dinosaur it's interesting you raise this particular issue regarding Lara Foot's play Tshepang. Interesting, because rather like this case, there was a lot of mis-reporting and sensationalising.
Tshepang has been performed in South African schools for a long time, and performed around the world to great reviews. In Ireland for example one newspaper review said 'it does exactly what one hopes theatre will do'. It is a play based on real events in SA - the 2001 incident of the rape of a baby known in the media as 'baby Tshepang'.
Students in the exam were not required to read a scene describing the rape of a baby, that is one of the ways it was misreported. Students were required to read a 14 line extract in which the incident of the rape is dealt with and the line reads 'Simon acts out the rape with a broomstick and a loaf of bread'. Still harrowing stuff but not what was reported around the world.
What caused the outcry in South Africa was not the fact that the play was on a Matrix examination but the fact it was a unseeen, compulsory question. In other words students had no opportunity to avoid the question if they wanted. The author of the play even described the question as 'insensitive'. There has not actually been any outcry over the fact students study the play at all - but the fact the 'rape question' was a compulsory element of the exam.
So the outcry over the exam question is not the same as the issue regarding Mogadishu that has led to the parent's objection - which is only about the use of bad language. She had the option of her child withdrawing from the class and studying a different task. Not giving the option to avoid the question, but insisting students write on it, was wrong as it is a safeguarding issue at that point (by UK requirements) because, for example, you would be causing a triggering event for children whose lives had been touched by rape or child abuse. Therefore such a question could not appear in an exam here in the way it did in SA and the two 'incidents' are not, therefore comparable.
Very interestingly one of the most rational comments on the case - by Brook Spector the former CEO of J'burgs Market Theatre - is that studying the play (as has been done for years in SA high schools) and watching the play being performed is not an issue (and hasn't really ever been considered one by SA schools). As Spector says “It is an extraordinary play, a work that always had a major impact on student groups when they came to see it at the Market,” Spector said. “But, and here’s the but, it was part of a process of discussion with the students when they came to see it." This is exactly what has been said here by many a drama teacher - using material in a safe, educational setting is a process which enables disturbing events to be safely examined. The SA department of education said 'grade 12 students are young adults and fully aware of the social issues confronting our country. The dramatic arts are powerful vehicles for creating social awareness and education to societal issues that need to be addressed to bring about societal change.'
FWIW the two questions in the Matrix on the exam, which were designed to assess understanding of action metaphor, which were felt to be inappropriate were “Why did the playwright choose to use the symbols of a loaf of bread to represent the baby and the broomstick as the ‘rapist’?” (the rape is not acted out with body parts in the play but with the props just mentioned) and, more problematically, “Describe how you would get the actor portraying Simon to perform line 9 to maximise the horror of the rape for the audience”.
In full, the questions, which accompanied the 14 line extract, were "Explain to what extent the character Simon can be called a narrator (2 marks)"; "As the only speaking role in the play Simon's speaking performance is crucial to the success of the play. Describe how you would use tone, pace and volume in lines 1-8 to build to the point of climax in this exatract. (5 marks)". The last 2 sections of the question, detailed above, were worth 3 and 4 marks respectively. Line 9 reads 'He acts out the rape using a broomstick and a loaf of bread'.
Clearly students did not read a scene 'describing' the rape of a baby. Never-the-less that is the media story which was carried around the world and gets repeated over and over again.
To suggest that the two 'issues' - Mogadishu and Tshepang - are the same is a fallacious argument. Tshepang was one of the set works for the 2012-13 school year, a fact which did not cause complaint. It is the compulsory nature of a badly thought through question which was the issue.