Columnist Calland captures state capture for stage

• Published date: 26 April 2024
• Publication title: Mail & Guardian: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

He is wearing a grey cap with the logo of his beloved Arsenal on it, and a matching sweater, during our Zoom call because Cape Town's weather has gone into autumn mode

"I always felt that maybe I had a play in me," he says when I ask where the idea for the new Market Theatre production The Brothers, Number One and a Weekend Special comes from.

It goes back to when he was growing up in London. His schoolteacher father was always prudent with money and never in debt.

"But he basically spent every single penny of his disposable income on the arts, on culture. He was addicted to the theatre and to opera.

"It was his hobby and he was quite hedonistic in that sense. He really loved the pleasures of art and culture. And he would drag me along."

Calland loved going to the theatre with his old man, even into teenagehood, with all its distractions.

"But there were times when, at the opera on a Saturday night, I'd be like, 'Can you please now die, so we can get home in time for Match of the Day?' Because watching football was still a priority for me. But, in general, I really enjoyed the experience."

The play tells the story of state capture, which started with the announcement of a new finance minister, one Des van Rooyen (the "Weekend Special" in the title, who was in office for a mere weekend) in late 2015.

It tracks a two-year history of corruption involving The Brothers — the Guptas, an influential family with close ties to the South African government — and "Number One", then president Jacob Zuma.

The play opens on Friday 26 April, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of South Africa's democracy when, for the first time, all the country's people went to the polls on 27 April 1994.

When Calland started writing the play in 2019, the story in his head was the Bell Pottinger scandal that was exposed in 2016 and 2017. It followed Zuma's appointment of Van Rooyen, a little-known backbencher, to one of the most powerful positions in government on 9 December 2015. It was earth-shattering.

"People were saying, 'I think he's an MP, isn't he? Is he from the North West?'" Calland recalls in our interview. "They had literally never heard of this guy and he's now been appointed as the minister of finance. That was incredible."

He says that was a massive overreach on Zuma's part.

"I think his downfall can be tracked back to that moment.

"Of course, as he began to fall, he got more desperate and he tried to do things. One of the things he did, through the Guptas, was to bring...