In the words of Zimbabwean theatre practitioner and director for Savanna Trust Daniel Maphosa, historically, a woman’s participation in the arts and entertainment sector came with a certain tag and stigma. As a result, women stayed in the industry only until they got married, then they vanished and pursued decent professions. For decades, the physical and administrative architecture of African theatre has worn a distinctively male face. From the rehearsal room, boards and down to executive arts directorships, the traditional spaces of dramatic arts have mirrored society’s broader patriarchal structures.
However, in her recent research titled An Africana Womanist Perspective of Gender Participation in Performing Arts in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean researcher Vimbai Moreblessing Matiza demystifies the stereotype associated with the decline in the potential of women in the performing arts industry, arguing that in precolonial eras, women held immense creative authority as storytellers, dancers, and ritual leaders. It is the introduction of travelling with theatre troops and the Western colonial frameworks that brought about the stigmatic gaze towards female performers.
In the history of Southern Africa, Matiza’s argument is supported by the existence of traditional ritual performances such as the Nkolola in Zambia, where elderly women acted as directors and performers, using song, structured choreography, and satire to teach during the initiation of young girls into womanhood, as well as the Ntonjane, a Xhosa ceremony which relied heavily on call-and-response (Uvunyiso), and intense vocal control and rhythm to drive the performance.
“Women who pursued professional theatre were often labeled “immoral,” “loose,” or “unsuitable for marriage”. In many instances, early female theatre students were actively forced or convinced by their families to switch career paths just to remain eligible for a respectable marriage”, wrote Matiza.
Maphosa also noted that many traditional and mid-era post-colonial scripts frequently relied on lazy, discriminatory characterizations with female characters flattened into moral cautionary tales portrayed exclusively as prostitutes, home-wreckers, or passive dependents waiting for male salvation, while male characters occupied complex positions of intellectual and social power. This characterization made female bodies on stage subject to hyper-sexualized costume choices which were mostly ‘skimpy’ and revealing , while male cast members were dressed “decently” as professionals, subtly reinforcing a psychological bias to audiences that women on stage were objects of visual consumption rather than intellectual equals.
During the 80s and early 90s, African communities considered theatre and music spaces for the uneducated. As a result, the type of women found on stages were mostly uneducated and unmarried. However, a few women were brave enough to challenge these beliefs and advocate for freedoms that have opened doors for the successful female theatre and arts administrators of today.
In Botswana, this change was ushered by collectives of rural women and later on inspired the rise of Moduduetso Lecoge, who staged the country’s first one-woman show titled, A Woman of Many Firsts. In South Africa, Nomhle Nkonyeni and the Vusisizwe Players were among the pioneers of women’s theatrical social defiance. Thembelihle Moyo through her play Who Said I Don’t Want to Dance, and Tsitsi Dangarembga through her 1987 play She No Longer Weeps, led the new era of female writers who challenged the status quo in Zimbabwe. Other pioneers include Fatima Dike and Nora Mumba among others whose voices became influential in the National Theatre Arts Association of Zambia (NATAAZ).
The struggle for gender equity in African theatre is fundamentally a fight for structural power. Today, arts administration in the region still wears a predominantly “male face”, but several women have risen to turn the tables, taking over the freedoms that were fought for by those who came before them. Across the SADC region and the wider continent, female theatre makers, institutional leaders, and cultural architects are bringing about a tectonic shift is reshaping the sector, claiming the space and rewriting the rules of ownership, production, and representation.
While mainstream theatre often typecasts women as passive ornaments or tragic figures, award winning Zimbabwean theatre actress Thandolwenkosi Ndlovu became the first ever female director for the Bulawayo Theatre. Her work in physical comedy, clowning, and community youth theatre demands physical authority, humor, and active leadership. She embodies the exact shift of women stepping up not just as acted-upon characters, but as creators, writers, and independent administrators.
Through Almasi, the acclaimed Black Panther actress Danai Gurira is actively dismantling the patriarchal bottleneck in theater administration while creating high-level training, mentorship, and international-standard platforms specifically designed to propel women into powerful directorial and playwriting roles. The leadership structure which features figures like Associate Artistic Director Zaza Muchemwa displays Gurira’s overarching mission of shifting how African women are represented globally, moving away from stereotypical tropes into multi-dimensional, powerful agents of their own stories.
This push for female leadership is part of a broader continental movement visible in convening platforms like the Africa Creative Economy Lens (ACEL), where participants interrogate legal protections and institutional blind spots that disproportionately hinder women from driving community-level cultural work. The momentum stretches further across the continent and diaspora with convenings like the Afrotellers Conference, the Global Diaspora and Festival Circuits, and Ubuntu Film Festival have increasingly centered narrative sovereignty, highlighting women storytellers, researchers, and cultural leaders who are actively deconstructing systemic gatekeeping in African media and performing arts.
Across SADC countries, pioneering figures are breaking barriers, from South Africa’s powerhouse actor-directors like Momo Matsunyane (Hairline, THENX) and playwright Koleka Putuma to independent producers across Zambia and Botswana carving out independent institutional spaces. Male practitioners have also played a vital role in fighting for this cause and bringing about various changes. Daniel Mpahosa, is one of the examples who, through the Savanna Trust for community theatre has contributed to the training and rise of women powerhouses. In its 20 years of existence the trust has only had female deputies, a move to maintain equal representation at the decision-making level.
“As a person who deals in the spaces of gender equality at Savannah, I’ve always said, we’re creating work for people to go to, respectable work, respectable artists. So, we made sure as a policy that there should be gender equality, equity in our employment at Savannah Trust, and treat women respectively. At one point, we employed someone who was more educated than the director. Who had a Master’s Degree, when I did not have one then. And I felt that brought respect to the sector. Successful women bring respect to the sector. So, for us, it’s a policy, for every man there should be a woman” said Maphosa.
To frame this shift strictly as a modern ‘takeover’ is to overlook the deeper historical truth uncovered by researchers like Vimbai Moreblessing Matiza. Women are not breaking into an industry built exclusively for men; rather, they are dismantling a foreign, colonial blueprint and restoring an indigenous order where storytelling, ritual direction, and creative leadership were naturally female-led domains. The current wave of female directors, playwrights, and arts administrators represents a systemic homecoming; a conscious alignment of modern institutional power with historical African roots.
