In 1989, I was interviewing Pieter-Dirk Uys (South Africa’s Barry Humphries) at the café outside the committedly multiracial Market Theatre in Johannesburg, when a frenetic, bald, bearded man stopped to chat with us. It was Barney Simon, co-founder of the theatre, and still, then, basking in the success of the worldwide smash, Woza Albert! (co-written with the two stars, Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema). The play imagined the second coming of Christ in apartheid Johannesburg (a BBC documentary can be found, fuzzily, here.)
Simon’s love-hate relationship with his home city, as well as his theatrical inclinations, are on display in his short story collection, Joburg, Sis! The title story is a gritty, dramatic monologue in South African dialect, incorporating multilingual slang. (‘Sis’ is an exclamation of disgust.)
Originally published in the collection Joburg, Sis!, Bateleur Press, 1974, and has featured in several anthologies, notably A Century of South African Short Stories, edited by Jean Marquard, AD Donker, 1978
A Personal Anthology 