popular opinion that there are still some ‘unfinished business’ that ironically link the present with the past. Therefore, it is considered a ‘must’ that these ‘silences’ be addressed in order for the present and future of South Africa not to be intractably burdened by the past. Bhekizizwe Peterson’s and Ramadan Suleman’s Zulu Love Letter (both film and scripted play) has joined this discourse by artistically amplifying the need for an engagement with these ‘deafening silences’. It is in the light of the aforementioned that this article investigates the process of wrong and attempts by the hegemony to expiate such wrongs, in the context of impervious agents, who disregard the processes for peaceful engagements, but rather scorn and threaten victims of their vicious actions for daring to seek justice. The article sees such a repudiation of one’s evil act and the conciliatory stance of the government as capable of breeding revenge. However, the article concludes that when medicated, using certain cultural and religious beliefs, the bleeding heart that is prone to seeking revenge or retaliation (vengeance) might also be a carrier of forgiveness and collectivism.

Existing narratives in African literature have substantiated the precarious positions and positioning of female characters who, often times, are constructed as “evil,” monstrous, vindictive, etc. Whereas other artistic productions sympathetic to the conditions of women in African literature have tried to neutralise this despicable femininity through the configuration of effective, productive, urbane and positive social and political female agency, the notion of “evil women” still looms large. Black female characters in South African drama are burdened, in multiple ways, beyond the idea of race and ethnicity, as they are subjected to the whims and caprices of socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantageous orders. It is given the foregoing that this article seeks to interrogate the construction of “evil women” in Lara Foot Newton’s Tshepang: The Third Testament. Using the attributes and manifestations that inhere in the symbolism of “mother earth” in Africa, which has been successively violated and remains divided against itself, the article argues that the commodification of a notable female character in Tshepang: The Third Testament, Margaret, has a negative impact that nurtures evil in her. Margaret is accused of starting the circle that eventually leads to the rape of Baby Siesie (Tshepang) by Alfred Sorrow, who was abused earlier by Margaret. Relying on the manifestations of ecocriticism as they relate to the interrelation between humans and the environment, the article submits that what obtains in most African societies is the reality of an “evil environment,” and by extension an “evil society,” as the proposition of an “evil woman” cannot stand, being that, just like the unpleasant reactions of “mother earth” to the people who degrade her, what the “evil woman” manifests is an aggregation of the treatment meted out to her. The article concludes that caution is required from all players to tame acts of evil in post-apartheid South African society.