THE SONG OF JACOB ZULU
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Written by a white Jewish South African emigre named Tug Yourgrau and featuring music by the black South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Song of Jacob Zulu is set in South Africa in 1985 and deals directly with that country’s politics. In fact, it’s based on a true incident: its hero, Jacob Zulu, is modeled on a young man named Andrew Zondo–a cousin of Joseph Shabalala, Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s leader and the score’s composer–who set off a Christmastime bomb in a shopping center that killed and wounded mostly civilians, both white and black.
But the story it tells is universal. Jacob Zulu, the 19-year-old black who lashes out against an unjust system with senseless and self-defeating violence, is affiliated with the African National Congress, but he could have been a member of the IRA or one of the Jews who revolted against the Romans in the first century AD. This intelligent, gentle youth, with an intellectual bent and deep Christian roots, could just as easily have been one of the Black Panthers gunned down in the 1969 police raid on Fred Hampton’s apartment, or one of the millions of people throughout history whose best instincts and basic goodwill were twisted by political and personal brutality so that they became enemies, and then victims, of the state. Jacob Zulu could as easily be named Billy Budd–Yourgrau’s drama, like the stage version of Herman Melville’s Christian allegory, ends with its hero ascending a gallows–and the insidious and perverted inhumanity of South African apartheid could well bear the name Claggart, or Satan.
