The first question I asked Jonathan Nkala after watching his moving one-handed play The Crossing was: "So which parts did you make up?."

"None" he answered, noting that he had actually left huge chunks of this autobiographical tale.

Nkala's play was, according to those who saw it at Hifa, one of the theatrical highlights of this year's festival.

After seeing him in performance at the Mbira Centre I agree with them. The Crossing is the tale of two Zimbabwean youngsters who like thousands others, decided to try their luck in South Africa rather than live a life of seemingly unending despair.

Jacob, the erudite dreamer and rapacious reader who according to Nkala "knew everything" including the misconception that Johannesburg was a place one could easily get a job drowned while crossing the Limpopo. So it was left to Jonathan to fulfill what was a joint dream.

Before they decided to seek greener pastures across the Limpopo the two used to make musical instruments out of junk and write songs. "Jacob used to say one day we'd play in the National Sports Stadium," Nkala recalls.

On arrival in Johannesburg, Nkala realised that the idea that getting work in the "City of Gold" was easy was nothing but a myth. But he was not going to give up. Through sheer grit he finally got a job but had to deal with corrupt police whenever he was caught without any papers as he was illegal, "They always asked for something to make the problem 'go away'," he says.

A couple of years later he decided to move to Cape Town where he started selling wire toys made by fellow Zimbabweans before making some himself. It was on the beaches of Cape Town that he came into his own. His very original sales pitch was so full of enthusiasm that people often said he should be on stage.

It resulted in him appearing in a TV advert for a phone company. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

The Hifa performances were the first in Zimbabwe and also marked his first return home since leaving in 2002. But acting is just one of the multi-talented Nkala's pursuits. He has recorded a demo CD and performs with a band when time from rehearsals allows it. He is also a poet and a stand up comedian which is no surprise given his wicked sense of humour.

But all that is taking a back seat as The Crossing heads for Italy and The Netherlands.

And, after selling out at the Mbira Centre's semi-outdoor theatre for three successive nights, the centre's director Albert Chimedza says he is still getting calls to bring him back. "It was an experiment, we had never had a play here but it has worked," Chimedza said.