Lights are very dim. TAMI is riding on a bicycle. It is really one of the wire toys that the township kids make, with a wire person perched on it and pedalling as TAMI pushes it. She walks gingerly on a stage strewn with figures huddled together, some squatting, others standing upright or crouching or curling up. She finds her way among them, ‘riding’ her bicycle. The figures, which are indefinable, are frozen in agony.

THE FIGURES [singing]:

Ndophule, ndophule, mntakwethu

(Break me, break me my brother/sister)

Ndophule, ndophule, ndophule, mntakwethu

Ndophule mntana ka mame

(Break me, child of my mother)

She stops next to a figure.

TAMI [to the figure]: Please, I am looking for Luthando. Have you seen Luthando?

FIGURE 1: Go find out from that mountain. Maybe it has seen Luthando.

She rides around the stage. Her ride is quite arduous. As she rides the figures sing the same refrain again.

THE FIGURES [singing]:

Ndophule, ndophule, mntakwethu, etc.

She stops next to another figure.

TAMI: Mountains of my beloved Qhoboshane: you with aloes whose nectar makes the birds drunk and spin in the air: have you seen Luthando?

FIGURE 2: Oh, he left these mountains many years ago. They say you will find him in Cape Town. In the Parliament building. We chose him to represent us there. And never saw him again.

She rides again. As arduously as ever. Once more the figures sing Ndophule. She stops next to another figure.

TAMI: Luthando? Is that Luthando?

FIGURE 3 [laughs mockingly]: Luthando? He has left for Johannesburg. The pickings are richer there. Parliamentarians are too poorly paid. Even though he was the chairman of the defence portfolio committee it was not rewarding enough. He was deployed to the corporate world. He is an executive chairman of a black empowerment conglomerate, which recently won a multi-billion rand tender to supply some defence systems to the army … in partnership with a Dutch company.