Nagging Doubt is set in the South Africa of the 1960s under the oppressive reign of Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, one of the most conservative Prime Ministers of the country and architect of the concept of apartheid or separate development. The massacre of 69 unarmed protestors at Sharpeville in 1960 revealed the desperate attempt of the regime to quell the emerging resistance within the black townships to this brutal policy. It is seen as watershed moment that would lead to the overturning of apartheid.

The play takes its name from a statement by Verwoerd: ‘I do not have the nagging doubt of ever wondering whether perhaps I could be wrong’. It was first performed to critical acclaim at the 1981 Edinburgh Festival and a Channel Four version by Roger Graef received international acclaim. Writer and performer Jack Klaff inhabits twenty characters caught up in the events of that time and moves effortlessly from a young schoolboy living with his liberal-conservative parents to the elderly Hendrik Verwoerd and Chief Albert Luthuli to the young upstart, Nelson Mandela.

But much has changed since then. Actor and subject have both lost something of their edge. In 1981 Klaff was younger and leaner and apartheid still reigned. A state of emergency had been imposed after the Soweto uprising of 1976 and the anti-apartheid movement was at its height in Britain and elsewhere. Today the ANC rules and the roles have been somewhat reversed. Afrikaners live in fear for their lives. Violent crime, continuing mass poverty and the deterioration of public services makes many nostalgic for the stability of an earlier period. It is just as likely for artists or activists to be censored by today’s democratically elected regime as they were in the past.

Despite this, Klaff brought back my own childhood memories of that oppressive time in a way that a recent documentary film was not able to do. Perhaps it was the small, close theatre – our skins moist from the warmth of the first sunny day for many weeks - or the solitary figure of Klaff on the stark, brightly lit stage and bare wooden floor that recalled those long, hot summers with nothing much to do besides listening to Springbok Radio or looking forward to a trip to the Indian beach on the Durban seafront and staring enviously at the large splash pool and waterslides alongside the White beach that we drove past.

It was also Klaff’s uncanny reincarnation as the steely Verwoerd with his high pitched, thick-tongued intonation of racist justifications that reminded me of the joy I felt as a child when I heard about his assassination. Afterwards an actress told me that Klaff’s portrayal of Verwoerd had sent a chill down her spine.

Colin Lovell is the first on stage. He is the young schoolboy based on Klaff’s recollections of his own childhood in Johannesburg at that time. Innocent and naïve; his only concern is about his father finding out about the windows he broke while playing cricket. Colin’s mother Marjorie and journalist father Eric are liberal conservatives who are aware of the injustice but still enjoy the good life - a universal liberal dilemma and not too different from my own parents. When Colin asks what Sharpeville is, he is promptly shushed. Colin’s uncle Alf is into weights. Charles Atlas was big in South Africa then. I remember even my dad bought the magazines and weights.

Klaff evokes the inane cheerfulness of the Tony Blackburn-like DJs on Springbok Radio - the equivalent of Radio 1 here - determined that everyone should continue to have a good time despite these portentous events. Like Colin, most of the population outside the townships lived in blissful ignorance of the seething unrest that flared up at Sharpeville. We had no TVs.

His Albert Luthuli is ponderous and slow and believable as the elder-statesman of the ANC who was inspired by Ghandi’s belief in Satyagraha – the non-violent resistance campaign that the Indians had used to successfully oppose the imposition of the pass laws on their community. Can he persuade Verwoerd of his cause?

Robert Sobukwe, the leader of the PAC is portrayed in more forthright tones. Sobukwe promotes his idea of non-racialism against Verwoerd’s euphemism of multi-racialism:

To us the term ‘multi-racialism’ implies that there are such basic insuperable differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democratic apartheid. That to us is racialism multiplied, which probably is what the term truly connotes. We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans, for the Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Afrika and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African. We guarantee no minority rights, because we think in terms of individuals, not groups.’

But is he anti-white? He says he is not.

In a flash, Klaff’s body crumples and becomes the victim of the massacre who describes the carnage he had witnessed that day, hardly believing what he has seen. Did they really do that? Why?

After Sharpeville, Klaff becomes a recognisable young Mandela who decides that they must use violence against violence, breaking with the old ANC tradition of peaceful resistance and diplomatic entreaty. 

The play asks questions of the audience by forcing us to consider the issues from different perspectives. The nagging doubts are with the audience as well as the participants - except of course for the architect of apartheid itself – Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. Everyone agrees there is no way to empathise with Verwoerd. ‘I’m a donkey and I’m a Dutchman’, chants the unbending Verwoerd, reprising the term of abuse coined by his opponents and revelling in the apt simile.

Klaff tells me that his ninety-year-old mum and sister still live in Johannesburg but that he has not been back to South Africa since 1994. I think it’s time he visited again because I would like to see Klaff do something on the new South Africa. There are many nagging doubts about the new regime that need to be aired.

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