This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 0 

University of the Witwatersrand 
Wits School of Arts 

MA Research 
 
 

THIS IS NOT 

DAWID OLIVIER 
 

A play in draft form by Matthew Lotter 
 

 
 
 
 

 
Submitted by 
Matthew Lotter 

For the Degree of Master of Arts in Dramatic Art  

by Research and Creative Project 

Student Number 1558544 

19 March 2018 

 

 

Supervised by 
Nondumiso Msimanga 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 1 

TABLE OF CONTENTS  
 

This Is Not Dawid Olivier: Cast       2 
This Is Not Dawid Olivier: Part 1      3 
This Is Not Dawid Olivier: Part 2      33 
This Is Not Dawid Olivier: Part 3      56 

This Is Not Dawid Olivier: Part 4      72 

This Is Not Dawid Olivier: Portfolio      91 
 Introduction         91 
 Drafts and Things 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 2 

 
CAST 

 

DAWID OLIVIER…    White. Male. Played between toddler and 50s. 

ALLISON OLIVIER…   White. Female. Played between 20s – 40s. 

MARTA BARENDS…  Coloured. Female. Played between 10s – 40s. 

REBECCA BARENDS…   Coloured. Female. 20s. 

SAREL BOSMAN…   Coloured. Male. Played between 20s – 40s. 

OUPA OLIVIER…   White. Male. Played between 40s – 80s. 
 

Minor role to be played by the actor playing ALLISON: 

MARIKE OLIVIER…   White. Female. 30s. EMILY FOGARTY…       White. Female. 40s. 
   

Minor roles to be played by the actor playing REBECCA: 

RACHEL BARENDS…Coloured. Female. 40s. 

DEBORAH…      Coloured. Female. 20s. 

LUCILLE ADAMS…       Coloured. Female. 20s. 

 

Minor roles to be played by the actor playing SAREL: 

P.W…     White. Male. 20. 

JACK…    Mixed Race. Male. 30s. 

BARAK…           Coloured. Male. 20s. 

 
 

Minor roles to be played by the actor playing OUPA: 

FW OLIVIER…   White. Male. 30s. 

REPORTER…   White. Male. 30s. 

B.J VENTER…   White. Male. 30s – 40s. 

TOMMY…            White. Male. 30s. 

PUBLISHER…           White. Male. 30s. 

HERBERT FOGARTY…   White. Male. 40s. 
 

NOTES: The dialogue may at times overlap. At suggested points a (*) is used to indicate dialogue which 

is spoken simultaneously. A (/) is used to indicate the starting point for proceeding dialogue to begin its 

overlap in mid speech. 
In scenes 7, 10, 11, 26, 28, 35 and 50, the actors are interviewed, documentary style. This actor breakdown 

reads as follows: Actor 1- DAWID, Actor 2 – ALLISON, Actor 3 – MARTA, Actor 4 – REBECCA, Actor 5 

– Oupa, Actor 6 – SAREL.  This actor division is a suggestion and can be altered at the director’s discretion.  



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 3 

 

PART 1. 
 

1. Black. Siren. It is an ambulance siren. 

A police scanner broadcast: 
 

VORSTER: Control this is Lieutenant Colonel Vorster, a 901 Tango; accident with injury on the 

November 10 north. That vehicle reg. Tango Juliet 199-491. That’s Tango Juliet 199-491. 

Three fatalities: One adult female, Caucasian; one adult male, Caucasian, one boy – shit, he’s 

just – one minor male… who are you boy? 
 

Lights up. It’s 1948. Somewhere in the Karoo.  

Dim lights on a couple in a car. MARIKE and FW. A boy, their son DAWID, plays with a doll in 

front of them. He is in full light. A radio plays under the scene. 

RADIO: - the electorate today, asking 

them to choose between his 

United Party with its vague policy 

of slow racial unification and ‘fair 

living conditions for all’ and a 

Nationalist Party with a clear 

system of social organisation 

planned to keep a separate, 

sustainable progress for the 

natural groupings of this country. 

The Prime Minister himself has 

admitted ‘things inevitably go 

wrong’ after war, and indeed he 

has allowed wrong to become an 

inevitability for the white worker 

FW:  I said it once, I can say it again till the Olivier’s 

get their two acres back; that boy will go to 

Voortrekkers. How else will he learn becoming a 

man; all soft at your elbow and dreaming of 

words? What well will words do him? Marike I 

ask you now; what well?   

MARIKE: Those words never left your mouth FW, sit 

there lying with a straight face. Take your foot off 

that accelerator, magtig. He is a boy, FW. If you 

put your hands at something other than pushing 

him so hard you could see it too. (She takes the 

doll from the boy, giving him a toy car.) He’s not 

like you; words are his corn, the sheep of his field. 

There are other ways of being man – 

FW: Not that live in this world, Marike, not that live 

under my roof. Other ways of – do you know what 

Commented [ML1]: FW calls him by 
Dawid Johannes? Giving his perspective 
of Dawid another name  

Commented [ML2]: Perhaps Marike has 
a nickname for him too. D.J? Dawikie?  



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 4 

of this country with unsustainable 

ideas of integration. 
 

The issue at the heart of this 1948 

election is whether or not the 

current government, formed by 

Smut’s United Party is 

representative of the country it 

serves. Can Smuts provide the 

leadership required after the Great 

War – a war, which I remind you, 

he dragged our boys and indeed 

the entire country into, on his own 

accord – to survive these tough 

economic times. One cannot think 

with the electioneering his party 

has done in these early months 

leading to the election in May, 

that the UP are aware of the 

temperature, can I say that? The 

temperature of the country it is 

wooing.  
 

The Prime Minister, if you will 

recall, paraded through the streets 

of every major port and town of 

the land with the royal family a 

few short months ago, as if to rub 

in the faces of families whose 

sons were lost in that war, the 

control of the British on our dear 

happens to other ‘men’ Marike? Do you know? 

The world might be all round corners and butter 

for women, but it hits up on a man; ploughs him 

straight through till December. You can believe 

that, and if he doesn’t have some metal, some skin 

thicker than a sheet, it won’t bruise that flesh, 

there will be nothing to bruise; he will be beat 

down and buried into the ground so fast his 

ligaments can sprout spring corn. That’s what 

happens to other men, Marike. Not my boy. Now 

I have said he will go, I don’t see why I should be 

sitting here defending my choice to my wife.  
 

The boy climbs over his mother and retrieves the doll. He 

marches it like a soldier over his mother, who takes it 

gently from him and gives him a toy gun. The boy uses the 

gun as a doll, then, grows bored of it. 
 

MARIKE: Don’t give me that. When have I ever been 

the wife you don’t defend to? No FW, you put that 

right back where you found it. I’m not the wife 

you don’t back and forth on something with, no 

FW! You wanted that wife, you married 

something else. You drive this fast to frustrate me, 

that I know. FW, I didn’t walk out of one home 

with those men to start another one with you. You 

know it. Four brothers broken by a pa so broken 

he couldn’t see the breaking he was causing 

through the cracks. They don’t know the touch of 

love if it isn’t given to them off the back hand/ I 

don’t like that. 
 

Commented [ML3]: Does she mention 
radio is too loud, she’s only hearing parts 
of what F.W. is saying – Hint to theme! 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 5 

state. Unconscionable. To suggest 

Mister Jan Hofmeyr as the 

successor to Prime Minister 

Smuts; the man is – he circles the 

very hem of communism. And 

may I remind you, Smuts has 

made motions and statements 

which can be read not so subtly as 

support of a State of Israel. He 

cannot dream to think the 

common man on the street would 

handle these assaults on common 

Christian decency.  
 

In Malan the UP have a 

formidable and deft opponent. 

The Union had barely got ground 

under foot after the great 

depression, and the drought of 

’33, when General Smuts usurped 

power from General Hertzog, in 

what can only be called a move of 

self-glorification. Despite 

Hertzog’s call for neutrality, 

Smuts saw fit to ignore the 

Union’s policy of friendship with 

Germany, and place us at the feet 

of an empire that, only four short 

decades before, had burned its 

way through this country creating 

the foundation of the very 

The boy climbs over both his parents to get at the doll, 

giving the gun to his father. MARIKE puts the boy down 

back where he started, with no toy. Neither parent looks 

at the child through this or any other interaction. 
  
FW: Marike, stop right there with your family, before 

you start another thing here. I’m talking about the 

boy. 

MARIKE: I don’t want to make my boy like that. Our 

boy. Go say it FW. My kind. My seun. Then feel 

what it tastes like when you put those words next 

to ‘Voortrekker loskop’; /tied up by his ankles 

three drinks from heaven. 

FW: Now calm right now there Marike! Let us talk 

nicely about these things. We can still talk like 

people on this. 

MARIKE: Us and we. Where FW? Where was that ‘us’ 

and ‘we’ when you decided to send our child 

there? Now you want ‘us’ and ‘we’ when you 

stand with your pa talking about ‘raising the boy’ 

like he was a shiny new thing. You should have 

kept that gold band to yourself and thank you 

Jesus. 
 

The boy retrieves the doll. He looks happy. He uses it as 

one would a puppet, in the production of a story. 
 

FW: What you understand about fathers and sons 

Marike could fill up the side of your apron string. 

I want that boy with skin so thick he won’t have 

to feel a tremble when he walks into my house 

with his boy and tells me what for. I never had that 

Commented [ML4]: F.W needs action in 
this scene, perhaps pepper with trying to 
find a destination? He is reading a map?  

Commented [ML5]: Would this imply he 
has chosen a side? Does this imply Dawid 
has accepted ‘feminisation’? Perhaps let 
Dawid play with both gun and doll and use 
both as puppets? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 6 

economic struggle we battle with 

today.  
 

Malan is not amiss in pointing 

these facts out. Correctly he has 

used this for political gain. Malan 

is shoring up support amongst a 

public who feel Smuts has 

abandoned his people to become a 

mouthpiece for his new British 

masters. Look at his dealing with 

the honest mine workers in ’22. 

What a fiasco; if you recall. Civil 

war on the rand, with some 200 

miners shot dead and more than a 

thousand injured, in a labour 

strike. I ask you, a strike? To 

allow the chamber of mines to 

rescind the colour bar would have 

decimated the local white 

workforce. Good hard-working 

South African men would be 

replaced by cheap Native labour 

to satisfy the coffers of Britain. 

Has Oom Japie not learned his 

lesson?  
 

Malan’s HNP is the only party to 

offer concrete plans to keep the 

white man in work, and to grow 

our union in tandem with Native 

Marike; life caught me green with its punches. I 

want to make my boy something else. 

MARIKE: Vader, you’ll catch our death sooner than 

later in this car. What are you planning next then 

FW? /Tell me that without lying, tell me that. 

FW:   I want him to feel so strong against life; he’s an 

oak against the wind. You wouldn’t understand 

that Marike, life isn’t the same with girls; life 

doesn’t come at you from the moment the sun 

crosses the horizon ‘til it creeps back under. Work 

with your one hand here, hit back with your other 

there, (FW takes the doll away from the boy) and 

on your back, make room for a family to hold 

onto. And they hold on Marike. They hold on so 

tight there isn’t a space there for light thoughts, 

soft things…for words. Even if they are your corn. 

And then, when the sun dips below, or when life 

thinks you aren’t hard enough, man enough yet, 

life hits back harder with every kind of thing 

grabbing at that family, defending knocks you into 

a sleep without dreams, Marike. Now tell me I’m 

wrong for wanting to keep that boy from that day, 

Marike. Tell me I’m wrong to make him tough, 

before that day comes. And comes again. /And 

again, after that.  
 

MARIKE gives the boy a hammer. He is upset by this. He 

begins to hit the floor with the hammer. 
 

MARIKE: And again, after that. And after that. FW, that 

day comes for me too. That day comes and it 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 7 

Crash sounds. Glass explodes, splinters. Tires scream. A police scanner broadcast: 
 

VORSTER: It was a kudu that did it. One large male. You should see this – albino; white as a 

church steeple. My heavens! It took them out. The whole front end – they must have been 

coming at a speed from Middelburg, straight into you, old boy. Nothing much left of the 

front end. The back – ah. Christ…Control – control. He’s – the little chap – come on son – 

he’s alive. What’s your name son? Control, we have a survivor, the boy – he’s – what’s your 

name son…  

 

territories. Separate territorial 

spheres, I think he mentioned so, 

will allow for equal but separated 

economic, legislative and 

political development of white 

and native communities in ways 

which will secure the continued 

livelihood of the white South 

African man.  
 

One cannot think the poorest of 

the poor, those white Afrikaners 

living below the bread line and 

neglected, I dare say, neglected by 

the pro-British stance of Smuts 

and his cronies, would ignore 

such a call from such a party as 

the HNP. I wager, come May 28, 

the headlines will read of Dr. 

Malan, and not General Smuts, 

being summoned to form a 

cabinet.       
 

comes sharp as needles up inside my skin, and I 

face that too. Vader, you think you standing 

against that day alone? Am I not that wife part of 

your flesh, standing there in the husband part of 

my own and feeling the day beat down on me? 

FW, I married a man with more sense between his 

ears than for you to think otherwise. You think I 

didn’t want hands free for other things than 

catching our sons and making home? But I am 

here on that back FW and the sun isn’t any easier 

on my skin from up here. My hands aren’t any 

freer when the night comes. But I keep that back 

light and easy as a woman can, I can let go of 

wanting other things FW, but not that boy – you 

and I didn’t stand against the world two feet sunk 

in the ground to put our boy right there with us – 

No –  



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 8 

2. It’s 1994. London. ALLISON and DAWID’S apartment. 
 

DAWID: Dawid Johannes Laurens Olivier, but no one here ever wraps their mouths around the lot. 

/They try at customs.  

REPORTER: Good morning, hello Davi – Mr. Olivier. /How do you do, sir? 

DAWID: David, please. How are you boy? Good morning. Please get yourself on that chair. David. 

Dawid. Who have you come to put into that article of yours, son? What am I to be today? 

The lesser-spotted white freedom fighter? The exiled playwright roaming the isle? Ovid? 

Are you to show the South African Ovid? Dawid, Ovid – there’s a ring there if you will have 

it. Or the old man no one wants – well, speak up boy. /I’d have journal filled -  

REPORTER: The whole man, if you please Mr. Olivier. 

DAWID: David, boy, Dawid! How are you to capture ‘the wholeness’ of man, let alone the one 

here, if you cannot start with the correct name? The name boy, write it down D-A-W – the 

rub lies in the W…fool’s errand this!  

REPORTER: How do you get to thinking that? Is all art not just another way of getting to the truth, 

/this is just another view of the world – 

DAWID: Truth? What a thing is that? Grasping at sand there, the tighter you hold around it the 

quicker it falls between your fingers and in your palm, it hardens to something else. 

Something more like that mark of your hand, than the Karoo dunes you tried to collect.  

REPORTER: That lyric belongs with prose; journalism is a more finely-tuned beast of words. 

Accurate. I’ve come to show the man, not sing the hero. 

DAWID: How prosaic. 

REPORTER: I shall start with some questions, history, important people, places; let’s see then 

where your story takes us. Then perhaps something more specific; a focus on your works, 

The Train Driver, The Captain’s Tiger, the latest one – I’ve just read that – Revolver Creek?  

I’ll go away then, sit with that, all of that in my hands and see what shifts away and what 

stays in the shape of an article. 

DAWID: Liberal thought, ‘see where the sands shifts’. But passive, like a girl child waiting for a 

father to lift a torch and show the way through the night. Are you the girl child? /Am I the 

one to lift the torch? 

REPORTER: Not at all, sir – 

Commented [ML6]: Is there a way to 
indicate this year? Perhaps through action? 
Is Dawid voting? Contradict later account. 

Commented [ML7]: Perhaps inset here 
the many sides you aren’t showing in the 
play? Farmer, father, avid gardener… so 
on. Hint at the fact that there is more to 
Dawid than I am representing? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 9 

DAWID: No, neither are most girl children. Where do we account for that, in there? My wife, my 

Rebecca then – forgive the nonsense. Direction, boy, is always inherent, thought out, hiding 

in your chest like a carver’s tool. Take it out. Show your craft, tell the audience the route you 

will take in cutting back a whole life into 500 words. You sound less conceited then, when 

you all get there in the end. 

REPORTER: Is that what you fear, Mr. Olivier? The prospect of creative conceit winning out over 

truth? 

DAWID: ‘Truth’. ‘Fear’. Are you not made of stuff less green, son? ‘Truth’. Everything you set 

your hands to in the name of art is creative conceit. You can hold on to words like 

‘authenticity’ and ‘truth’, but you may as well hold signs; stop, yield, bear left. They are no 

more the thing they indicate than man is a fish. You can write me a true man of many aspects 

but bury that in a frame of words it becomes another thing, or be true to part of a thing that 

is not true to the whole. Truth but not truth.  
 

It’s present day. Talking starts in darkness. A light spot slowly reveals the actors as if in a 

documentary interview. Each actor is to answer the questions posed to them below. 
 

ACTOR 3: (Answers these questions: How would you describe the emotional toll of a sexual 

betrayal? How do you think the trauma of infidelity impacts identity?) 

ACTOR 2: (Answers these questions: What do you understand by the term ‘infidelity’? How do 

you think the general motivation for cheating differs between women and men?) 

ACTOR 3: (Answers this question: Do you believe society makes it easier for men to cheat?) 

 

DAWID: Art’s only truth is that it is that; a creative conceit. To conceal that conceit, to present the 

pretence of truth as truth; fool’s errand.  

REPORTER: What of Blood Knot and Sharpeville then?   
 

3. It’s 1967. The Karoo. The Olivier homestead.  

RACHEL and her daughter MARTA set a large dining room table for dinner. 
 

SAREL (O/S): I don’t know much of anything about /that -  

Commented [ML8]: Re-frame these 
questions to be about perception. Stronger 
link to theme of ‘reality’ vs. perception  
and representation… 

Commented [ML9]: Shorten this, focus 
more on Sarel and B.J. 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 10 

B.J:  (Running off stage with a rugby ball) Nobody would expect a cotton head to, Sarel, but what 

I can say is: What’s worth learning that a man doesn’t already know? /Now, that’s a penalty 

to –  

DAWID: (Following after) Watch those words coming out your mouth/ B.J. 

B.J (O/S): Loosen your bra strap, Dawid. Though why Oupa Olivier let you off to a varsity in 

‘Mother City’ is a reason buried between him, the four walls and God the father.  

*RACHEL: Go on, pull that side straight there Martie. Miesies Olivier will have my hands burning, 

this cloth sits skew. 

*B.J (O/S): Look here, he sneaks in the back and - thank you, a try! The only use for that University 

of Cape Town, is putting enough English words in the mouth of moneypiel like Hendrik, 

they can confuse any girl enough to pull in. 

RACHEL: Enough noise to knock thoughts straight out of my head. Set a place at the foot for 

Auntie Lettie, /she’s up from the farm. 

SAREL (O/S): Hendrik? That you get from where? He’s at no uni. Got himself conscripted. 

B.J (O/S): What’d he go do a thing like that for? There isn’t testosterone enough running through 

that slack prick to break a five Rand. Sarel, water boy!  
 

SAREL enters.  
 

RACHEL: Take the glass off that table Sarel, two mind you. Martie, a tin cup. Don’t you think of 

walking that /grass onto my clean floors. 
 

SAREL collects two glasses and a tin cup of water from MARTA who, blushing, looks outside.    
 

SAREL: (Calling out to off stage) It’s conscription Mr. Venter. He’s got to be thinking: Get the first 

buck in for a girl Friday post – dankie Marta (Exits) – before someone puts a rifle in his hand 

and sends him to the border and finds out he’s shooting blanks /There’s no Field Marshal 

buried in that boy, he’s ripping that plaster.  

RACHEL: (To MARTA) Cut those looks before they root. That kind of coloured is all charm and 

‘dankie Marta’ till they land in prison and it’s you fishing them out. Police here don’t need 

a reason to arrest you and that damned father of yours hands them two.  
 

Commented [ML10]: Perhaps start the 
scene here? Jump into meat of the scene! 
Commented [ML11]: Describe the army 
entering townships to answer above 
question: what about Sharpeville? NB -
link! 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 11 

B.J enters. DAWID follows. MARTA notices. 
 

DAWID: Talking about conscription like he knows – like he’s liable to be called up himself. Sarel; 

you’d make a white man if you weren’t so coloured. (Tentatively) There’s a chance we will 

all have to face that call up B. J. Maybe sooner’s better than later.  

RACHEL: (Noticing MARTA’S flushed face) I’ve spoken Marta Barnards. Fetch me my purse and 

headscarf, thank you girl. 
 

MARTA exits. 
 

SAREL: I bet what he’s thinking: get a neat kiekie to get a girl.  

B.J:  Don’t worry, Sareltjie, I promise, there are SADF men; strong, clever, white men, who have 

that sluiper Hendrik in hand. If nature won’t take care of him, the SADF will. Pour us a 

whisky soda! (To DAWID) What? The bubbles make easy work of lactic acid! 

DAWID: I don’t see why you’re still yammering about Hendrik when that boy chose the SADF as 

much as sheep choose dipping. 

B.J:  (Said throwing ice from a bucket at SAREL to catch in tumblers) Now see, there’s the thing. 

What’s the SADF looking at calling up his kind? They’ve learned nothing from senator, 

what’s-his-name? Who figured the commies were breeding traitors with the queers and the 

Jews?  

DAWID: McCarthy. 

B.J:  The very same. Now you think he would have sent that bent nail into the South West? Right 

there with the Soviets and that SWAPPA nonsense? They’d sniff him out and then it’s one, 

two, three: Domino! No, he’s paying his way to a plum posting. That money-balls better not 

creep down Meintjies Straat December, jingling medals like Christmas bells.    
 

MARTA re-enters. 
 

SAREL:  Since when you so concerned about another man’s bells?  

B.J: If he knows how to use them, I’m putting up my two (Hands up) and covering my six. Real 

men don’t need to puff out their bells with uni papers, or buying postings. When your legs 

come back over your head you’ll know I’ve been. (To DAWID) But Hendrik’ll walk round 

Commented [ML12]: Sarel is perhaps 
under ‘spoken’ here. Give him more 
dialogue space? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 12 

like he’s jingling, when you and I both know there isn’t anything under that suit pants that 

didn’t stop growing in Standard 5. Never take a man only by what he says he is. Trying to 

cover what he does by what he says? Pretence! Isn’t that right? I’m right. I know it, just say 

it. You know it. Say it, say B.J, you’re right! Say it! (Pause) I’m kidding, Davina. Right, 

Sarel? Now here’s a boy who never thought of pretending to be more than Mother Nature 

intended, right? 

SAREL:  Not any more or any less than any law allowed. 

B.J: Can’t even talk straight. As it was intended. Ousie. Fill me up! Soda! 

RACHEL: Yes, baas, please baas, my girl Marta can get you the soda. I must get myself into town. 

My husband has a bill I must settle before five.  

B.J: Yeah, where there’s a skirt there’s another story. (Looking for soda) You want to kick out 

another? 
 

DAWID trying to stop B.J from getting at the soda siphon, grabs at it first, tosses to SAREL, and 

bounces it between them with B.J in the middle. 
 

DAWID: Can’t.  

B.J (O/S): Now winning that line out – on the wing is B.J Venter, stepping out, brilliantly misses 

the tackle. Back into the midfield with Bosman, pass to Venter, (B.J catches the siphon, turns 

on SAREL threatening to spray him with soda) with no full back here’s a chance and there’s 

a try! (He sprays SAREL) 

DAWID: Can’t. (Looking at MARTA) I’ve got some studying to do!  

B.J:  Politics student -studying? What’s her name Dawey? I’ve known you all my natural life, 

never once put a ball down for a book! Where’s the girl you’re studying? Politics 101? Not 

happening. What’s her name? 
 

DAWID pushes an excitable B.J and SAREL out the room. 
 

4. It’s 1982. MARTA’S backroom. The Karoo. The Olivier homestead.  

MARTA is holding a baby. Her and DAWID’S child. 
 

MARTA: Rebecca. Her name’s Rebecca. Ma se klein Bekkie. 

Commented [ML13]: Perhaps in this 
scene she is in the main house and not his 
maid? Talks thenof the perception that 
people will have, that her working else 
where is becaiuse of him not her own 
volition. Will challenge the representation 
of Marta as maid 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 13 

DAWID: Rebecca – Rebecca. Bekkie, my klein babatjie. 

MARTA: Shush, shush that noise now. /She’s no need to be awake now. 

DAWID: Who must I keep quiet for? Am I not the farm Baas? (Singing) Doringboom heuning jou 

soet gebak, ma se klein Bekkie. Bruin brood warm Bekkie, jou Pa se mosbolletjie –  

MARTA: Dawid Olivier, I swear, I can smell that singing from here, sit your drunk self down before 

you break something. /Shush quiet – or you’ll have her screams and my hands wringing your 

ears. 

DAWID: (Singing) Soettant verstom, jy’s jou pa se Suikerbekkie. Ah, Doringboom Heuning Marta 

Barends, that sweet-bread oven of yours has made me happy twice over. 

MARTA: Dawid Olivier, hold yourself in. /And in front of a baby! 

DAWID: Marta Barends! I’ve been holding myself in since that day I met you. Took all I had to 

hold it in, when I heard out there working my sheep this afternoon. Look what we made 

Marta Barends; one strip of your warm dough twisted next to one strip of whatever she got 

from me, all wrapped up in sweetness, smell that Marta Barends, she’s sweet summer rain. 

Suikerbekkie ek wil jou hê - 

MARTA: You held in as much as the law said you should, Dawid Olivier. You were all ready to 

take it all out when the law man wasn’t looking. Still are! Can’t walk through your house 

without your hands at me! That’s what made this Bekkie. Since the day you met me? That is 

a lie bigger than any you’ve ever told. You stood there in your front room, first time we met, 

with a mouth full of words about Odysseus and Troy and his hero’s journey, like I never 

received an education, like you were showing me the inside of a tortoise shell; followed me 

around like you had it in your hand. All I could do was say two words and stop you dead 

still: Immorality Act! 

DAWID: Now what you go and do that for; lying in front of my Suikerbekkie? Your nose is as long 

as a plough tills wide. You came into my front room three times to dust the same shelf. Every 

time you had a new set of questions on you: What you reading? Who’s it by? Does he die in 

the end? You let slip you knew so much when you let out a triad on Ms. Waiting Penelope. 

“Isn’t she just the picture of a white woman? What other woman’s got the time for that much 

waiting? No coloured woman I can assure you Klein Baas Dawid”. That’s when I knew 

you’d be someone I wanted to sit myself down next to. And I’ve sat next to you every day 

since. And I will every day you let me! 

Commented [ML14]: Perhaps this is 
what Marta will call him through out? Her 
version of his name? to frame her version 
of Dawid? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 14 

MARTA: What kind of misremembering are you making up here? That mampoer’s dulled your 

memory as much as your sense! Leave that stuff to your workers -  

DAWID: And the only two words that stopped either of us dead still were: Rachel Barends.       

MARTA: Still does; she ever finds out she’ll pull me out by the hair and show the whole street, 

she’ll say ‘Here’s the fool, here’s twice the fool! Let a white man between her thighs and got 

herself an 18-year keepsake for that wisdom’. /What she’d do to you – 

DAWID: What are you saying? She doesn’t know? 

MARTA: What should I tell her? ‘Ma Rachel I’ve got a white Romeo waiting behind the big house 

balcony’. She’d call Ou Mies Olivier with tears so many her hands couldn’t catch; swearing 

she’s not that same kind of devil that took hold of her child. Have you told Ouma Olivier? 

No, because she’ll call the police so fast they’ll have you in bracelets before she drops dead 

from shock. What kind of crazy world do you live in? Does she know? I love you Dawid 

Olivier, but you know this is right. A Baas and his house-meid? Where’s the caramel and 

milk bottle walking hand in hand down the street? Where’d they let that happen? You know 

it’s not here, not now! That Nelson, he’s trying to climb up on that white man’s shelf and 

when he makes room, we’re next in line. Then you can dream of telling Ou Mies Olivier, 

then I can dream of screaming so loud ‘Dawid Olivier is my kêrel’, ‘Come see our love 

twisted into a koeksuster and dipped in joy so sweet we called her Suikerbekkie’, but there 

is too much road before I get there Dawid. My passbook’s got no space for that kind of dream 

world. 

DAWID: Because I’m a farm-baas I do? They may let me in, but it’s one-size-fits-all dreams they’re 

handing out there. (Pause) I suppose I’m just a fool of the white man variety, but I’ll keep 

working my land, keep coming home to you Marta Barends and keep dreaming our dream 

for Bruin Brood and Soet Mosbolletjie and I.  

MARTA: That kind of fool knows no colour, Dawid Olivier. That kind of head rot is just you. 

DAWID: Don’t try show me down in front of the Suikerbekkie, Marta.right now I’m just a happy 

drunk father farmer. I’m who I want to be, where I want to be. She’ll decide what kind of 

fool I am all with her own mind. (Singing) Doringboom heuning jou soet gebak, ma se klein 

Bekkie. Bruin brood warm Bekkie, jou Pa se mosbolletjie –  
 

 

 

Commented [ML15]: THEME!! 

Commented [ML16]: Perhaps this is 
reframed to pick up that people will think 
of her as Dawid’s maid? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 15 

5. It’s 1999. London. DAWID and ALLISON’S apartment.   
 

ALLISON: That just sounds like a bunch of words you put together too quickly. I’m sorry. You’re 

going to have to give me a minute to put them – to go over them in a way so that I can 

understand what you’re saying. Dammit David I am about a minute away from asking you 

for that again, because that’s what we do David. You sit on your chair and I sit on mine and 

we talk about the minutes that make up our days. Even now. Even when your chair is in a 

bedsit across the city. Now you walk away from that chair, to go back to Johannesburg. And 

you don’t tell me. 

DAWID: Keep it simple Allison. You broke the space between those chairs when you took that 

grant and flew off to Germany, first time. 

ALLISON: You were right next to me when that happened, don’t you go re-remembering our past. 

This is not a poem for you to edit. I came back to you; I come back to you –  

DAWID: For you. You come back to see how the land is lying. And I have to see how much further 

away I am from you and my – my writing! 

ALLSION: Fuck you! 

DAWID: How are you not expecting this Allison?  

ALLISON: So, the curtain falls? Your final act is written David? So long and farewell to Allison. 

Don’t I get my happy ending? Don’t I get some resolution? 

DAWID: Allison. Allison, I need this. You’ve got - I cannot run out my days staying here. I barely 

write – last thing that crossed my pen was about a fly! A fly, Allison. Musca dominestica – 

you can’t keep holding on to us as a play thing -  

ALLISON: Me? Now you want to talk about me? Where was that concern when you took up the 

bottle and drank yourself out of a plumb teaching job? So, drunk you slept off a hangover, 

election time. If you had me on your mind David, I wouldn’t be finding out about your flight 

back to Johannesburg /the day you’re packing your bags! 

DAWID: You’re not listening, woman! I need to write. Can’t you see that? 

ALLISON: So, write David. Write. What’s stopping that pen from putting down something on 

paper? Standing here with lies in your mouth. 

DAWID: I need space, Allison – the walls keep coming in at me. All I can see is you. And me. And 

– I don’t have the word for this, Allison. I need to go. Let me find my words! 

Commented [ML17]: Dawid is writing 
an article about Mbeki’s election 

Commented [ML18]: Dawid on the 
phone waiting for comment 

Commented [ML19]: Perhaps he’s been 
given opportunity by newspaper 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 16 

ALLISON: Just say it – then we’ll get you space here. I’ll get you – no, you can’t find the words 

David because there aren’t any to find. The ones that you have are choking up your throat, 

because you’re to chicken shit to let them out and hear them. /Pull that plaster. Say it. 

DAWID: I’m telling you the best way I know how – I’ve had nothing published in two years, 

Allison. A whole year before that since I put something worth reading /on paper –  

ALLISON: This is redundant. You’re disgusting. 

DAWID: We’re not even – when was the last time? You and me? /I can’t remember –  

ALLISON: Blood Knot is up for reprint! It’s a celebrated piece of political academics – practically 

a text book! People read that! 

DAWID: You left, Allison. You left, when I needed you. This is not the betrayal. 

ALLISON: No, that happened at the Karoo. It’s her isn’t it? Standing here trying to sell ‘writing’ 

so hard, when you haven’t written in 2 years. It’s her. Your black slut. Say it David. The only 

poetry you want to write is sung between the thighs of your black slut in the Karoo.  

DAWID: Fuck you. 

ALLISON: You never gave us a fighting chance. I love you, you fuck. 

DAWID: Please. Let me write.  
 

6. It’s 1959. Somewhere in the Karoo. Voortrekker camp.  

DAWID has finished reciting a poem to PIETER-WILLEM (P.W), the team leader, and a small group 

of teenage boys. 
 

P.W:  Isn’t that just a poem? All the right words put together, sitting right where they need to be. 

Beautiful. Doesn’t rhyme. Some people might feel cheated about that, I don’t, but some 

people may just do Dawid.   

DAWID: It’s free verse, I wrote it just like that. 

P.W: Sorry I didn’t – you wrote it like that… 

DAWID: I wrote it like that, Oom P.W. 

P.W:  There it is. The fire pit is standing as cold as the minute I left it this morning. The potjie isn’t 

doing anything more than collecting ants. Yet you found time to put together a neat row of 

words into a poem as lovely as cool wind through summer bluegums. Now I may not be as 

culture as Verkenner Dawid here, but I think the correct response to that bit of poetry, is an 

‘aw’. Let us give him an ‘aw’ boys. 

Commented [ML20]: Dawid intergects 
he hardlt knew Marta  

Commented [ML21]: Shorten scene 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 17 

BOYS: Aw!  

DAWID: I was heading over to get the kindling for the fire –  

P.W: You were heading over! No doubt you happened on a thought in your head, pretty Karoo 

words, that you just had to put through pen onto paper. Now there’s no kindling for a fire. 

Your team, your team of Verkenners building a raft, can’t make a fire. The meat is just going 

to sit there, making friends with the potatoes and the vegetables, your team freezing after 

crossing the lake in a raft they just built with their hands, can’t make a potjie – there is no 

fire. But don’t worry, Dawid will keep you warm with words – How long you think they can 

live outside in the winter without a fire before their fingers fall off one by one Dawid? 

DAWID: I don’t know, Oom P.W. 

P.W: You don’t know. If I had a log for all the things you don’t know I could build a fire. I can 

see now why your mother tried, hands over fists, to get you a spot in the Voortrekkers. She 

must be tired, embarrassed; sick and embarrassed that you steal at her pens to write poems. 

Did you get into her needle kit -  

DAWID: I was heading over to get the kindling. The potjie is waiting ready. I took five minutes. 

Eight minutes I would have been back. I can make a fire quicker than any on the team. That’s 

still a minute before the team came back from building that raft. Five minutes wasn’t going 

to send any fingers into frostbite. 

P.W:  If you’ve got balls enough for back talk, you better have brains enough to put an ‘Oom P.W’ 

at the end of it. Now, come over here Dawid, don’t wet yourself in the corner like a 

Drawwertjie. Do you think you would have had that fire ready?  

DAWID: Yes Oom P.W. 

P.W: And you think you would have had that potjie spit cleaned and waiting for the coals before 

that raft pulled up on the shore? 

DAWID: Yes Oom P.W. I had it planned; I had those five minutes free and waiting for myself. 

There’s no way the team pulled that raft together, across the lake and back in time to notice 

my hands were writing for five minutes and not still and waiting with the kindling. Had time 

to notice and bring you walking in on my writing like that – they had no time Oom P.W. 

P.W: I know they had no time Dawid. Do you think my mother dropped me fresh and new this 

morning? What I don’t know is why you have been standing with a hand full of papers when 

staring you in the face is that fact: One of your team ran up a tale about you? One of your 

Commented [ML22]: Start here 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 18 

team had a whole ‘free verse’ delivered without papers about you. But here you stand papers 

in hand, still with all those words in your mouth. Words, words, words Dawid. What are you 

going to do, Drawwertjie? 
  
The boys part to reveal the instigator, B.J. He stands smiling, while the boys chant ‘fight’. Dawid 

doesn’t want to.   
 

7. It’s 1989. London. Outside South Africa House.  

Anti-Apartheid chants heard. DAWID and TOMMY are tipsy. They carry a banner: “CITY 

LONDON ANTI-APARTHEID GROUP. NON-STOP PICKET TO FREE NELSON MANDELA” 
 

TOMMY: You did no such thing David, what stories you selling here now? I thought you were a 

serious journo, not a gossip columnist! You hear this? On the field? 

DAWID: I’m just telling you what happened; the boy wakes up, bed all nicely laid down on the 22, 

with old Solomon standing over him asking: ‘Het jy nou lekker hier geslaap seun?’ That’s 

when the sprinklers came on. Big Soutie Loose Forward, sitting with a mouthful of teeth one 

minute, next he’s dancing in the sprinklers like he was this Non-Stop Picket lot in Trafalgar 

square protesting. Don’t let it touch the ground now, hear me now Tommy? We’ll get a drink 

in after the changeover! 

TOMMY: What’s he do after? 

DAWID: Nothing. What could he do? What captain’s going to give you the what for, when you let 

the other team pick you up in the middle of the night and lay you and your mattress down on 

the 22 and you snoring straight through it? Solomon wasn’t going to say anything; he was 

with us five minutes before when we changed the sprinkler timer. He bounced a cigarette 

with the four of us while we watched that wet Soutie behind waddle up the grandstands, 

lugging a mattress behind him. We’re clapping and singing: ‘Trans Karoo, bring haar huistoe, 

laat jou yster wiele rol…’  

TOMMY: You’re breaking my heart with all that home-talk, Davie. Any sign of that Nat yet? 

DAWID: Hasn’t come in the three years I written about this picket. Nor the 2 I’ve spent in the 

picket! (Shouting) Fucker. Enjoy that bit of South Africa House – (Tearful) a house in South 

Africa. We don’t need to come out, just need to see me. Us. Ja, soutie, I see your eyes, you 

about ready to ask the barman for a warm-me-up beer, keep the change, gimme a Wilson.  

Commented [ML23]: Does Dawid have a 
completely non-literary job here perhaps? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 19 

TOMMY: I haven’t had a Wilson for change in – what, seven, nine years? Haven’t been called a 

soutie in about as long and there’s no Solomon in my shoebox flat other than me! But I bet 

that Solomon’s shoebox is up in flames, or been dragged half way there by Botha’s boys.  

DAWID: Or wrapped in tyres and blown up by his own boys. (Shouting) Botha ought to get himself 

on Robben Island and walk Nelson out himself. (Calmer) He’s holding on so tight he’ll finish 

what Kitchener started.  

TOMMY: The Nats will never allow that. Forgive me for saying it David, but they’d rather see it 

that no one can live there, than give up the ‘Vaderland’. One of you journo-Boers told me as 

much when I got out. 

DAWID: Well they never thought I was much of one of them when I was there, neither did I. Neither 

did Solomon, why would I be offended if you call those journo-Boers what they are? Fucking 

liars! They wouldn’t know truth if it was pressed into their hand like it was something to 

shoot. When they aren’t twisting something to look like something else, they just make the 

rest up, fabricate shit and sell it to the /Boer masses ‘cause they can.  
 

JACK, the barman, enters, in a panic! 
 

JACK: David, David! What you standing here for? Phone’s been ringing off the hook, it’s your 

wife. She tried you at the newspaper’s office – she’s been trying to reach you. Poor girl 

thought you were at the beer. And here you are in the square with the Free-Mandela’s. It’s 

your grandpa David, he’s gone. Passed this morning, she’s been trying to call – she’s had 

them on the phone – sorry old boy. She said there had been a raid or something at your 

grandpa’s; police come by in the night asking after you. They’d – David! David where you 

going? I got your wife on the phone David – what are you going to do? 
 

DAWID exits. Sounds of a fist fight and glass breaking and cheers of ‘Take the Nats down’.  
 

8. It’s present day. Talking starts in darkness. A light spot slowly reveals the actors as if in a 

documentary interview. Each actor is to answer the questions posed to them below. 
 

ACTOR 1: (Answers this question: How do you think the trauma of infidelity impacts identity?) 

Commented [ML24]: Perhaps it’s not 
Allison who is phoning at all. Maybe it’s 
someone from home, maybe he is single 
here… 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 20 

ACTOR 2: (Answers this question: How would you describe the various social pressures on women 

regarding their sex life?) 

ACTOR 1: (Answers this question: How would you describe the various social pressures on men 

regarding their sex life?) 
 

9. It’s 1967. Johannesburg. University of the Witwatersrand. Somewhere on campus. 

Two riot policemen stand in the foreground. DAWID stands with two students; DEBORAH and 

BARAK hidden in a corner, watching the audience. 
 

DEBORAH: How they love to put action to those promises; ‘I’ll see you next time’, ‘Next time I’ll 

introduce you to my baton’; there isn’t a love made more active than between a police man 

and promises of next time!  

DAWID: What’s happening now? 

BARAK: Security police, back on campus. Old man Tobias finished talking at the Great Hall, when 

they set in. They must have missed us so much they needed to take a few friends with them.  

DEBORAH: From here it almost looked like they playing at hide and seek. One black, one moffie, 

one Jehovah’s Witness; pushed in the back of a van. 

DAWID: You do have a way of reporting life like it was a Mel Miller set up, Deborah. 

DEBORAH: Not sure he ever had a right hook for a punch line. (Shouting) Fucker! Enjoy that bit 

of the Great Hall! 

BARAK: Shhh – (He cups his hands over her mouth!) No one takes cussing seriously in a dress 

Debs, not even cute. I’m going to ask you a question Dawid: Why weren’t you protesting? 

You’re a liberal boy. I know you sit in those ‘progressive’ classes with ears open enough to 

take something to root. Look at you: Corduroy pants and hair that hasn’t seen a brush or a 

drop of shampoo. Why weren’t you cussing loudly for freedom? 

DAWID: Are you saying I’m a broken hippie? 

BARAK: I’m saying; you’re not made in the mould of those other white boys. You might not be 

able to shake off all those supremacist sprinkles but you know there’s more than a table spoon 

of Africa mixed in with your baking. Why doesn’t your liberal self speak up? 

DAWID: You think corduroy pants and unwashed hair makes it any easier for anybody to build a 

soap box and throw fists in the air? 

Commented [ML25]: Edit shorter, get to 
the point of asking; who has the ‘right’ to 
speak and who has the opportunity to 
speak in any situation… 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 21 

BARAK: You want me to believe that your corduroy pants and your unwashed hair doesn’t make 

it easier? I don’t see them eyeing your ministerial permission slip when you build that soap 

box? I don’t see you needing a ministerial permission slip just to be here? 

DAWID: I thought you needed to be another beer down before you got to this level of stupid. 

Everybody’s got something to lose here Barak. 

BARAK: Careful now; you’re touching foot on the other side. You can’t sit on that fence forever 

Dawid. You are either with us, or against us. So, I’m asking; why weren’t you protesting? 

DAWID: You like action in numbers? You’re more like that Nats than you think; student 

organisations, Voortrekkers, what’s the difference? Never been a card-carrying member of 

those boys’ clubs. Why start now? 

DEBORAH: Do you two need a ruler? 

 BARAK: Careful Debs, the men are talking now – but I’ll gladly carry these books for Baas Olivier. 

(BARAK tips an imaginary hat to the watching policeman). Choose boertjie; hero or villain? 

DAWID: I think I’ve already written this poem. You think somewhere, someone’s standing waiting 

to hand out white hats and rifles? Somewhere else, there’s another someone waiting with 

black hats. Sooner rather than later, both are going to set down into an intersection and wait 

for the shoot-out. And when all the guns have been fired, you will be able to count more 

bullet holes in the black hat. And a petticoat you’ve always wanted will come running out 

ready for you to scoop her up and take her off as the credits roll. That’s why I’m glad I never 

went to some Voortrekker club to bend me into a shape so far from reality I couldn’t see the 

story for the truth. 

DEBORAH: Sometimes life needs to be that simple.  

DAWID: Depends where you look from, I guess. The way I see it; we are all just selfish shits acting 

to save our own piece of ground till there’s no one left to save it from; while everyone else 

is doing the same thing. I’d be just another white man hurting on someone because someone 

hurt on him. Besides, no white hat will have me. Blackhats disowned Whities a long time 

ago. Heroes were thought up by the Greeks to frame stories, give poems endings; make us 

forget that every hand we hit out in defence looks like a hand hitting out in offense to 

someone else.  

DEBORAH: You really are just a broken little bird like the rest of us? 

DAWID: I beg your pardon? 

Commented [ML26]: Is there a way to 
change this to her speaking here? Give 
Deborah a voice too 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 22 

DEBORAH: I know that colour on anyone. I know that colour ‘cause I can’t take it off when I put 

my head down to sleep. I don’t know why I didn’t see it on you before. I know how hard a 

face gets when it’s made to look on the outside of life being lived by other people. I know 

how cold eyes get when all they can do when they look in the mirror is see all that they are 

not. I know the colour of being on the outside. Now I don’t know what ‘cause you have for 

having it, but I see it there hiding under all that whiteness. You don’t have to join us, but 

stand with us. Write that poem.    
 

10. It’s 1999. London. DAWID and ALLISON’S apartment.  

ALLISON is packing for a trip. 
 

ALLISON: That just sounds like a bunch of words you put together too quickly. I’m sorry. You’re 

going to have to give me a minute to put them – to go over them in a way so that I can 

understand what you’re saying. Dammit David I am about a minute away from asking you 

for that again, because that’s what we do David. You sit on your chair and I sit on mine and 

we talk about the minutes that make up our days. Even now. Even when my chair is in a 

bedsit across the city. Now you walk away from that chair, to go back to Johannesburg. And 

you don’t tell me. 

DAWID: Keep it simple Allison. You broke the space between those chairs when you took that 

grant and flew off to France, first time. 

ALLISON: You were right next to me when that happened, don’t you go re-remembering our past. 

This is not a poem for you to re-edit. I came back to you; I come back to you –  

DAWID: For you. You come back to see how the land is lying. And I have to see how much further 

away you pushed me. How far I am from Oupa, Marta – from my daughter, my family – 

ALLSION: Fuck you David Olivier! I don’t need to listen to your – And fuck your family. I’m your 

-  

DAWID: You stop right there with my family Allison, before you start another thing. Now I know 

you knew this was coming. We both saw it staring us down a lot further back that you making 

it out now.  

ALLISON: So, I’m just supposed to let your hand fall from mine? No. You need to stop talking. 

After all that I’ve done –to get us as far away from that ending. And you know you haven’t 

made that running any easier on me. I’m just supposed to let your hand out of mine?  

Commented [ML27]: Start the scene 
here, reframe to answer last scene’s last 
line. 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 23 

DAWID: I know I’ve done some things, I’m not denying that. I know – but you picked up your life 

and you left me here with just the walls to remind me every day and nothing and nobody 

else! Don’t you stand here making out like your life isn’t where you wanted it, how you 

wanted it, since you decided that door was better looking from the other side.  

ALLISON: How I wanted it? How I wanted? David, you’re remembering life so far from the truth, 

it isn’t ours. You drank me out of my home long before I closed that door behind me. Now 

I’m not – you don’t get to talk about that David, that’s my story. Following every other 

indignity, you’ve put me through I shouldn’t be surprised finding out about your flight back 

to Johannesburg /the day I’m packing my bags for Germany! 

DAWID: How much longer do you need me on that cross before the debt is paid? I’m sorry. But 

please, let’s forget every other telling of this story, every other event that pushed those wheels 

to get both of us here. You’re not listening, Allison! I need to go home. Can’t you see that? 

ALLISON: So go, David. Go home. But before you get on that plane, answer me this; why do you 

think you needed to keep this from me till I was 5 minutes from Germany if your intentions 

were so noble?  

DAWID: Honestly I didn’t think a thought of care past your mind about me anymore. Why are you 

holding on to us when it’s already done? We haven’t been an ‘us’ for a time –  
 

ALLISON kisses DAWID. Neither is moved by it.  
 

DAWID: This is redundant. You’re disgusting. 

ALLISON: You’re a failed writer David. A failed writer and a broken hippie who held on to hating 

apartheid to feel like you mattered. I took you back, you don’t get to leave! 

DAWID: You never should have put my ring on your finger. You knew I was not yours to keep. 

We gave this all the chances we could Allison. I can’t live making a life like this anymore. 

ALLISON: You’ll be a fool twice then. It’s not her you want Dawid. Deep down inside not even 

you are believing the lies you’re telling so well. You don’t love her. You want to save her. 

You want to play at being a hero  who brought down apartheid one last time before you drink 

yourself into that good night. Do you honestly think you can save South Africa? You couldn’t 

even bring yourself far enough away from that bottle to vote back in ’94. You didn’t even 

vote.  
 

Commented [ML28]: Framing Allison as 
masculine? Her actions, vs. Dawid’s failed 
actions. Is this challenged else where? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 24 

A light spot slowly reveals an actor as if in a documentary interview. 
 

DAWID: Fuck you. 

ACTOR 4: (Answers this question: To what extent does gender stereotyping play a role in excusing 

infidelity?) 

ALLLISON: You’re about as relevant to African politics as a fish bowl. I love you, you fuck. 

DAWID: Please. Let me go back to Marta.  
 

11. It’s 1986. London. DAWID’S publisher’s office. 
 

RADIO: – abandon her people by becoming a 

mere mouthpiece dispensing 

‘handbagging’ lectures on saving 

money. Look at her dealing with honest 

mine workers in ’84-‘85. What a fiasco; 

if you recall, civil war in 

Nottinghamshire. Some 20 collieries 

closed and more than twenty thousand 

jobs lost, in a labour strike. I ask you, a 

strike? To allow the National Coal 

Board to roll out a plan to close 75 pits 

over the next few years would decimate 

the local work force. Good hard working 

British men would be subject to 

‘accelerated’ redundancy to satisfy the 

coffers of Britain. Has the Milk Snatcher 

not learned her lesson?  

 

But Kinnock’s Labour, the only party to 

offer concrete support for ‘the cause for 

coal’, to keep the British man in work, is 

progressively at odds with NUM and 

PUBLISHER (O/S): Tell me, is that how you get into 

the writing?  A woman? She sounds fiery! It 

does amaze me how writers (Entering) bring 

words together. /Amy its 3pm – 

DAWID: Something much like that, yes.  

PUBLISHER: Get us an Old Fashioned. You want 

one? He’ll have one. (Amy exits)  

ACTOR 3: (Answers this question: How have you had 

to edit your gender performance in a past 

relationship?) 

PUBLISHER: I am amazed how that sense of place; 

the light quality, the background noise, 

becomes vivid from thin air, with just a few 

right words. And that you find them on 

Finchley Road, after a day teaching girls? I 

don’t suppose it’s very much different from 

writing in Africa. Now this anthology –  

DAWID:  Sorrows and Rejoicings – 

PULISHER: Awkward title. Are you precious with 

that title? We can focus group a title.  

DAWID: It’s conversation, sir, with Ovid’s Sorrows 

of an Exile. /A communion with freedom – 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 25 

seemingly the electorate at large. 

‘Parasites living off the struggles of 

miners’, I think he mentioned so, this is 

how Kinnock describes parts of his very 

party; and parasites they have been. 

Have a look at the rogue activities of the 

Militant groups in Liverpool who have 

‘played politics’ with the livelihoods 

and home of ordinary British people. 

Disgraceful. 

 

One cannot think the poorest of the poor, 

those coal miners living below the bread 

line and neglected I dare say, neglected 

by the pro-‘free market’ stance of 

Thatcher and her cronies, would find 

much love for such a party as Labour. I 

wager, come June 12, the headlines will 

read of Thatcher, and not Kinnock’s 

Labour, being summoned to form a 

cabinet. 

PUBLISHER: I’m going to stop that train right there, 

there isn’t a station ready for that docking. I’ll 

play it open with you David, your lines are 

something; you have a way knocking words 

into pictures I haven’t seen before. But no one 

will want to pay to hear the cry of freedom 

from a white mouth. I can’t sell it. Now I’m not 

saying the market isn’t ready, and wanting 

anything from that country, and where there’s 

a bookshelf there’s a space for a poet from the 

colonies, but this – I can’t sell it. 

DAWID: It’s not finished, it’s the bitter sweetness of 

freedom in exile. Finding something you didn’t 

think you could have, but in a place that isn’t 

really yours -  

PUBLISHER: Show us the pain, get in there. Write the 

suffering. Then throw in an African face and 

wrap her up so deep in your lines we can cry 

over her. A face we’ll want to put our hands out 

and pluck from the nothingness of your page 

into our homes and into safety. Be the Gauguin 

of words to the southern tip of Africa. Write 

that. This is your story. Trust me. 
 

12. It’s 1978. Johannesburg. DAWID’S apartment. 

DAWID, drunk, has a sign marked JOHN WAYNE on his back. ALLISON has FARRAH FAWCETT. 

They are guessing who they are. 
 

ALLISON (O/S): Never trust a writer to retell anything; it comes out all pieces and nonsense 

garnish. (Entering reading a newspaper) You’re supposed to be asking me questions (She 

kisses him). 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 26 

DAWID: I’m not lying, it’s written there in black and white: ‘Iewers tussen 'n 'bildungsroman'-

anthologie en 'n 'lokasie melodrama', lees hierdie volume soos 'n huisvrou se dronk…’ (She 

pushes him away from the newspaper) – Ok, I’m white, a man and American. Are you sure 

you can understand Afrikaans?  

ALLISON: I had that language on my report card ‘til Matric I might have you know. /And that’s 

not the yes or no questions I was talking about! 

DAWID: How many times you need a rewrite before they gave that card a clean bill of health? You 

know how to make the world turn where you are looking Miss Allison Fogarty. (He kisses 

her) Am I an entertainer? 

ALLISON: Well you certainly never entertained me, though the truth of that question is yes. You’ve 

only got 12 left Mr. Olivier. (Reading) ‘Die werk van 'n onvolwasse skrywer /wat probeer 

om buite sy vermoë te bereik...’ 

DAWID: Well he must be an action hero, hmm cowboy or military man then. You say you hate 

them, but I’ve seen your face, you love to hate them. Am I famous? 

ALLISON: Hmmm the most famous. What’s ‘vermoë’? 

DAWID: ‘Reach’, ‘ability’ (The phone rings, he exits to answer it) In other words they say I have 

neither the ‘reach’ nor the ‘ability’ to use poetry as a political – hello? /You’ve reached the 

residence of another (Drunkenly yelled) failed Afrikaans poet-   

ALLISON: ‘Van besondere belangstelling is verwysings na Sharpeville en Soweto wat met 

onnodige geweld /beskryf word’. Who is that calling at this hour? (She walks toward 

DAWID).  

DAWID (O/S): Yeah, I read it. It’s all I could read. It’s sitting there yelling at me even when I’m 

not reading it. I’m surprised they don’t just hand me over to the censorship board –   

ALLISON: ‘In die gedig Blood Knot, wat sy naam met hierdie anthologie deel, collageer 

halfgeskrewe sinne beelde van bloedige fantasie en dogmatiese propoganda op 'n manier wat 

nie sedert die dae van /Kitchener gesien is nie’. (She exits) Do you know who you are yet? 

DAWID (O/S): Stop. Stop. No stop yelling at me! I can’t hear all the words through the phone and 

the drink – (To ALLISON) It’s my publish- editor! 

ALLISON (O/S): I’m Farrah Fawcett! She’s a pin-up not a –  

DAWID (O/S): How many? What you saying now Harold? It sold – another print! (Laughing) 

Another print run. 5 000? But it’s sitting there as clear as the day is hot. They hated it. What 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 27 

you mean; another 5000? (ALLISON kisses him. Another phone starts ringing.) It’s another 

run Allie, another – they liked it – well they hated it. Another run. Do you know what that 

means? I’m – I’m – who am I? (Indicating his sign) I’m John Wayne? Why would you do 

that? 
 

13. It’s 1980. Johannesburg. DAWID and ALLISON’S bedroom.  

Dull light. The ringing phone is slammed down. Enter DAWID carrying ALLISON, her legs wrapped 

around his waist; kissing.  
 

ALLISON: Tell me? Why do you think anyone would do that David? Why ring the phone at this 

black dead of night, waking up the house? / David –  

DAWID: Allison, I’m not worried about that house. It’s waking up something else. I’m not worried 

about waking up the house, when all that needs waking is standing upright. Can I place that 

call Mrs. Olivier? 
 

DAWID throws ALLISON on the bed and opens her legs. He moves his head between them. 
 

ALLISON: That’s not children, David, just admit – Stop that – Ah that’s – no, no, no. That’s good! 

(It becomes too much for her) Stop! Stop that! (She pushes him aside to catch her breath) 

You know that’s not children crank calling for the fourth time this week. 

DAWID: I don’t know anything like that. (He kisses her body) All I do know is the phone rings and 

no one talks. (He kisses her body) That’s what I know Allison. (They kiss) 
 

The phone rings once more. DAWID answers. 
 

DAWID: Hello – hello…now listen here you little fuck, and you listen with both ears wide open. 

You better pull off this game, calling me awake at twenty to two in the morning. You better 

pull off. I’ll give you something to stay up and awake for - hello? 
 

DAWID slams the phone down. Rips at the phone cord. 
 

DAWID: Get off of my damn phone. Sorry Allison –  

Commented [ML29]: Is there a local 
celebrity? Local version I could use 
instead? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 28 

ALLISON: Don’t. I didn’t walk out of one home with those men to start another one with you. You 

know it. 

DAWID: How’d you like that? What was I supposed to do?  

ALLISON: Nothing David. Try that one for size, for once. I bet they pick the coldest hour just to 

get that rise. And you give it to them, good. Go on, why don’t you yell out a little louder next 

time, I’m not sure they get the full girth of your manhood over the receiver!  If the damn 

thing still works. (There is a knocking at the door) What good did that do? How are you any 

better than they? How is this… this any better than ringing at twenty to two in the morning? 

You’re a herd of boys, with one hand down your pants and the other pointing out ‘he started’. 

Well I don’t care who started it anymore. 

DAWID: Woman, I can’t talk to you when you get… (He exits) 

ALLISON: I can’t do this anymore. I’m done with phone calls. I’m done with people sitting outside 

our house. I’m done! I’m going to /make this part end. 
 

14. It’s 1993. Johannesburg. DAWID and ALLISON’S apartment. 

The knocking at the front door intensifies. ALLISON answers it.  It’s DAWID, drunk.  
 

DAWID (O/S): Make this part end. I need a drink. Do you want a drink? I'm having a drink. No, no 

coffee. Coffee wakes you up. Up! And I don’t want to be awake enough to remember – big 

as cricket balls. And I can’t even hit a home run. Where’s the fair in that – irony, now that’s 

there.  

ALLISON (O/S): Shush, shush that noise now. Don't you think you've got enough of that in you? I 

can't think Dr. Meyer will think that is a good idea.  

DAWID: (Entering and singing) Doringboom heuning jou soet gebak, ma se klein Bekkie. Bruin 

brood warm Bekkie, jou Pa het geen bolletjies! 

ALLISON: David, I swear, I can smell that singing from here, sit your drunk self down before you 

break something. /Shush quiet – 

DAWID: 'Can't give your wife what a husband should'. He said that, like he was talking about a 

blender. Like that’s all I was; a sperm factory… 

ALLISON: Yes imagine that… David, hold yourself in. 

DAWID: ‘You can't give her what a husband should' like I should just take back that gold ring and 

thank you Jesus.  

Commented [ML30]: She takes a 
masculine stance here. Does this challenge 
Dawid, or just claim masculinity for 
herself? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 29 

 

DAWID kisses ALLISON. She does not return his passion. He stops, still holding her. 
 

ALLISON: What did you do that for? Do you think if you jump at it hard enough it will prove him 

wrong?  

DAWID: There isn't enough happening up here for me to answer that.  

ALLISON: You know that's not the truth of it.  

DAWID: Stop that! (Pushing her away) Don't look at me. All I see when you do, is every part of 

me that isn't there; feels like there’s a lot less of me when I see myself through your eyes. 

(He is crying) What's that? What's happening?  

ALLISON: You're drunk. 

DAWID: You're beautiful.  

ALLISON: You're drunk  

DAWID: I'm sterile. I'm sorry. I'm drunk. You're beautiful. Don't look at me like that. (Pause) I just 

- I wanted - I… (He cannot find the words) 

ALLISON: (Understanding) Me too. (Not knowing how to comfort DAWID) You should get some 

sleep. I have work in the morning David – there are many ways of getting where we want to 

go. We could - adoption. We could look into -/ just an option. I'm not -  

DAWID: No! No, I didn't want adoption for my family. I grew up with - every day wondering where 

I came from. I don't want that for my children. I'm not going into making another child suffer 

that. Not if I can stop it. I'm sorry Allison but that's the way I feel.  
 

DAWID kisses ALLISON. It's a short shared intimate moment of connection.  
 

DAWID: I don't want to feel... this.  

ALLISON: Me either. We should put some sleep in between us and today.  

DAWID: Us? I need air. I'm sterile. There is no us here. I've lost - I lost. I can't breathe.  

ALLISON: David don't! Don't push this hurt in between us, like you are the only one suffering 

under it. I lost – I didn’t stay married to you for 13 years for you – I've lost too.  

DAWID: I need to get out. The air is sitting on me. Right on my chest. I can't breathe.  

ALLISON: Don't you walk out David – come to bed. Don't you leave me alone with this hurt. I 

won’t follow you around the streets of Jo’burg again! 

Commented [ML31]: Work in more of 
Marta’s dialogue form scene 5 here, set up 
more of a similarity. 

Commented [ML32]: Is this enough to 
hint at setting? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 30 

DAWID: You better watch who you’re telling what to do like that Mrs. Olivier. 

ALLISON: You are one step over from becoming your Oupa David. You’re drunk – you should –  

 

There is a noise. Siren. It is an ambulance siren. And the hints of flashing lights. 

 

DAWID: Should, should, should! What should I do Mrs. Olivier? Let me tell you what Dawid 

Olivier should be doing. (With self-hatred) Dawid should be putting his hand at writing more 

than clerk reports at some provincial bank office. Dawid should arrive home to a wife who’s 

cooked and a wife who’s giving him a fucking drink. And Dawid should be man enough to 

push a child up between your legs, and make you ask for it again. 

REBECCA (O/S): (Singing) ‘In that old canyon, /echoed a wagon, that pulled him away.’ 

DAWID: Sorry. Just – bitter old white man! 

ALLISON: That kind of fool knows no colour, Dav id Olivier. That kind of head rot is just you. 

I have work in the morning (Exits). 
 

15. It’s 1999. The Karoo. The Olivier homestead. The living room.  

The silhouette of a kudu bull lit in flashing red and blue light appears over a sleeping DAWID. Kudu 

barking, becomes knocking at the front door. DAWID, still waking, goes to answers it. It’s 

REBECCA, drunk.   
 

REBECCA (O/S): (Singing) ‘No track, upon its back, so in that canyon, she stayed’ 

DAWID: Marta? God – Marta! I can’t - alright give it up. I hear you out there. Marta? I’m coming. 

/ (Exits) Hello –  

REBECCA (O/S): (Singing) ‘Sing your song, your man is gone, what are you going to do?’ (Matter-

of-factly) Don’t you come when the door knocks? Knock, knock, knock, nothing! Are you 

ok? The old Olivier would answer his door till he was some time past eighty-five. Are you 

the Olivier that needs a ‘stinkhout meid’ to answer? You look like shit! 

DAWID (O/S): Oupa Olivier, now is that a something. I was – (Sounds of kudu barking, snorting, 

crescendo with breaking glass) I just need to sit down. Oh, he hasn’t crossed this threshold 

in years, girl. If it’s he you’re looking for –  

REBECCA (O/S): (Singing) ‘Before he left, he gave a gift, in your belly and now you’re two!’/ Are 

you him? 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 31 

DAWID (O/S): I don’t know that – (Entering looking for the kudu) I was dreaming before you 

knocked – /had a thought I was in London – strange Karoo dreams! Am I hot to touch – cold? 

REBECCA: (Standing in the doorway. Singing) ‘You’ll never be the number three. Bottle your 

tears with wild honey. /More water for the stinkwood tree.’ You’re as bland as peaches. 

DAWID: Please come in, please. How are you girl? Good evening. Please get yourself on that chair. 

David. Dawid. Who brings you here? Marta? Marta? Fallen asleep – 

REBECCA: Are you – him then? 

DAWID: I’m not much of anyone nowadays. I don’t feel any good. Marta is down that passage, 

you’ll see her; sleeping in that chair. That an old song from here? I don’t have a memory of 

it, but – your mother give you that one? Your father?   

REBECCA: Don’t you know – my mama wouldn’t sing that song unless you put a ‘Jesus’ or 

‘Hallelujah’ in it. My daddy – he hiked up my mama’s skirt and passed through her like he 

passed through this town. Hot air through the trees; /only song he left behind. 

DAWID: I never knew my pa; got himself killed. I was somewhere near two years. You must have 

heard; if you’re from these parts. Here I am; /the only thing he left behind. 

REBECCA: You ended up somewhere soft. Some man found you, put you all together like this. He 

took your hand, you never had hunger on your plate, need on your back. 

DAWID: My name. That’s all that old man kept tender affection for. He would have turned me out 

on my two-year-old ear if I didn’t have his name behind my own and a last name between 

us. 

REBECCA: You want to cry abandon? There isn’t space on this tree. You had a man fill that space. 

You had someone tending to you as a father should. You didn’t stand there with a hand free 

where a father should have been.  

DAWID: What else was he going to do? He could have left me on the stoep where he found me, but 

every person buying what they did off his land would have thrown their hands to the heavens 

and left him as broke and broken on the same step he was eyeing to leave me on. He didn’t. 

I can say that about that man. He read his responsibility on that situation and he made sure 

he filled out every part of that to the lines. He did that. But he never let a day go by without 

pointing out that debt I was shoring up under his hand. The day I turned 18, he sat himself 

on that stoep waiting my return from school. Told me I had to choose; in one hand a key for 

a back room and a life managing the sheep. In the other; a letter, an interview with Mr. 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 32 

Pretorius at the Post Office. He finished colouring in his responsibility, I was now my own 

to keep. Since it was my birthday he gave me three days to decide; left them both on the 

kitchen table. By the Saturday I still hadn’t moved either. He walked into my room, the sun 

hadn’t moved a finger above the horizon, he pulled me out by my ear. All 18 years of me 

hanging off my left ear. He dropped me on that same stoep where he found me. I was still 

wiping sleep from my eyes; he held my head down by its scruff and laid leather against my 

rear, praying all the while. There was a tie and a Sunday suit on the bench. That letter on top. 

When he had drawn enough ‘sense’ from under my skin, he turned around locked the door 

behind him. Didn’t let me back in till I could hand over what I made at the post office minus 

lunch money. The day I heard he died; I cried so heavy I didn’t know what to do with myself. 

I didn’t know if I was sad. Or happy. I still don’t. Maybe a space in your hand where a 

father’s should be, is your something to cry and be happy for? It’s a space. But no one filled 

it with their back hand.  

 

A phone rings, DAWID and REBECCA both stare at the phone, even as the next scene plays.  
 

16. It’s 1983. Johannesburg. DAWID and ALLISON’S apartment. Black.  

A phone is ringing. Lights start to dim. 
 

ALLISON (O/S): David. The phone is ringing. /Wake up David –  

DAWID: Allison I hear the phone ringing. Haven’t I just been woken up by the same phone as you? 

Calling me at this hour – put the light on. (He picks up the receiver) Hello – hello… 
 

Die Stem van Suid Afrika is heard playing from the receiver. DAWID stares at REBECCA.  
 

Break.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commented [ML33]: Perhaps here, break 
Part 1 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 33 

 

 

PART 2. 
 

17. It’s 1983. The Karoo. The Olivier homestead. The living room.  

There is a stinkwood table and chairs. 
 

ALLISON (O/S): What do you mean; ‘can’t you just let it go?’ They’re going through my rubbish. 

Standing there at my work, head deep into a dustbin, going through my rubbish, like its 

normal. Then they passing notes to my co-workers – Mr. van Riebeek’s got a whole file lying 

on his desk. God, my back is dripping. When they break into my car, our house; should I just 

let that /go too? 

DAWID (O/S): They are just trying to scare you off, you know this Allison. I keep saying you’re 

just a little too trusting there at the library. You just have to be more vigilant /next time – 
 

 ALLISON (O/S):  I’m too trusting. I’m not 

vigilant enough. What about you? None 

of this would have happened – give me 

your hanky – I wouldn’t have to be more 

vigilant, if you just stopped writing these 

articles. 

DAWID (O/S): I can’t stop writing Allison, and 

you know that! Now that’s not fair to 

ask. (Entering) Can you lower your 

voice inside please? 

ALLISON (O/S): Why? You should just stop 

writing the things that make those 

people get in a car (Entering) and follow 

us all the way to the fucking Karoo! Or 

something. Do something David. 

You’re meant to be my husband. But 

SAREL (O/S): I’m saying it like it was. He went 

and put all of himself into that chair. I wasn’t 

going to tell him it was broken. He leaned 

over: ‘Teach me some history, teacher boy’. 

Those children stood up, began reciting ‘6 

April 1652’. They put on the whole show; 

running round in circles like ships, feet 

stamping, singing. He looked like he was 

staring at the devil. They hadn’t gotten three 

words past the Dromedaris when crack, that 

chair gave in underneath him and set him 

spilling all over the floor. Those poor 

children just stood there with eyes big as 

potatoes, not knowing if they needed to cry, 

or laugh or pee, or all three at the same time. 

I stood over him, wrapped two purples into 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 34 

sometimes, sometimes it feels like I’m 

standing in this alone. I could lose my 

job. My job! Now that might not seem –  

DAWID: I’m sorry –  

ALLISON: Just make it better. And don’t think 

for a minute that by dragging me to this 

dry spot of hell, that you’ve gotten us out 

of this! You’ve just made it hotter 

(Looking out the window). They aren’t 

even trying to hide. At least they look 

about as unhappy as we are. My blouse 

is stuck to my back. You know there is 

one other option to ending all this – It’s 

not running away. And you could still 

write. It’s not giving in David. Think 

about it. And think about it fast. All I’ll 

say is this is the last time we walk across 

that threshold, when we leave you either 

go back to that apartment by yourself, or 

we pack our bags for London! Now I 

need to freshen up. It’s fucking hot! I 

don’t know why you want to come back 

to this! Who’s making all that noise? 

 

his hand, held his face close to mine and 

said: ‘Here’s two crib notes, let’s leave these 

poor blacks to learn the rest of Van 

Riebeeck’. 

MARTA (O/S): You did not, Sarel Bosman. Now 

you’re just making things up. Listen to you 

knitting onto that story like you took on the 

entire Police department. 

SAREL (O/S): What stories Marta Barends? You 

can walk yourself over to the station and see 

that white man waddling. Now you know 

why they walk like they have a stick up their 

ass. It’s the last time he comes into my 

classroom wanting the chair from under me, 

telling me ‘Teach proper history teacher 

boy; Van Riebeeck, /ja, when we saved your 

kind’.   

MARTA (O/S): If you are going to take up my 

kitchen space, then hand me those plates, 

they need to go in the warmer before /Ou 

Mies comes back. 

SAREL: Why you always trying to put this 

coloured man to work? 

 

DAWID: Bosman? Bosman, is that you? What stories are you making up?  

*ALLISON: (To herself) Why don’t they just stare out from behind that windscreen at someone 

else?  

*SAREL (O/S): Put a pin in that, now we are in trouble. Here’s the one they’re really /looking for. 

Dawid Johannes –  

DAWID: Now hold on Bosman. I can’t let you in here. Hold on! That chair might be a story but my 

banning order is as real as they come. I’ve got two plain clothes in a car outside the driveway 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 35 

to show for it. Can’t have you and me and Allison in the same room, /two’s the magic 

number.  

SAREL (O/S): Allison? Why didn’t you lead with that? How are you Mrs. Olivier? /What are you 

doing back in this nowhere town? 

*ALLISON: Morning Sarel, Marta –   

*DAWID: I’ve come to see Oupa, I’ve got – well I tell you what I haven’t come to do is listen to 

your poorly-knitted stories. Bosman –  

ALLISON: Bosman give us a hand with these bags, /will you? Come around the front to the car; 

give us a hand will you?   

SAREL(O/S): This banning order is just a fancy way of saying you want a coloured man to use the 

back door and do the hard labour, say it Dawid! Alright Mrs. Olivier I’ll meet you out front, 

(Fades off as he leaves. ALLISON exits) I can tell you about the day I got a visit from the 

blue shirts. /Your husband isn’t the only man to wrestle the blue shirts and live. 

DAWID: (Calling to SAREL) And take out a tray of tea for our guest in the driveway. English 

breakfast. (Softly) You still there Marta? 

MARTA (O/S): Where else would I be now Dawid? Haven’t I been working here every day since 

I was sixteen? Where do you think I would be? 

DAWID: Nowhere, I just didn’t want – hell, I don’t know what I want. 

MARTA (O/S): Did it take a banning order for you to figure that out? I knew that was your colour 

first time I saw you standing in that front room. I didn’t need a banning order to tell me 

you’re carrying around everybody else’s wishes and wants you had no /hand space to find 

your own. 

DAWID: Stop that girl. You wouldn’t – I had it all the way in the car from Allison. Don’t climb 

into the ring too. / I’m trying to tell you something -  

MARTA (O/S): So now I’m getting in between you and Allison? (Pause. Meaning it.) Sorry. The 

coast clear? Or am I bound to be arrested for putting things out on the table? 

DAWID: I’m alone. 

MARTA: (Entering with table things) You look like shit. Go on pull that side straight there Dawie. 

Ou Mies Olivier will have my hands burning, this cloth sits skew. 

DAWID: (He does) She’s had to walk away from the library; Allison. They started following her at 

work.  



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 36 

MARTA: It’s not like you need the money, she’ll get back in her heels. 

DAWID: (Trying to fix his tie) That woman’s got dreams too Marta. This has hurt –  

MARTA: Hurt? What do white people know about hurt? Come here with that. (She tries to help 

him with his tie) /Stop fussing. Let me – I’m trying to help Dawid. 

DAWID: Stop it. Stop. Marta. I can do this myself. 
 

MARTA folds DAWID’S collar over his tie. It’s an intimate gesture, but suddenly awkward. 
 

DAWID: If you don’t mind -  

MARTA: Sorry. Of course, I just – I’m sorry. (They stare at each other) Set a place at the foot for 

Auntie Lettie, she’s up from the village.  

DAWID: I – give me a minute Marta, I’m trying to tell you something! 

MARTA: (Hearing the front door open) Don’t you think of walking that grass onto my clean floors 

Sarel! (Pause) If you’re finding a way to say something Dawid, get on with it. You know I 

don’t have time to put my hands in my apron and help you/ find it.  

DAWID: I’m moving to London. Allison and I are moving –  

MARTA: (Pause) No. No, Dawid. You don’t know what you are saying. You are moving to 

London? You already moved halfway across the country –  

OUPA (O/S): Marta? There’s a car parked in the driveway, /like it’s a parking lot.  

MARTA: Say something else! You’ve used that line before. 

OUPA (O/S): What’s that car doing in our driveway, sitting there like we’re a supermarket on sale? 

MARTA: You don’t end our story this way.  
 

OUPA enters. 
 

DAWID: Marta, don’t –  

OUPA: I should have known, Dawid-Johannes. Trouble comes knocking twice over when you blow 

in. /Are those your friends - 

DAWID: Hello Oupa. Wait there -  

OUPA: What is that ‘hello Oupa’? Did that city make you too ‘big’ for manners? ‘Hello Oupa’! 

That you got where? 

DAWID: Middag Oupa Johnny. (Shakes OUPA’S hand and hugs him)  

Commented [ML34]: Link to F.W in 
scene 1. Perhaps make this more apparent 
through out. 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 37 

MARTA: Come in out of the draft Ou Baas, I’ve got your blanket and brandy waiting for you. 

Lunch will be on the table soon. (To DAWID) You better put your words together different 

Dawid, I’m not – I’ll put the kettle on for Mies Lettie. (She exits). 

OUPA: Trouble still rolling in from your days at the university? I know I raised you with more sense 

than to get in between those boys. 

DAWID: I’m not anything to anyone of them Oupa. They’ve set their mind on who I am; now they 

are trying to prove it. They’ll just sit in their car like they’ve been doing for four months 

now. They just want me to stop writing. 

OUPA: Well they aren’t the only ones. She’s gone and watered this down; thinks I don’t know 

brandy from rain water. Behind the book there boy, get a man a drink. Don’t give me any 

lip; I don’t need judgment in my own house. Have yourself a sip too. 
 

DAWID pours two drinks and gives one to OUPA but doesn’t touch the second. There is a pause. 
 

DAWID: Die Bulle are playing well. 

OUPA: Are you trying to get a rise out of me? I know you know where this house is planted, and 

that isn’t anywhere near the Northern Transvaal. So, I don’t know why you think you can 

come into here and start talking about how well die Bulle are playing. Province. Now that’s 

who you should be talking about. And well is exactly how they are playing. Die Bulle haven’t 

been worth talking about since Botha left them for that American style rugby.  

DAWID: He’s just taking a chance to play on the international stage again. You know he can’t play 

internationals since the pitch invasions of New Zealand in ’81. How many chances is he 

going to get to play at the top of his game, if he stays? 

OUPA: No, my child. Money! The root of all that is… that’s what’s pulled him over there. None of 

this international stage business! The smell of paper money in his back pocket! He didn’t 

like what they were folding him under the table, so he went to lift his skirt to the Americans 

to see what they would offer.  

DAWID: The man shouldn’t make a living doing what he loves? What he is good at? 

OUPA: And what exactly is he good at Dawid? Let’s start this story there. When last you see Botha 

put flesh on flesh on the field? No, you pass him the ball he puts boot to it. When last you 

see him run the ball? That ball comes his way, his boot follows after. If he wants to play at 

kicking he should have put on a different pair of cleats and played soccer.  



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 38 

DAWID: Come on Oupa Johnny; he touched one under the poles in ’78 against the Free State. 

Captained Northerns to victory 1980, 30 points clear of Province. Ran the ball then, make a 

break, pass to Geldenhys and long ball to Krantz: Try! They went and named him Player of 

the Year in ‘81. 

OUPA: And what well did that do for ‘Die Bulle’? How are the Northerns any better off for having 

‘Nasty Booter’, Player of the Year 1981?  Defeated the year after 24-7; no ‘golden boots’ to 

kick points on that score board. No, they had to play the game. They lost. And even if your 

Northerns make it to the final, I’ll be a chicken’s egg if they aren’t out played three times 

over by Province. See the problem is he’s been playing his own game, him and his ‘golden 

boots’, thinking he can kick his way to glory. He’s good, I’ll give you that. He’s a damn good 

fly-half. But what kind of legacy is the man leaving behind, when five minutes after he 

leaves; his team can’t put points on the board playing a real game, never mind defend their 

22 without using their fists. He’s good at kicking alright. And when he wasn’t getting 

something for it, he packed up his boots and headed to America. What is he to America, or 

America to him, that he packs his bags and leaves behind the people that built him up, cheered 

him on, and gave him the team to show off his fancy feet; for America?  

DAWID: Why’s everyone trying to break the man down for trying to make his own way in the 

world? He put down France and Ireland with the Bokke, would have rolled over the All 

Blacks it wasn’t for the protests – if he can make something of himself over there, something 

he’s being stopped from doing here, then why shouldn’t he? Player of the year twice over – 

he’s hit a ceiling. He can’t go up, so he’s going right! What’s South Africa done for him but 

get him banned from doing what he’s good at with the best of them. And Northerns isn’t 

falling down on anything without Botha. They made that final last year on their own skin 

and they’ll make it this year too. Maybe he’s just doing something for himself. Maybe 

Northerns just needs a breath to find their rhythm again.  

OUPA:  A breath is all Province needs. You’re not going to see a Barberton Daisy near that trophy 

for some half dozen years now. (Pause) So when are you planning on giving me your bad 

news? Or do you need more time defending Botha before you pop it into conversation? 

DAWID: How’d you know it’s bad news? 

OUPA: Well you only come down when the news has some weight to it. That Pommy girl of yours 

isn’t showing any signs of rounding out, so it can’t be good news. You’ve got two friends 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 39 

sitting outside turning my driveway into an ashtray, so it can only be bad news. I don’t need 

very much more of that, keeping this farm going with the strike and the crop coming in late, 

on my own. 

DAWID: I’m helping – 

OUPA: I don’t need your money. I have money. I need an Olivier on /this farm. Not out –  

DAWID: I’m moving to London. 

OUPA: (Pause) No you are not. (Pause) Give me a hand. (He gets up, holds DAWID close to him) 

I did not give you everything worth giving so you could run off and sow the profits into that 

island. You wanted to go to university, I let you. You wanted to move up north, I let you. 

You brought home every girl of every kind, I said ‘Fine. He’s just being a boy’. You put a 

ring on an English finger; I let you break your Ouma’s heart. But that credit only runs so far 

for you boy. You better pull those big man pants on. I’m calling in that debt. You were born 

of the Karoo Dawid Johannes Laurens Olivier, you will be buried here.  

DAWID: It’s already done Oupa. 

OUPA: Golden boots only take you so far Dawid. And when you come back, when you come back, 

you better hope there is someone left here to bury you. (He exits)   
 

DAWID is alone for a minute then MARTA enters with REBECCA. 
 

MARTA: Sorry I didn’t think you were still here. (She attempts to exit.) 

DAWID: Marta, /can you give – 

MARTA: Sarel’s gone missing, turned my back for – I need to get to the shops. Aunt Lettie wants 

mosbolletjies for tea later and I don’t have the flour for it. I need him to look after – /Sarel? 

DAWID: I can do it. Marta, can you give me just a minute? 

MARTA: I’ve already given you 20 years’ worth of minutes. (Pause) But you already know that. 

Like you already know I am about a minute away from asking you about London, because 

that’s what we do Dawid. You sit on your chair and I sit on mine and we talk about the 

minutes that make up our days. And you tell it to me so sweetly; I can live that life in your 

words. Every class. Every protest. Every half-baked poem. Every girl. Now you walk away 

from that chair. And you don’t tell me. You burn me twice Dawid. 

DAWID: You’re unrelenting Marta. Can’t you see any hurt that doesn’t have your name on it? You, 

Marta Barends, you pushed that chair away long before I stopped sitting at it. You kept the 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 40 

name ‘Pa’ from me and Bekkie, you kept every look every touch I barely know her or you 

even when we stand in the same room. I left up north to give you the air free of Dawid Olivier 

here, because that’s what you wanted. That banning order’s tied my hands behind my back. 

I’m not allowed to write anymore Marta. It’s like telling the sky ‘don’t be blue’, asking me 

not to breath. You know I can’t stop this Marta, you know I need this. Let me have this.  

MARTA: Why don’t you put these hands back at writing for me/ then, Dawid? 

DAWID: And lead them to Suikerbekkie? (He takes REBECCA from MARTA) Why don’t I just 

invite them out the car now and hand her over? I’m trying the best way I know how, to keep 

you and her from harm’s way, and live a life. I need this Marta, I need just one victory I can 

call my own. I love you Marta, but –  
 

MARTA waves him quiet. She exits.  
 

DAWID: I promise you, Suikerbekkie! You’re going to grow old being so proud of your old man. 

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’m making you this promise. I know I’m leaving you, 

but where’s the good in staying? Bad happens even with a guard at the door. Banning orders. 

Exile. They can take a pen right out of your hand. Your mama can take the word ‘pa’ right 

out of your mouth. I – what am I doing with me? I’m going to write you a world so different, 

Bekkie, even from over there. I know you never asked for this. And there’s a whole lot more 

of that stupid world coming for you. You perfect little mix of a girl, but your mama is a 

coloured and your father is a white man. And this is South Africa. And that’s a kind of life I 

wish you never knew. I don’t want you to know it. Not if I can get in between you and it, and 

if I have to leave - I don’t want you to know it. But when I come back, and I will come back 

for you, your world is going to be so changed. And you will be so proud of your old man 

because some of that change will have come from my pen. I promise. 
 

18. It’s 1960. The Karoo. The Olivier homestead. The living room.  

MARTA polishes the large stinkwood table. DAWID is studying. A radio plays. 
 

RADIO:  – sudden turn about of the group 

of Africans, who had advanced on 

the police brandishing sticks and 

MARTA: And he kept that promise. Oh yes. Ten 

whole years late, a whole army short, but he 

kept that promise. He touched foot on that 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 41 

screaming. With some of their back 

turned in retreat, others began 

pelting stones and glass bottles at 

the advancing line of police. 

According to the local police 

commander at Sharpeville, it was 

under this barrage of stones striking 

at their vehicles and in fear of 

public safety, that the police opened 

fire. The latest casualty count from 

the Vereeniging hospital puts the 

dead at 56, with a total of 162 

injured in the violence.  

 

Ithaca soil, he left behind all that stuff and 

nonsense from that island – the island… you 

know what I’m talking about – the Island klein 

baas?  

DAWID: Calypso’s Island – Yes, I know what you 

going on about – /how do you know this 

Marta? 

MARTA: Quiet Dawid. This woman is talking now! 

He marched up those palace steps, but at the 

top he was not alone. No sir. Every man that 

ever there was had planted his feet there; every 

space on the front steps had a man, two and 

three on the balconies, an army of them, 

standing waiting. (DAWID turns the radio off.) 

MARTA: (CONT’D) Not just waiting, they had plots ticking over in their minds; ticking over, the 

way men do when they have got nothing to do with their hands. You see they wanted Ms. 

Penelope. She’d been there waiting for her husband to come back as he said. She knew how 

to wait. She was good at it. But when she looked at Odysseus, him coming up those palace 

steps surrounded by an army of white men in their blue suits, and shiny hats and guns, ‘dis 

nou ons land’, she didn’t know him. Ten years is a long time on a face, and Athena put this 

raggedy guise over on Odysseus. But she took that man in, held his broken face in her hands, 

like I’m taking yours in mine now. This man who defeated the thieving Trojans, this good 

man who pulled one over on that one-eyed giant, this real man who fought a monster of the 

sea; he pulled himself onto her front step looking like he was a no-good bum of a man by 

just the face of him and she held him by that very face. But she’s a crafty woman, people 

forget that. You know her waiting, but she had crafty. She knows a real man is more than his 

look, she suspects him to be hers. Her man. She leans in close and says – what did she say? 

Tell me, with his face in her hands – what did she say to him? 

REBECCA (O/S): (Singing) ‘In that old canyon, /echoed a wagon, that pulled him away.’ 

DAWID: Rachel Barends – she’ll kill me if I kiss you! 
 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 42 

19. It’s 1999. The Karoo. The Olivier homestead. The living room.  

The silhouette of a kudu bull lit in flashing red and blue light appears over a feverish DAWID. Kudu 

barking, becomes knocking at the front door. DAWID, in the last throws of dying, goes to answers 

it.  It’s REBECCA. A radio play under this scene, it plays REBECCA’s song. 
 

RADIO: ‘No track, upon its back, so in that canyon, she stayed…’ 

DAWID: Marta? God – Marta! I can’t – alright give it up. I hear you out there. Marta? I’m coming. 

/ (Exits) Hello –  

REBECCA (O/S): (Awkwardly) Don’t you come when the door knocks? The old Olivier would 

answer his door till he was some time past eighty-five. (Trying to make light of it) Are you 

the Olivier that needs a ‘stinkhout meid’ to answer? 

DAWID (O/S): Oupa Oliver, now is that a something. I was – he hasn’t crossed this threshold in 

years, girl. If it’s he you’re looking for –  

REBECCA (O/S): Are you him? 

DAWID (O/S): I don’t know that – I was dreaming before you knocked – had a thought I was in 

London - /strange Karoo dreams! 

REBECCA (O/S): I thought he was more  an Afrikaans bull! But - I am sorry I have to ask –  

DAWID (O/S): Come in, please. How are you girl? Good evening. Please get yourself on that chair. 

David. Dawid. Who brings you here? Marta? (Entering with REBECCA) Marta? Fallen 

asleep – 

REBECCA: Please, let’s not make this more awkward then it need be. Are you – him then? 

DAWID: For a moment I was in a dream, in Finchley Road, the light was coming in all orange 

through the kitchen blinds. He just sat there at the Formica table, hands folded over himself. 

He was never a quiet man, but Oupa just sat staring at me like he was waiting for a 

conversation to start. (The kudu barks loudly) I was cooking – a curry? Something with lamb 

– But I couldn’t get to any words in Afrikaans so he could understand me. The more I tried 

the less I felt anything Afrikaans form in my mouth. /And Oupa just sitting there waiting for 

– an apology?  

REBECCA: Not the only one there. You took Afrikaans out of your own mouth a long time ago. 

Why would it come back to service an apology you didn’t mean? To a man you walked away 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter 2017 43 

from? You walked; anything that needs saying is yours! (Pause) Perhaps that’s what it 

means! 

DAWID: Perhaps! (Suddenly tired) Good evening. I don’t think I want to talk about this. Marta? 

Marta! There’s someone here! Who brings you here?  

REBECCA: You walked right out of that door and never turned back to see what kind of hands 

where doing what to him. Or me. Or to my mama.  

DAWID: Marta is down that passage, you’ll see her; sleeping in that chair.  
 

MARTA appears. Part of the stage but not the scene. She sings REBECCA’s song. Joined slowly by 

the cast it becomes a battle cry under the scene. Ends in a defiant protest. 
 

REBECCA: You left her standing at an empty table – no, not empty. You filled that table with 

promises and stories of your coming back so good she could polish them up bright enough 

to chase away the loneliness when she needed to believe again. They were so good she 

believed them even when they started to show tarnish and rust under the weight of all those 

year of polishing. Do you know what that sounds like? That kind of loneliness wrapped up 

in denial? That’s a woman crying so heavy she doesn’t know what to do with herself. It 

comes on so sudden, halfway through words at a Sunday service, nights brushing her teeth. 

And you didn’t come back. Not for a long time. Not until the rust had set in so bad she was 

talking to that table you left her standing at. Talking! And, where were you? 

DAWID: Running. The world might be all round corners and butter for women, but it hits up on a 

man. Sometimes all a man can do with the inertia of it all, is run. Run before it traps him 

there in one space where all he is doing is taking the hits.  

REBECCA: What trap you think you put me in when he ran away? The world already had me in 

two traps when I was pushed out from my mother’s legs; coloured and a woman. That’s two 

pinning down my legs so I don’t have the option of running. The one you left me in pinned 

back my arm. Now you ask me why I lift my other hand, my free hand, up in the air and 

make a fist against you? 
 

20. It’s 1976. Johannesburg. Somewhere on Queen Elizabeth Bridge. 

Sounds of gun fire scatter the group. Police sirens. Black. In spots we see BARAK, DEBORAH and 

DAWID, hands behind their back – arrested! 



This Is Not Dawid Olivier 
 

© Lotter