Amakhosi Theatre

Amakhosi Theatre Productions (also known as Amakhosi Academy of Performing Arts) is a Zimbabwean theatre company based at the Amakhosi Township Square Cultural Centre in Makokoba township, Bulawayo. The company was established under its current name in 1981 by Cont Mhlanga, and has since become an influential cultural institution in Zimbabwe, playing a role not only in stimulating the performance arts scene, but also in examining critical issues in politics, health, women's rights and development with urban and rural communities through a method of active audience engagement.

The group's origins go back to 1979 when Mhlanga and his Dragons Karate Club colleagues turned up one day for their training session at Makokoba's Stanley Hall and found the hall booked for a theatre workshop. The karate club members attended the workshop out of curiosity, and it was during this experience that their enthusiasm for theatre was first ignited. Cont Mhlanga began to attend theatre workshops in Bulawayo and Harare in 1980 and 1981 (in the newly independent Zimbabwe), from which he would return to share newly acquired skills with his karate club. In 1981, the Dragons Karate Club officially renamed itself “Amakhosi Productions”.

The performers became highly active in the township of Makokoba and beyond. By 1990 the group had performed 295 times on stage, and grown to 110 active members. Initially Cont Mhlanga was the sole writer, director and producer of all the plays. However, later other Amakhosi playwrights, such as Cont's brother Styx Mhlanga, were to make contributions to the company’s extensive repertoire, while the company expanded and diversified.

Amakhosi was founded within a unique historical and cultural context. Prior to Zimbabwe’s 1980 attainment of political independence, Rhodesian cultural and social life was polarised.

The Senior Drama Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, Owen Seda, notes that "as a conquest society, colonial Rhodesia was in dire need of legitimacy in its values and existence as a domineering settler society…Through theatre and other arts, western civilisation was contrasted with the lives of indigenous people who were regarded as uncivilised and without a culture."

It was inevitable that after independence this segregation of Zimbabwean theatre would continue. Indeed, for the first decade following Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, the National Theatre Organisation (a colonial establishment) continued its support of exclusive white amateur theatre companies. In this context, Amakhosi emerged as a strand of revolutionary black nationalist theatre, critical not only of colonialism, but also of the post-independence leadership which it characterised as hypocritical and corrupt.