Short description
The play shows how little we still know each other and how South Africans still make assumptions about each other based on racial grouping rather than on individual reality.
Long description
The play shows how little we still know each other and how South Africans still make assumptions about each other based on racial grouping rather than on individual reality. Happy Natives is very contemporary, looking at the way in which South Africans struggle to define their present identity. The author's play points out just what an interesting and richly human world we inhabit. He shows that no human being in fact fits into the images that the media would like to sell us, and that the effort required to relate authentically to one another is worthwhile. A willingness to listen, a tolerance of different ways, and a sense of one's own worth are shown to be ways to greater enjoyment of this diversity.