It was a turning point in the push for African independence – and it took place in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall. We meet the writer of a play about the fifth Pan-African Congress
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n the facade of the building that once housed Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall in Manchester sits a plaque commemorating a turning point in the push for African independence. The fifth Pan-African Congress in October 1945 was attended by future global leaders as well as activists and scholars from across Africa and its diaspora. But despite the event’s international importance, it has been largely overlooked by mainstream British history. Now a biting new play is set to remedy this.
“I think a lot of Mancunians don’t know it happened,” says playwright Ntombizodwa Nyoni, who lectures in the same building, now part of Manchester Metropolitan University. “But it’s like: you’re part of such a phenomenal moment in history.” Eighty years later, her dramatisation of the event, Liberation, is about to receive its world premiere at Manchester international festival.
“Quite early on, I was interested in how leaders are made,” Nyoni explains when we meet, post-rehearsal. She started working on Liberation in 2019, spending the first year and a half “getting to know” the 200 delegates through extensive reading and tracing their individual timelines. Then came the task of bringing the attendees to life, showing the people behind their legacies. “I think we have this idea around activists … that they are these extraordinary people. But actually they were all normal people who did extraordinary things,” she says.
