‘But that’s the main reason why I performed it, as part of an assault.’
2 ‘Maar dit is die hoofrede hoekom ek dit opgevoer het, as deel van ’n aanslag.’ Fourie, author interview, 16 October 2020.Reviewers certainly picked up on the play’s local applicability. One critic described it as a ‘gripping drama full of black humour, but with a theme as fresh and relevant as today’s newspaper headlines’.
3 ‘’n pakkende drama vol galgehumor, maar met ’n tema so vars en aktueel soos vandag se koerantopskrifte’. ‘Die Brandstigters in Nico: Galgehumor in nuwe drama’, Die Burger, 17 March 1978. Another pointed out that ‘the thematic implications echo the current situation in South Africa: There are always those who look at reality with a blind eye’.
4 ‘vind die tematiese implikasies ’n weerklank in die huidige toestand in Suid-Afrika: daar is altyd dié wat met ’n blinde oog na die werklikheid kyk.’ William Pretorius, ‘’n Somber vingerwysing’, Rapport, 9 April 1978. Yet exactly what they believed the message of
Die Brandstigters to be, is less clear. Referring to its broad applicability, one anonymous contributor remarked even before the play opened: ‘It condemns the individual’s limp attitude towards elements that threaten the establishment; the lack of a sense of responsibility that makes him hesitant to act when circumstances require it.’
5 ‘Dit veroordeel die individu se lamsakkige houding jeens elemente wat die maatskappy bedreig; die gebrek aan ’n verantwoordelikheidsgevoel wat hom laat huiwer om op te tree as omstandighede dit vereis.’ ‘Die Brandstigters in Nico’. Judging from this particular journalist’s concern with the establishment in ‘a world plagued by anarchy’ (‘’n anargie-geteisterde wêreld’), it seems fair to surmise that the message they would take from Frisch’s ‘Lehrstück ohne Lehre’ was that white citizens had to be vigilant against violent black-inspired opposition. As in 1962, paying attention to one’s guilty conscience was merely a chink in the collective armour of white South Africa.
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Figure 26: Set designer Raimond Schoop on the set of Die Brandstigters, 1978.
Yet at least one reviewer, W. E. G. Louw, picked up on the similarities between ‘dié dom Mnr. Biedermann’ (‘the stupid Mr Biedermann’) and ‘ons Suid-Afrikaanse burger’ (our South-African citizen’), pointing out: ‘he calmly continues with his work or his little jobs, whether it’s the production of ineffective hair products, as in the case of Biedermann, or tractors, school clothes, the growing of tomatoes or pineapples, but is blissfully unaware of the dangers that are stacking up in the attic. Well, yes, okay, we gradually realize that our house is surrounded by highly flammable gas cylinders. But do we realize that all that is still missing is a match?’
6 ‘hy gaan rustig voort met sy werk of sy werkies, hetsy dit die vervaardiging van oneffektiewe haarmiddels is, soos in die geval van Biedermann, of trekkers, skoolklere, die kweek van tamaties of pynappels, maar is salig onbewus van die gevare wat bo-op die solder aan die opstapel is. Nou ja, goed, ons besef langsamerhand dat ons huis tussen hoogs vlambare gassilinders staan. Maar besef ons dat ál wat nog kortkom,’n vuurhoutjie is?’ Louw, ‘Die Brandstigters in die Nico Malan’.~
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Figure 27: Biedermann (Neels Coetzee) handing a box of matches to Schmitz (Marko van der Colff) and Eisenring (Mees Xteen) in Die Brandstigters, 1978.
In my reading of the 1978 production of Die Brandstigters, the two arsonists still symbolize the oppressed majority who, weary of clawing for scraps of human dignity in apartheid’s long shadow, have taken up arms. But in a post-Soweto environment, the play’s warning is something quite different. No longer cautioning ordinary white voters against allowing the black other into the heart of white South Africa, Die Brandstigters warns that, if change does not occur, the entire country will burn down. It warns that if the system is not reformed constructively from within, it will be torn apart from without. By advocating necessary change without resorting to violence, the play presents a stance fully aligned with the notion of loyal resistance – and, I would argue, with Scholtz’s own worldview.
Fourie, on the other hand, argues that
Die Brandstigters is ambiguous enough even for the arsonists to symbolize a group other than the oppressed black majority who in the late 1970s were setting fire to government buildings. For him, in the tense post-Soweto environment, anyone who was careless with South Africa was a would-be incendiary. ‘Each of us had a potential arsonist in our house’, he points out.
7 ‘Ons het elkeen in ons huis met ’n potensiële brandstigter gesit, jy weet.’ Fourie, author interview, 16 October 2020. It could be his wife or his black domestic worker, he says. ‘It could be you as well.’
8 ‘Dit kan jy self ook wees.’ Ibid. For Fourie, I realize, conservative right-wing Afrikaner elements were perhaps the most likely arsonists of all. Yet let us not forget that in the final analysis, it is the ordinary white voter – legally exploiting the labour of his fellow man – who finally provides the box of matches.