Dancing the death drill - a story of who counts and who doesn't in the eyes of empire

The story of the sinking of the SS Mendi 102 years ago comes to world attention thanks to South Africa's Isango Productions who visited Auckland earlier this year.

There were maps of Europe; numerous copies of USA maps and a few world ones but none of Africa. If it were a small rural bookstore in, say, a Southern US town or a backwater English village it might not be surprising but this was Cape Town in Africa itself.

Mark Dornford-May, co-founder and artistic director of South African musical theatre company Isango Ensemble, uses the story to show how Africa – the richness of its people and their stories – is often missing. Even in Africa.

"Here we were making a show [A Man of Good Hope, which played in Auckland this year] about one man's journey through Africa and we couldn't even find a map in Africa of the African continent…"

So, says Dornford-May, it's not surprising that until a couple of years ago he and the company's performers, mainly from townships surrounding Cape Town, had never heard of the 1917 sinking of the SS Mendi killing 646, mainly African men from the 5th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps.

But their story is now the basis for Isango's latest production, SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill which helps to open the spectacular Brisbane Festival next week before travelling to North America for performances. It has extra poignancy for Isango given the men would have camped then set sail just a mile or two from the company's base: "They would have seen the same church we look out over now."

Dornford-May describes it as a story of Empire, one of many that have perhaps been conveniently forgotten about who counts and who doesn't, made more significant not by the sinking itself but the reaction to it.

Moving through thick fog in the English Channel early on February 21 and escorted by the destroyer HMS Brisk, the Mendi was accidentally rammed by the cargo ship Darro. She was en route to France to deliver men who "support" Allied forces fighting there. The Darro, twice Mendi's size, was damaged but not to the extent it would have stopped her master Henry W Stump to order lifeboats lowered to help rescue those overboard.

"And because they were from all over South Africa, many of them from the highlands and inland areas, few of them could swim," says Dornford-May. "Besides, the water would have been freezing at that time of year."

Survivors said interpreter and former church minister Isaac Wauchope Dyobha calmed the men by forming them into ranks, raising his arms heavenward and proclaiming: "Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do...you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers...Swazis, Pondos, Basotho...so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies."

A scene from Dancing the Death Drill, which tells the harrowing story of the sinking of the SS Mendi - and the subsequent thwarted rescue.

While the Brisk's lifeboats were lowered, Stump did not respond for four hours meaning many of those who drowned could have been saved. A formal hearing found him guilty of having travelled at dangerously high speed in thick fog and of failing to emit fog sound signals but it not delve into why he was reluctant to join rescue attempts. His licence was suspended for a year.

In South Africa, the incident became a symbol of racism and inequality but apartheid governments stymied wider talk about it until the mid-1990s. Dornford-May found the story through a book, by noted South African writer Fred Khumalo, recommended by a friend.

"When I read the story and shared it with the cast, everyone reacted with a sense of resignation that it's part of the history of the world that doesn't get talked about or examined but agreed it's worth telling," he says. "It makes people think but it also makes other people – those whose stories aren't told – feel that they actually count, that they're part of this world."

It's too early to say whether the musical will visit Auckland, but Dornford-May would be keen given the enthusiastic reception we gave A Man of Good Hope and the fact that its cast "had the best time" here. Nevertheless, see the show or not, he's convinced as many of us as possible should know the story of the Mendi because, like the best history, it tells us something about ourselves today.

"Who counts and who doesn't? Whose stories are told and by whom?"

The Brisbane Festival opens on Friday, September 6 and includes 85 theatre, music, dance, cabaret and circus, family and special events until Saturday, September 28.