New Play Honours Murdered Environmental Activist Fikile Ntshangase

In a new play, Mam Nomsa, played by Empatheatre co-founder Mpume Mthombeni, opposes the expansion of a coal mine, forcing her to face a polarised community, corrupt traditional leaders, and mounting threats to her family’s safety.

Environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was murdered by unknown gunmen in her home in 2020. She was a leading voice in a campaign against the expansion of a coal mine near the Hluhluwe–iMfolozi park. Organisations involved in the campaign believe she was murdered for her role in mobilising the community against the mine. More than five years later, no arrests have been made.

Her life and murder inspired Isitha Sabantu, a new theatre production that opened at the Market Theatre on 8 March. The play is staged by Empatheatre, a theatre company producing research-based plays about social justice.

Musician Syabonga Majozi performs guitar in Isitha Sabantu.

Isitha Sabantu is a musical drama, using puppetry and traditional songs to explore land rights, resource extraction, the climate crisis, and the vulnerability of environmental activists.

The play is based on months of research and community consultations. The creative team worked with environmental organisation groundWork, interviewing activists in rural areas, some of whom are in hiding because of death threats.

Empatheatre co-founder Mpume Mthombeni plays the lead character, Mam Nomsa, who rallies the community to fight the expansion of a coal mine that threatens to destroy the village, displace family graves, and the pollute the land the villagers depend on for their livelihoods.

“Her community is not united, and she must confront corrupt traditional leaders, mounting threats to her family’s safety, and the bitter irony of being declared an enemy of the very people whose lives and land she is fighting to preserve,” says co-writer and director Neil Coppen.

The play includes puppetry and traditional songs.

The characters wrestle with the mine’s promises of jobs and economic development while weighing these against their ancestral ties to the land.

“We are seeing more and more threats, and they are coming in different forms,” says Sifiso Dladla, a Human Rights Defenders Campaigner at groundWork.

“Besides the deliberate threat to a person’s life, we’ve also seen activists being interdicted from exercising their rights of peaceful protests, slapped with expensive lawsuits, and losing livelihoods.”

The cast sing while holding model homes to represent the village households and the risks the mine poses to them.

Empatheatre co-founder Dylan McGarry says the play has been in the works since 2020.

“One of the members we spoke to at the time said that when you want to blast rock and open up for coal, you’ve got to find a crack, and then you put dynamite in it, and it fractures the rock.

“And we saw the ways in which mining companies find the cracks in society and then break apart communities.

“So we really wanted to tell a story about that and how that happened. And at the same time, to honour her [Ntshangase ] and environmental defenders in South Africa,” says McGarry.

Mam Nomsa conducts the local church choir, her dog by her side. The local pastor later dismisses her from the position because of tensions in the community around the mine.

Last week, Empatheatre hosted three “Citizen Assemblies” at the Market Theatre, bringing together mining-affected communities, environmental defenders and activists to share their stories and exchange ideas.

The producers plan to take the show to Durban and Cape Town, as well as to rural areas in KwaZulu-Natal where the story is set. A European tour is scheduled for 2027.

Isitha Sabantu is showing at the Market Theatre until 22 March 2026.

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