Fashionably Ethnic: Individuality and Heritage in Greig Coetzee's Happy Natives

One of the earliest predictions made about the direction which South African theatre would take after apartheid was that it would become increasingly unshackled from an obsession with collective concerns and that there would be an increased adoption of a more personal, subjective approach: a shift from exteriority to interiority. This is the reason one might expect post-apartheid literature to be increasingly interested in the individual. To an extent, developments have borne out this prediction, and Andre Brink (1997: 172) and Temple Hauptfleisch (1997: 161-2) both noticed an increase in more personal plays. And Miki Flockemann says that with the shift in the 1990s it seemed as if there would now be a greater emphasis on the individual voice, and voices exploring and articulating personal, subjective experiences, not speaking as representatives of a group, and where your story isn't always a testimony to a larger community, but it's your individual story. (Solberg 2003:32)