Shrouded Blessings

written by Basil Diki

Shrouded Blessings is a tale of four people on a collision course. Naomi, a Xhosa schoolgirl and enchantress given to prostitution that counts the S.A Police Commissioner among her clientele, approaches Fr Bryn Flynn, an Irish priest at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Christ the King, in Johannesburg, for confession. But Fr Flynn is reeling from the consequences of a parishioner’s botched abortion. To the Cathedral also comes Bonginkosi, inheritor of a business empire, to surrender a bloodthirsty and sexually abusive tokoloshe (goblin). As Naomi enjoys her daring escapades, Bonginkosi is catapulted into a maelstrom of spiritual journeys in frantic attempts to get rid of the menace.

Beginning in Johannesburg, the story unfolds with great drama and mysticism before a cabbalist in Jerusalem, a diviner in Nigeria, a Lama in the Samye Temple on the Himalayas in Tibet, a Disciplinary Committee of the Vatican, and finally before a Xhosa sangoma (diviner) in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. But will the Xhosa sangoma, a diviner in conflict with the Government and his community, a man threatening gods and desperate for the head of an albino, rid Bonginkosi of the goblin and himself of his newly found wife -Naomi? Down and trodden, is Naomi not being turned day-by-day into a creature that animates her worst fears – a tokoloshe?

Basil Diki

Basil Diki, born in Kadoma, Zimbabwe in 1971, is an iconic prolific dramatist who has written, performed and directed numerous plays. In 1988 he pioneered the founding of Rimuka Performing Arts, a theatre company, and in 1991 founded Kadoma Actors and Writers Organisation. He has won several awards for his daring and outstanding dramaturge, notably the 2001 Writing & Publishing Award, Special Mention; Poetry and Drama from the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association for the play The Tribe of Graves. In 2004 he won the Best Achievement & Production Award from the Zimbabwe Invitational Drama Festival Society for directing his play Behind the Façade. He is an entrepreneur and a freelance Total Quality Management practitioner. Father to a son and two daughters, he still leaves in the City of Kadoma as a celebrated thespian, drama critic and adjudicator.