Many Monsters in One

In the wake of the end of apartheid, residents of rural South Africa engaged in a series of moral panics, concerned that neighbors were witches who controlled zombies. When schoolboys in Kokstadt killed elderly women after a school bus crash and refused to let the victims of the crash be buried due to fear of witches and zombification, South African theatre artist Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight developed Ipi Zombi?— a postmodern devised piece of theatre exploring the community’s fears and actions. A major theme in Bailey and Third World Bunfight’s work is the reality of the spiritual beliefs of the amaXhosa people and the efficacy of these beliefs in combatting the drivers of social fears of the late twentieth century. The essay offers a close reading of how Ipi Zombi? dramatizes the events of Kokstadt and demonstrates how it is possible through community, ritual, and collective resistance that a more just, inclusive, and economically empowered society can be developed, even in the rural areas.