As lights go up again we see NOMVULA sitting on the edge of her bed and whispering to MKHULU.

NOMVULA: Pssst … Psst … Mkhulu, please tell me a story. Tell me of a time when people were free to sing and dance. How did they sing? How did they dance? Show me. Please show me. [Pause.] Why must they lock me in this room, hide me away from the rest of the town? I have done nothing wrong Mkhulu … I only listened to the beating of my heart.

She climbs off the bed and retrieves MKHULU's hat, placing it on her head.

NARRATOR: The old man shook his head sadly, distant memories dancing in his eyes.

NARRATOR now assumes the role of doddery MKHULU, preparing to tell his story.

MKHULU: My father founded this town on a dream … a dream of a desert, a tin bucket and a rain drop. He came here with plans to build Africa's first tin bucket factory. Buckets that could be used by villagers to transport water during the dry season. Buckets that could be distributed to all the villages across the continent. With the money they made from this tin bucket factory they built this town, Tin Town.

The PERCUSSIONIST begins to build tin music into the old man's narrative.

MKHULU: While the men would work in the mines, the women would beat the tin into buckets at the factory. All the time singing … singing … singing.

The tin sounds build into an infectious drumming.

MKHULU: Singing while they worked. From out of the din, the clanging of tin, they created songs, praise to the ancestors, who responded by sending the rains each year. As children we used to wait … wait with our thirsty buckets raised to the sky.

MKHULU raises a tin bucket anxiously to the heavens in the hope of catching a precious rain drop. He waits expectantly for a few seconds but nothing comes.

MKHULU: But I was just a boy then. Just a boy when the men from the Silent Sir government first arrived.

He lowers his bucket. Ominous music and military drumming fill the space.

We revert to a flashback. MKHULU disappears behind the centre gauze screen before reappearing through it as the CENSOR.