Angolan border war resurfaces in powerful London play exploring race and reconciliation

Detailed summary

Paul Herzberg’s London play The Moth revisits South Africa’s secretive Angolan border war through a tense encounter between a black journalist and a former apartheid soldier.…

Paul Herzberg’s London play The Moth revisits South Africa’s secretive Angolan border war through a tense encounter between a black journalist and a former apartheid soldier. Exploring racism, trauma, hatred and the difficult pursuit of forgiveness, the production confronts the lasting human cost of conflict.

South Africa’s secretive war in Angola half a century ago is playing out nightly on a London stage in a visceral play confronting racism, war, trauma, redemption and the limits of forgiveness.

It is a riveting psychological thriller with memorable performances and clear messages for humanity regarding the growing global trend to revert to tribal identities such as race, which divide rather than seek common ground.

It is powerful rather than comfortable viewing, particularly for those such as myself who lived through the apartheid era.

The play both demonstrates in microcosm how wrong things can go when hatred and anger run out of control, and the give and take needed to resolve conflict.

The narrative is all the more powerful for being based on a chance meeting in which two men are forced to confront their troubled past. There is no happy ending – rather some sort of redemption by attrition.

The drama unfolds on a train bound for Dundee between a South African-born black British journalist who despises apartheid, and a white Afrikaner soldier who served in the Angolan border war to uphold the apartheid regime and thwart its efforts to control Angola.

South African-born actor and award-winning playwright and screenwriter Paul Herzberg, who left South Africa in 1976 after serving as an auxiliary in the Angolan border war, has returned to the Angolan border war theme for the third time.

He has a distinguished and diversified career in theatre, film, and television spanning 50 years, which includes playing the late Shimon Peres in the smash hit Oslo at the National Theatre and in London’s West End.

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