Sizwe Banzi Is Dead

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead Summary | Part 1 Summary

This section of the play is set in the photography shop of a young black man named Styles. He comes in, sits down and reads a newspaper. After commenting briefly on stories about a storm in another part of South Africa, about the Chinese influence on the South African economy and the politics of US President Richard Nixon, he comes to a story about the planned expansion of an automobile manufacturing plant.

This prompts him to tell a story of how he worked at a Ford plant and how one time the workers at the plant worked, cleaned, slaved and got new uniforms and tools, all to prepare for a visit from Henry Ford Jr. He tells how the (white) Big Boss wanted to make an inspirational speech to the workers but couldn't speak their language and had to have Styles interpret for him, and how he (Styles) twisted the Boss's words during the interpretation to make fun of both the Boss and Ford. He then tells how Ford arrived in a limousine and spent all of five minutes in the plant, and how the workers had to increase their output to make up for lost time. He finishes the story by calling himself "a bloody fool" for having spent six years in that job, and goes back to the paper.

An ad for an insect spray called "Doom" prompts him to tell another story. This one is about how he realized one day that he was little more than a monkey, working and making money for someone else, living a life that belonged to someone else. He realized he wanted to become a photographer, went looking for a studio, went through a whole bureaucratic process to get approved for ownership of a building and a business, got both, and found when he got to his new shop that it was infested with cockroaches. He tells how he went out and got a good supply of "Doom" and fumigated the place, but the "Doom" didn't work. He then tells us a friend of his recommended that he get a cat, and since Blackie the kitten came along he hasn't had a cockroach problem at all.

He then shows us his studio, which he describes as "a strong room of dreams." He tells us about some of the photos he's taken, and how he always takes them the way that his customers want to have them taken since to convince them of another way is to rob them of a dream. He tells a story of how one customer wanted to have his picture taken with his diploma from a correspondence course, and then acts out his final story. He tells how a large family came in for a photograph, how he arranged them and rearranged them, how much work it took to get them all to smile, and how when he finally got them to smile how much their joy spread. He then tells how a week after the pictures were taken, the eldest son of the family came to collect the pictures and told him that two days after the session the father died. Styles tells us that he showed the son the pictures and soon the son started smiling about the happy memories not only of that day but also of his life with his father. Styles tells us that he encouraged the man to go back to his family and encouraged them to remember their happiness in the same way.

This leads him to speak of how we own nothing but ourselves. He recalls his father, who was a soldier for South Africa in the Second World War, and came back from fighting honorably only to have everything stripped from him when he came back. He was left with nothing. All Styles has of him is a faded old photograph. He starts to tell another story, but is interrupted by a knock on the door.