Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1991
   
!KUNG SAN: RESETTLEMENT

1988. 28 minutes. Video only. Color. Produced by Documentary Educational Resources

SYNOPSIS
The dramatic changes in !Kung lifestyle and subsistence that occurred between 1978 and 1986. Though edited by teachers of from Grades 4 and 5 in Massachusetts schools, the video would be better used with appropriate background at higher levels of learning.

CRITIQUE
Like The !Kung San: Traditional Life (1987), this film uses N!ai from N!ai: story of a !Kung Woman (1980) as the narrative voice. John Marshall offers viewers shots of people with whom they can come to identify, get to know, and eventually empathize with. N!ai s an individual intersects with the communal subjectivities shared by the clan as a whole. However, the early focalization through N!ai shifts from her to Marshall half-way through the film. This occurs because, like Traditional Life Resettlement has been edited from pre-existing films made by Marshall.

The subsequent narration foreshortens explanation of why the Ju/'hoansi join the South African army, whom they are fighting, and what the `enemy' stood for. The irony is that the `enemy', the South West Peoples Organisation (SWAPO), was much more sympathetic to the !Kung's plight than the South African Administration. (SWAPO finally took power in Namibia in 1990 after United Nations supervised elections.) The Ju/'hoansi's relatively high pay in the South African army exacerbated differences in wealth within their community.

The pictorial contrast is between the !Kung's earlier self-sufficient hunter-gatherer economy and their dependence on hand-outs of food from South African administrators in the late 1980s. Marshall is seen helping this community to survive through a mixture of pastoralism, hunting and gathering.

Farming is interrupted because of elephants destroying water holes, and lions eating the Ju/'hoansi's cattle. This sets up a tension between the Ju/'hoansi, who want to protect their cattle by killing the lions, and the Department of Conservation which is entrusted with protecting the lions, but not the cattle. The Ju/'hoansi's need to hunt for meat leads, according to a white game warden, to a decline in the giraffe population, which he feels should be conserved, even if this denies the Ju/'hoansi an adequate supply of meat. Elephants are less of a problem and can be kept out of the water hole by circling it with rocks.

The discourse of conservation in Namibia under South African rule included `Bushmen' as part of `nature'. The international success of an earlier film, The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), rekindled an idea first discussed in the 1940s where the Department of Nature Conservation and Tourism would allow the Ju/'hoansi to live and hunt `traditionally' in a game park in Eastern Bushmanland. However, these `Bushmen' would not be permitted to raise cattle or engage in `non-traditional' activities (Gordon, 1990a). Tourists, especially Western European, who complained about the San in Botswana `indiscriminately' killing game, could then live with, and like, `wild Bushmen', knowing that their conservation ethics had been massaged (Gordon 1990b:31).

Resettlement was partly made to counter the racism of anthro-tourism. The video contests the idea that the Ju/'hoansi are culturally frozen in time, and offers the alternative of farming as a means of social and economic survival. The game park, argued to become a "national asset" by the occupying South African state, perpetuated the white Western myth of `Bushmen' as always having been hunter-gatherers.

Marshall's ironical narration about San knowing little about tracking, overlaid on shots of a mock attack against SWAPO by battle-dressed Ju/'hoansi soldiers, refers to a new myth about the San popularized by the South African military, but not mentioned in the film. The army talks about the `instinctive' ability of the San as `hunters', making them unsurpassed counter-insurgency operatives (Gordon, 1990b: 33-4). They are portrayed in military and mercenary magazines as `natural' trackers, but as Marshall tells us, they had lost much of this skill by the 1980s. These myths, based in animalism, continue in the face of hard evidence to the contrary (see Mill, 1987). Symbolically, Resettlement suggests that the military is destroying the !Kung - they get uniforms, boots, rifles, backpacks, and even fight an imaginary enemy, in preparation for the real SWAPO, about which the video says very little, but which would be the more appropriate ally.

An omission in the video concerns the South African government's land policy in Namibia. It is not clear why the government wants to resettle the !Kung. Resettlement has to be seen in the context of the game park idea, and other attempts to forcibly concentrate Namibian ethnic groups in bantustan-like areas.

The film moves from a pessimistic description to one of hope where the !Kung are trying to adapt to a mixed economy in the face of social, institutional, political and carnivore impediments.

Where N!ai is structured like a tragedy, with closure. Resettlement is open-ended, and invites further discussion.

Further Reading
Gordon, R. (1990a). "The Prospects for Anthropological Tourism in Bushmanland", Cultural Survival Quarterly, 14(1), 1-3.

Gordon, R. 1990b: "People of the Great Sandface: People of the great white lie?", Commission on Visual Anthropology Review, (Spring), 30-34.

Mill, D. 1987: "SADF's Bushmen: Desert nomads on SWAPO's track", Soldier of Fortune, (January), 32-37.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1991)

Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, Grahamstown

Grocott’s Mail 3 February 1984

   

A unique kind of academic ‘paper’ was presented at the University of the Witwaterstand History Workshop this week in the form of a video movie made by four lecturers at Rhodes.

The 40 minute movie tells the history of the coloured settlement at Kat River, near the town of Seymour in the Stockenstrom district north of Fort Beaufort. It was researched and produced by Jeff Peires, senior lecturer in History, and three lecturers in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies - Graham Hayman, Don Pinnock, and Keyan Tomaselli.

This history is related mainly by the Kat River residents themselves, who, although they never formally learnt their history - few of them are educated beyond Std 4 - have a clear grasp of the story of their community reaching back into the 19^th century.

It is a story of dispossession of their land, often by deception and false promises. The latest and most bitter episode is the demand by the Ciskei government that the Kat River people must leave, because the Stockenstrom district is needed to join up Keiskammahoek with the district of Hewu.

Letters from the former Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr J.C. Heunis, and his successor, Mr F.W. De Klerk, show that the South African government first accepted responsibility for finding alternative land for the community, then denied that such a promise was made, then retracted this denial. The community, who do not want to move, feel uneasy about their fate.

The movie tells how the Kat River settlement was founded in 1829 under the direction of Commissioner-General Andries Stockenstrom, primarily as a buffer district to protect the white settlers from Xhosa raids. Stockenstrom came to view the settlement as “a place to collect the remnants of the Hottentot race, to save them from extirpation, to civilise and Christianise them”. It was to be a place where “men of colour” could own property and build a community of their own.

By 1833, the community possessed 2500 cattle and 5000 sheep. They cut 53 irrigation canals and reaped 700 bushels of wheat, by 1845, the wealth of the settlement was valued at £65000.

The men of the community enrolled in the Cape Town Regiment and fought with the whites in the Frontier Wars against the Xhosas. But their allegiance to the Cape Colony changed after the War of the Axe (1847), when the Cape government came under the influence of Stockenstrom’s enemy, the newspaper editor Robert Godlonton. Godlonton’s supporters, appointed magistrates in the area, condemned the people as “a set of lazy paupers” who should hire themselves out as labourers to Boer and English settlers.

Fearing that the powerful Godlonton faction would push through a vagrancy law which would coerce them into becoming labourers on white farms, the loyalty of the Kat River people become divided. In 1850, in the War of Mlanjeni, the largely Khoi (Hottentot) garrison at Fort Armstrong mutinied, and throughout the Eastern Cape the Khoi rebelled. The “bont oorlog” raged for three years until the rebels were defeated and stripped of their land.

Although the loyalists retained their freehold title their ownership was eroded at the turn of the century by the unscrupulous Seymour lawyer and money-lender named Adendorff. He encouraged the people to take large loans at exorbitant rates of interest, and when they could not pay, he demanded their land.

In 1907, Adendorff sold his practice to Vivian Gordon Fenner-Solomon, a young attorney, who, in the words of Dr Peires “presided over the ruin of the Kat River”.

In his research Peires found that Fenner-Solomon deliberately inflated the costs of survey and transfer in order to force his poor clients to take out bonds on their formerly unencumbered property. Some of his devious bookkeeping methods are documented in the film. Over time, Fenner-Solomon became mayor of Seymour, Chairman of the Divisional Council and, in 1938, MP for Fort Beaufort. “But despite his eminence” says the film’s commentary “his bookkeeping methods did not improve”. Many of the Kat River people lost their land.

The creation of the Ciskei has brought chaos and despair to the settlement. The film ends with a spontaneous outpouring of frustration by Piet Draghoender, owner of the farm Bergmans Hoek. Here, translated from Afrikaans, are some part of the verbatim transcript:

Here is was all brown people, but they were chased out so - not with their agreement but on their backs, without wanting to. Today I go also, without wanting to. I say …I say… I prophesy he who has done this evil to me will not live on this earth.

He will be punished above and he will die below … My father went for the war. My father … my children … my father’s children … for a war. My uncles’ children … My aunt’s children. Blood! Of blood! To make this place free! And today we must leave it behind. Without wanting to. This ground is a free ground. It isn’t in debt. I don’t pay interest on it. But I put it in the hands of the Lord, the Old Master. He will put such things right. He will look out for a place for me. The land won’t permit you to be taken. Taken like this, and thrown away”.

 

Further Reading
Peires, J. (1984). Stockenstrom: The Third Betrayal, (July), 99-104.

Peires, J. (1987). The Legend of Fenner-Solomon. In Bozzoli, B. (ed.) Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

Sienaert, E. (1988) Perspectives On and from Oral Testimony: Piet Draghoender’s Lament, Mosaic, 21(2/3), 227-241

Tomaselli, K.G. (1997). Orality, Rhythmography and Visual Representation, Visual Anthropology, 9, 93-116.

Tomaselli, K.G. and Sienaert, E. (1990). Ethnographic Film/Video production and Oral Documentation - the case of Piet Draghoender in Kat River - The End of Hope. In Groenewald, H.C. (ed.) Oral Studies in South Africa. Pretoria: HSRC. Also published in Research in African Literatures, 20(2), 242-264.

Author: Milbrodt, Natalie
Date: 1998
 

Jaguar : A Voyage of Discovery

SYNOPSIS
This story follows three young Nigerians who decide to travel to the Gold Coast. Their journey is a `voyage of discovery'. Before they leave home, each of the men consults their respective sourcerers to secure advice and blessings for their journey. Once their business is in order, Illo, Lam and Damor'e set out for the west coast. The first people they encounter live in the Savannah and give them food and water. Next they encounter the Somba. The Somba live nude, wear feathers in their noses, smoke pipes and have unusual piercings. The three Nigerian travelers laugh when meeting these nude "savages". The rumors they had heard about these people were actually true. Despite their initial discomfort, Damor'e, Illo and Lam eventually accept the dress of the Somba they first saw as strange. Damor'e makes a comments that they were wrong to laugh at the Somba because they are gentle people; God must have meant for them to live naked. The men then travel through landscapes unfamiliar to them. They are fascinated with the mountains and long bridges they find. They then cross the border into the Gold Coast. The men follow the diviner's advice and separate at the first crossroads past the border. Lam goes toward Kumasi with a fellow herder. Illo becomes a kaya-kaya , a worker on a boat. The camera first follows Damor'e, who heads for Accra on foot and by car. He becomes a successful worker for a lumberyard in Accra. Illo finds Duma, a mutual friend to all three, and works with him selling perfume in Kumasi. Eventually the four men find each other and work at their own boutique until it is time to return home. They ride on buses most of the way home and return to their communities as heroes. They give away almost everything they bought while in Accra and settle back into their lives as more cosmopolitan and experienced members of their society.

CRITIQUE
Non-actors portray situations which are likely, but not actual. Rouch and his companions approached their project in a free, pourquoi pas style - an ethnofiction. As sound was added later, the voices of the travellers offer a somewhat distanced and summarized vocalization of each man's thoughts and words at the time of the filming. The narrative is both recreated dialogue and an explanation of the characters' activities.

What makes this film so timelessly entertaining, is the enduring theme of travelers encountering others. Illo, Lam and Damor'e all experienced new people and places in their travels. Their reactions to these encounters allow us to consider their judgments about what they saw. A peek into others' perceptions also forgives us for feeling uncomfortable when we first encounter naked people like the Somba. If the Somba seem strange to the three travellers, they would logically seem unusual to us as well. About twenty years after filming Jaguar, the film was shown to members from a few communities in Niger. The crowd's response to the Somba was loaded with the same intolerance Damor'e, Illo and Lam begin with when they first entered the village. The audience regarded the Somba as savages. This reaction was unsympathetic and even cruel toward their fellow Africans.

The three travellers adapted during the course of their travels, thus changing who they consider as others. They encounter people who speak many different languages and who live in different social and economic levels. The population in a busy port city on the ocean is more varied and larger than their village in Niger. Damor'e, especially, began to suppress his identity. All three try to be as little as posible like the na'ive and inexperienced young men from the country. Damor'e makes comments like, "just can't do anything with them blacks." He has become a powerful boss in his estimation and lords whatever he can over people he manages.

Illo, Lam and Damor'e's self-perceived superiority over others is most dramatic when they return home. They enter their village speaking English, which they know no one will understand. They emulate stereotypically Caucasian behavior, just as Damor'e distances himself from his own blackness with his workers at the lumberyard in Accra. The men are full of comments to make themselves seem superior. "Hold my bag boy, it's full of precious goods," "I only speak English, you translate for me," "Let's show the poor people the mats we bought." Money is very exotic and respected in the village. Giving all of their purchased goods away is a method of buying respect. They have not only left home and came back safely, they have profited personally and for their village. These heroes condescend to their fellow villagers in their new position of power as cosmopolitan travelers. One of the men even has the courage to ask a woman to marry him after his triumphant return. The film also offers a larger message about the nature of human societies. Rouch demonstrates that a vast separation in social class, prosperity, or lifestyle between societies can result in a sympathy between different groups of people. Their only similarities are basic human qualities, many of which are flattering to both parties. Once Illo, Damor'e and Lam left their small village, they quickly adopted an attitude of acceptance. They are forced to adjust to strangers from different cultures outside their village. They manage to accept the Somba when immersed in their culture. They cope with each others' vast religious differences and with people from all over Africa who live and work closely with them in Accra and Kumasi. Soon, the only things they will not tolerate are reminders of their own `backwards' ways. The men belittle everyone to whom they feel superior, namely workers with less responsibility and fellow villagers who have not traveled to the West Coast. The things the three young Nigerians found contemptible in others are qualities they themselves possess.

Further Reading
Stoller, P. (1992). The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Loizos, P. (1993). Innovation in Ethnographic Film: From Innocence to self-consciousness . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Author: Oosthuysen, Chantel
Date: 1997
Place: University of Natal, Durban
Date: 1997
Product: Master’s Thesis
Copyright: Chantel Oosthuysen    

Introduction

Egoli is the only locally produced daily soap opera in South Africa. It is broadcast on the Electronic Media Network (M-Net) every weekday from 18h00 to 18h30. According to the All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) more than 1.3 million viewers watch Egoli every day (June 1996).

Soap opera is often seen as providing mere entertainment from which the audience derives pleasure. Franz Marx (personal interview; 9 July 1996) states that soap opera is literally the personalisation of “strooivermaak” (chaff entertainment) with no specific underlying message. My argument is, however, that any text, no matter whether it is literature or media, has meaning or meanings in the sense that it is produced and interpreted by certain communities. To argue therefore that a soap opera provides only entertainment and that it conveys no messages is problematic.

As a result of its number of viewers, Egoli is in a powerful position in terms of incorporating context-specific events and utilising these to supply the audience with sufficient information. The storyline regarding prejudices against AIDS, for example, heightened awareness amongst the Egoli viewers and so helped to conscientise viewers (Pitout, 1996). In the same way, the dominant ideologies in South Africa, such as capitalism, racism and male domination, can also be contested. Ideology can be defined as a “system of ideas” (Gramsci, 1971: 375) which serves as an agent for social unification.

For Gramsci (1971) hegemony is a tool for understanding society in order to contest or change it. Hegemony consists of 1) the spontaneous consent given by the masses and 2) the apparatus of state coercive power, which enforces discipline on those groups who do not consent (Gramsci; 1971: 12). There is always tension between the dominant and the subordinate group, and as such the dominant group achieves domination through both coercion and consent. A soap opera, such as Egoli, can challenge the hegemonic order prevalent in society through 1) criticism and 2) presenting an alternative way of living and thinking.

Egoli can serve as a cultural forum with the aim of making different cultural groups aware of each other’s customs, habits, attitudes and values (Pitout, 1996: 203-206). Magrietha Pitout (1996: 2) states that since 2 February 1990 when the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) were unbanned, existing political hierarchies such as the National Party (NP) began to disintegrate. This led to “Africanisation” which found resonance in popular culture products, especially those aimed at mixed audiences. As such Egoli can serve as an information source concerning different cultural groups in South Africa.

Pitout (1996: 4) investigates the possibility of Egoli being a popular symbolic form, which propagates the ideal values of the new South Africa, for example tolerance of other cultures. Symbolic forms entail language and images being utilised in the media to produce a specific message. The aim can be to inform, to convince or to entertain. Pitout (1996: 205) argues that in Egoli an idealised society is represented where different cultural groups interact without any conflict.

I agree with Pitout (1996: 4) that Egoli can in some respects be a cultural forum where viewers can learn about other cultures and learn to interact with one another in an idealised manner. This article argues, however, that the intertextuality that is used in Egoli should be politicised, that the relationship Egoli has with the context should be a critical one rather than merely reflectional.

Certain aspects of South African life are portrayed in an idealistic way in Egoli, especially those relating to racial relations in the work environment. This is done deliberately by Franz Marx (personal interview; 9 July 1996) who attempts to present an idealised Johannesburg. Apart from presenting preferred interrelationships, Egoli also manages to be critical of some socio-political issues, for example prejudice against people with AIDS. These critical relationships with the context should, however, be extended to include all socio-political issues such as gender and ethnic equality.

Since any production of a text is a cultural activity, the cultural context of the producer is incorporated into the text, whether consciously or not. The producers also have a specific target audience for whom they produce the soap opera, which colours the way in which they present the South African context in their productions. It is important for producers to be aware of their own ideological perspectives. In this way a certain viewpoint is not propagated and audiences are provided with sufficient information from all involved parties so that they may create informed opinions regarding socio-political issues.

Culture is a useful tool in understanding the way meaning is constructed through the production and the interpretation process. Both producers’ and audiences’ cultures play a salient role in the way in which they actively react to their socially determined identities. Culture can be defined as follows:

Culture is the ensemble of meaningful practices and ‘uniformities of behaviour’ through which self-defined groups within or across social classes express themselves in a unique way or locate themselves within an identifiable ‘field of signification’ (Tomaselli, 1988: 39).

It must be noted that cultures are not homogeneous wholes and that the interpretations and behaviours of individuals from one specific culture differ according to their various identities that constitute their culture, such as gender, ethnicity, class and language.

The production of Egoli will be analysed as being influenced not only by culture but also by consumption. The latter can be defined as “the processes by which consumer goods and services are created, bought and used” (McCracken, 1988: xi). These two aspects determine the way Egoli presents reality in the various storylines. Using episodes aired between 14-29 November 1996, I will analyse whether the various audiences interpret these texts as being critical or merely reflectional of the South African context it incorporates.

As theoretical basis I will apply Julia Kristeva’s (1980) definition of intertextuality to a Peircean model of Semiotics. The different types of intertextual relationships will be discussed as proposed by Genette (1982) and a new term will be introduced, namely contextuality. The latter form of intertextuality entails the relationship between a text and the context to which it refers. I will argue that Egoli needs to be critical of the context it represents in order to make its audiences aware of the options available to them.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1997
    Inside the Struggle: The Amy Biehl Story

1994. 60 mins. Turning Point.

SYNOPSIS
The film offers a brief biographical profile of Amy Biehl, an upper middle class American girl. Mandela had became her hero after hearing a song about him on the radio. Her interest impacted her family, and she learned about South Africa in university courses. She was absorbed with the country's history.

The history of Afrikaners, compared to the American West follows. This overview includes a very quick, but accurate history of apartheid, illustrated with footage from features, news reels and other visual materials (none of it identified). Amy had wanted to change conditions, and was prepared to take the necessary risks. She worked in several African countries, and then was awarded a Fulbright to study at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a primarily `colored' institution near Cape Town. Biehl was stunned at the township poverty she saw in this area.

Amy was warned by one of her UWC professors about the dangers of going into black areas. After ten months, Amy told that she was surprised that nothing bad had happened, but that she had had a premonition that something might occur. While taking a colleague home to Guguleto, young radicals were holding a protest march. Amy was caught and killed. Her grieving black friend talks to the camera and says that Amy was killed because she was a `settler'. News footage of her funeral and counter-protests in support of Amy are shown. Brigette Mabandla, Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, says Amy was truly part of us. "We felt guilty being black". She died because of her love for us, says a church woman.

The camera follows the Biehl family who went South Africa to understand the reasons why Amy died. Mr Biehl says he got quite a rush being in the middle of a revolution: shots of shooting over the years of struggle punctuate this statement. Memorial tributes are addressed by Mr Biehl. At the University of Cape Town (UCT) there was a mass response: singing in support of the Biehls occurred in a large classroom.

Shots of Mandela being released in February 1990. End of apartheid statements by the State President FW De Klerk. But the conflicts continued: A frustrated white farmer kills a black man, because his dog had mated with the farmer's.

All the statements made by interviewees in the film are linked to Biehl's philosophy. Maria, a typical black maid, becomes the character through which the continuation of apartheid is shown to occur in the form of a master-servant relationship. The video becomes a maid-and-madams vignette with the white madam not knowing her maid's real name, not doing anything when her husband was being beaten by the farmer, and not paying her enough.

Amy's admiration is revealed for those leading the liberation, especially Chris Hani, who held sway over South Africa's angry young blacks. She continued going into black townships, but says the narrator, "white skin had become a red flag" - the mood was changing. Veteran journalist Allister Sparks talks about how police brutalization turns people into killers. She was a classic victim of a situation she did not create says Robert Shrire, professor of politics at UCT. He tries to explain why some of the very people she aimed to help had taken her life. When the Biehls first set foot in a squatter camp, they were shocked to learn that this is how eight million people lived in South Africa. Small, singing cheerful and welcoming children in the township - they could turn out to be like Amy's killers in 10 years or so if things don't improve (Amy's mother).

Now the camera takes us to Guguleto where Amy was killed. Seeing houses on side of the road - how could their inhabitants just have watched - it was such a public place? The Biehls were shattered.

At the Court house where the suspects were being tried the Biehls are cruelly met with raucous and taunting behavior by young Pan African Congress activists, on hearing about Amy's death. All that mattered to them was that she was white, a `settler'. An interview with the prosecutor tells of threats against the witnesses. "I know now what it means to be hated purely because of race", says Amy's sister.

The Biehls meet the widow of Chris Hani. This was the most important moment of whole trip say Mr Biehl. The scene is of one grieving family meeting another. Reconciliation is the theme from widow and daughter. The camera cuts to Maria Kutwane, who walks past the farm of the man who killed her husband - but she wants blacks and whites to live together. Shrire talks of the "miracle" that so few blacks hate whites for apartheid, and that they don't want retribution.

Tokyo Sexwale, a former guerilla commander and ranking member of the African National Congress and Communist Party, talks about the need to address hopes and material needs, or the dream will be shattered. This is why political leaders are so determined to press ahead with free elections. The Biehls then meet Mandela at a mass rally.

Amy had wanted to be counted amongst the thousands who lost their lives in the struggle against apartheid.

CRITIQUE
Inside the Struggle: The Amy Biehl Story is an excellently made production which appeals emotionally to viewers in its quest to understand the nature of the conflict in South Africa, and why Biehl became a victim. But it also rearticulates the notion of `victim' through linking deaths of democrats (eg. Biehl and Chris Hani) to broader calls and processes for reconciliation. The film becomes the Biehl's quest for self-discovery through meeting the people with whom had Biehl worked and admired. Biehl herself is the vehicle through which a kind of absolution is reached by all concerned, except the brutalized youth of the PAC. She does not become the focus of the film, though her thoughts and writings and integrated into broader processes under way.

The history of conflict in South Africa is woven into the narrative, and while a strength in the narrative form and argument of the video, is a weakness in understanding the broader history of oppression and resistance.

The welcome emphasis is one of locating Amy Biehl and the Biehls within broader processes of resistance and reconciliation. This is a positive bias away from canonizing individual heros. The video examines the attack against Biehl in terms of the structural violence that made her assailants into killers. It breaks with the usual notion of black as savages, and locates the savagery in the system of apartheid.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1997)

Further reading
Magona, S. 1998. Mother to Mother. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.

Author: Shea, Martin
Date: 1998
   

I BRING YOU FRANKINCENSE

TOPICS: Anthropology, Sociology, Intercultural Relations

USES: UE, LE, U, G

CRITIQUE
I Bring You Frankincense, a film from a child's perspective about socially defining one's self, can be seen as the psychological development of a post-cultural identity. While Third World cultures struggle to retain their conscious traditional perspectives, the young half-white, half-black boy in Frankincense represents the color blind ideology and complete integration of race which the 1960s cultural revolution sought. What gives this 1971 British elementary schoolboy named Sunshine Brown his relevance to the current global racial struggle is his initial innocence of politics and lack of self or ethnic consciousness.

Sunshine's name embodies his uniqueness, combining the free love of the hippie movement with the surname Brown, which signifies the genetic background which dominates his features. While his blackness is unavoidably one of the first things the audience notices, his youthful perspective unfettered by the darkness of school politics or motherly irresponsibility is best described as Sunshine. Quickly, his uniqueness has less to do with him being the only black kid in an all white school and more to do with his goodness. He shines through, aided by the narrating voice of the off-screen adult Sunshine, to an audience whose own political dispositions are quieted through his Forest Gump-like view of the world, i.e. his falling in love with the his blonde deskmate Mikilai

The Bible, a book which proposes unconditional love, is used by the teacher to insult Sunshine as he lapses into daydreams about love. The academic hierarchy further reveals its hypocrisy as the same teacher separates Sunshine from the girl without explanation and the principal, guilty of attending strip clubs, confronts Sunshine's hippy mother about her marijuana use. It becomes obvious that the school is controlled by the other mothers who Sunshine describes as Maggie Thatcher. But his mom is `Janice Joplin'. While her flaws are evident, her commitment to Sunshine is the only apparent source of his boundless energy-which is further illustrated in the movie.

Sunshine has managed to escape both this Maggie Thatcher society and the black culture which experienced a revolution of identity in the 1970s. He does, however, seem influenced by all of the cultures which touch his life --his all-white elementary school, his grandparents, his mother, and his attachment to black pop musicians. Though he did not stay long enough to fully realize it, the homogenous society of Newcastle, England has no room for him. The football scene seems to be his first confrontation with racism. However, the film establishes his feeling of rootlessness long before he realizes it. For instance, his attachment to the idea that he is related to various black artists reveals that even as a young child the fact that he is black alienated him. As adult Sunshine recalls, "I loved that TV-that big Formica box was mine," we are reminded of the power of television or film to represent minorities. We are also reminded of the importance of appearance. Although blacks are portrayed stereotypically on the television, Sunshine's young mind is happy just to be reminded that he is not the only black person in the world. Strong black figures like Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding also take on a new importance as seen from the a young boy who seems to derive a form of hope for himself. Without any trace of ethnocentricity or resentment, he relates to something special. When Sunshine finally finds a real life accessible father figure he can respect, he begins to experience first hand the joys of being part of a black culture.

But it is not until he is arrested as a teenager that Sunshine realizes that he is black. When he says this, he is not talking about the color of his skin but the stereotypes he had seen in the world and the media but never really considered real. At this point, Sunshine and the audience have experienced a reversal of roles or perspectives. The audience who initially saw a black boy in a white world are now attached to a kid who is defined more by his goodness and trademark smile. Meanwhile, Sunshine's cultural identity has caught up with his conscious understanding. I Bring You Frankincense takes us out of a political context so that we can realize from a new perspective. Sunshine concludes, "Black was not sitting by Mikila, not playing Joseph, it was Red Lips dancing." We find a happy, healthy Sunshine in the present, but we are left to contemplate the irrationality of our reliance on appearances in a new way.

(Reviewed by Martin Shea, MSU, 1998)

Author: Dye, Michael
Date: 1998
   
Hyenas is a parable which lends itself to meanings inferred by the viewer. One overriding theme encompasses all the various strands of the plot, one comprised of the examination of the modern condition itself without particular regard to place or time. The origin of concept in the film is deliberately confused; a story taken from Switzerland is reset in Senegal without dislocation, and standard notions of ideology are subverted by the involvement of the public. The film is remarkable for its cinematic proficiency, but it is more impressive in that it moves beyond `traditional' conventions of Third Cinema. Racial motives do not drive events. Political struggle is not an issue. Colonialism is long past. True, economic conditions are harsh but the plight of poverty is not limited to Africa. The town of Colobane is a key symbol of the parable, the product of capitalism itself, separated from the implications of colonialism. The dying town is heavy with the trappings of the bankrupt Western ethos. Mambety uses the universality of the veneer of civilization to probe the modern psychology, to attack the underpinnings of Western ideology without regard to place.

Richard Porton in "Mambety's Hyenas: Between Anti-Colonialism and the Critique of Modernity" describes in elaborate detail the various implications of the plot of the film. While it is beyond the scope of this review to analyze the "thematic tapestry ... geared more toward narrative polyphony", it is instructive to develop the author's views with regard to the condition of modernity. Porton dismisses the idea that the parable is too rigid a form to allow direct communication between the filmmaker and the audience. He argues that it speaks to the pervasive sense of "brokenness" felt by both those suffering at the hands of enforced capitalism and those who try to depict both hardship and hope. While an allegory contains overt moral messages, the parable implies subtle meanings often misconstrued. Mambety uses the latter to put into question the location of Colobane. Situations of strife are in every case unseen; the tension of impending violence is present but unresolved. The drinkers demanding drink, the Mayor who offers inducements as blinders, the inevitability of the fate of Dramaan, all are questions that demand the response of the viewer. The film conveys modernity in its own referential origin, and in numerous glosses of Eurocentric imagery. Shots of the prototypical elephant or hyena during the prototypical safari, with obvious meanings given to the placid Western audience al a a "Wild Kingdom" alternate with dull black-and-white documentary of atrocities from the past. Superimposed images of construction and reconstruction, the nearly violent tearing of the earth, tear audience attention away from individualism. One is left with a reading based on assumptions, and a song that warns of the Ramatou bird and counsels "Get to work and stop talking ... to find freedom." The song is a mockery of the work ethic. Ramatou states that the residents of Colobane are "living a lie." The Mayor declares that "we may be suffering drought but we are not animals." Ultimately, the town turns on Dramaan without ever acknowledging its own role. They disguise as justice the money they crave. The Mayor begs Dramaan to leave the town, but the townspeople prevent it without touching him. The Mayor cannot believe he has declined. The people have descended to savagery, but they are not willing to admit it. By pretending to vote for city councils they are modern by any account, no matter their actions. Ramatou is capitalism, and Colobane is the product of capitalism. The Elders meet at the `Hyena Hole' to discuss policy. They don't notice the deathly hermit, who doesn't notice them. The utilization of psychological repercussion rather than political exhortation is, as Porton argues, a "strategy [that] allows the film to continually circle around the political and social traumas that animate the narrative." The parable is applicable beyond its scope within the context of African impoverishment. The people of Colobane are faced with the unthinkable, and have no choice but to release all value for the sake of money. It is a choice many are making, but few admit.

Further Reading
Porton, R. (1995). "Mambety's Hyenas: Between Anti-Colonialism and the Critique of Modernity", Cineaste.

Author: Biesele, Megan
Date: 1998

Other Authors: Robert Hitchcock    

On her original reading of this film's romantic and misleading "script," Megan Biesele recommended that it not be made. The filmmakers went to Namibia anyway, as they already had a contract with the Discovery channel. Biesele decided not to accompany them. The filmmakers negotiated with the Income Generation program of the Nyae Nyae Farmers' Cooperative (NNFC), the Ju/'hoan people's organization, agreeing to pay well for the chance to film. They employed a Nyae Nyae village, imported outside Ju/'hoan people in brand-new beads and skins, and used a Ju/'hoan translator, who did his best with their romanticized tale about a young man who can't hunt.

Later, in Texas, Biesele received an urgent request from the NNFC to help the filmmakers, who had realized they had 19 cans of film which they could not interpret. Their contract time was up and now they had to produce something for TV. Biesele said that, based on her previous experience with film people's priorities and ways of operating, she could not be available to help. However, the Ju/'hoan people were afraid they would be misrepresented worse if she didn't, and the filmmakers refused to work during production with their previous Ju/'hoan translator.

Work eventually undertaken on the material was excruciatingly difficult because of the confusion in which it was filmed. The filmmakers, intent on deadlines, paid scant attention to anthropological concerns Biesele tried repeatedly to impress upon them. They neglected entirely to include the NNFC or their translator in the credits, despite the form of the credits having been clearly written out for them. The result is a disastrous pastiche, but at least it contains some good folktale footage.

Anthropological advice given to but not heeded by the film's producer with London's Essential TV, who was also urged to heed this advice by the cameraman and editor of the film, included:

1. The cartoon cave-paintings of the falsified story told at the beginning to justify the rest of the film contain layer upon layer of wrongful cultural assumptions. They not only trivialize the masterful and meaningful rock art of the San peoples, but they import inappropriate Western motives and plots into San peoples' lives. This device was introduced at the last gasp of the production process, allowing no input from translator-anthropologist, cameraman, or editor.
2. The narration, and the storyline as a whole, are misleadingly rhapsodic and romantic. Over and over the producer was told that contemporary people must be represented as individuals in a respectful way, and with faithful contextualization, but these exhortations appear to have had no effect.
3. Talk of "witchdoctors" and spirit-possession was rife in early versions of the script, and was only toned down slightly through ceaseless efforts to convey the deeply spiritual and efficacious ritual trance dance for healing engaged in by the Ju/'hoansi. Biesele wrote, "The great thing about San concepts of evil is that they come from the beyond, not from anywhere in the human group (which causes witchcraft accusations in other societies). Their trance states are exactly the opposite of `possession': they are enhanced states of the ordinary human self, to be cultivated and used for transcendent purposes, like healing and transformation" [fax May 18, 1994].
4. Sexually titillating aspects of this dance were overemphasized by camera angles and by the obvious interest of the male cameraman. When this was pointed out, no effort was made to rectify the imbalance.
5. Though both anthropologists suggested, before filming, that obtaining the right combination of detailed hunting shots along with undirected, spontaneous conversation would be necessary to make a responsible film, the film as it took shape followed the distorted and preconceived notions of the original script because the producer insisted on it. Biesele wrote to the producer, "...changes should be made in the script so that it can `breathe' normally as a reflection of the people themselves, rather than of our `myths' about them" [fax, May 18, 1994], but this had no effect.
6. Biesele also wrote, "The treatment of the boy's eagerness to hunt, along with the women's verbal support for this, just wouldn't happen in Ju/'hoan society. Learning to hunt is a circumspect ritual activity, and emphasis is laid on modesty of claims at all times. Women emphatically do not participate in talk about what a great hunter their son is going to be -- this is against the ethos of their whole society. Over and over, the society tries to "level" young men and women to be like others in great modesty, to make no claims about their prowess, but definitely to be competent and excellent too" [fax May 18, 1994].
7. Gender-separation was artificially enhanced in the film to conform to Western expectations, though the producer was told repeatedly to eliminate this bias. Likewise, the production did not seem able to avoid the trope of "village leader," though both Biesele and Hitchcock tried to emphasize the systematic implications of egalitarianism. And efforts to convince the producer that San boys would not laugh "at" each other, as they are shown doing at the boy who supposedly cannot hunt, but conceivably "with" each other only, did not bear fruit.
8. Biesele asked the producer to make sure that the film would "have real life in it, in a way that no script that any of us can write would." She also told him that "It is impossible to separate '`traditional' lifeways, even in `adventure' form, from issues currently animating the local people" [fax, Aug.31, 1994].

The shortcomings of the film were most evident in its American version, where the painstakingly-translated subtitles were eliminated and American-urban-black-accented voiceovers were substituted, often with very detrimental effect. By the time Biesele or the Essential TV cameraman or the editor had seen the final version, it was too late to have their names removed from the credits. This is a perfect example of the way the production process makes clients of technicians not involved in the capitalization of film. A fortiori , indigenous peoples have their hands tied even more tightly by the social relations of the production of film. The experience showed Biesele, as a translator-after-the-fact, a bit of the frustration felt by the often voiceless indigenous subjects of ethnographic film. Lacking education, finances, and information, these people have little power to influence images made of them. The bottom line of creative control, particularly in film, seems to be capital, lacking in most such communities (and indeed among consultants, translators, and others).

Can a multicultural age countenance such a bottom line?

One can understand an insistence on the filmmaker's personal vision. But where practical development consequences are involved we fear the stance of auteur neglects the enormous power of the medium -- as well as power differentials involved in its production. We renew our call for dialogue among anthropologists -- particularly visual and social anthropologists -- on these topics, and suggest it is vital the former "subjects" of such films be included in the dialogue as well.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan

Date: 1985

    During the mid-1980s in South Africa there were about thirty producers making very low budget films for black audiences (mainly school children). A Herd of Drums was one of the first local attempts by a director working for such a producer to marry the conventions of the horror movie with tribal imagery.

A Herd of Drums needs to be seen in terms of the explosion of ultra-cheap (R10-30 000) 16mm films designed to reach a total black audience of about 400 000. Similar in business conception to the British `quota quickie', few of these films show any cultural integrity or cinematic quality. The `quota quickies', and American equivalent Roger Corman films in particular, repeat the relatively fixed grid of genre conventions through an efficient production-line execution. As such, the studios concerned have often provided the training ground for directors who later won international acclaim. Where the quota quickie producers and Roger Corman were central to their national industries, the crop of white producers (ex-builders, teachers, administration board officials etc) in South Africa claiming to have made `black' films were marginal to the mainstream industry. It is not surprising then that South African `black' films neither led to the emergence of talented film makers, nor resulted in any notable contributions to cinema. Nor were they ever likely to.

Some of the production houses, notably Ronnie Isaacs' AIM Productions, Cliff Scott Films and Jimmy Murray/Simon Metsing Studios showed a (perhaps naive) concern for the practice of film making and a sincere respect for their audiences. This set them apart from their often inept (and racist to boot) competitors in terms of an evidently continuous thematic and aesthetic development from production to production.

The production stable (the Van der Merwe clan) for which Dale Lee worked pioneered `black' films in South Africa in 1974, and developed the `back to the homelands' genre. These movies, made from the mid-1970s, are entrenched in apartheid discourse not only in terms of plot and characterisation, but production practices as well. In this genre, migrant black labourers are generally seen going `home' to their rural origins in the opening sequence. Typically, whereas at the start of the film they are clearly Westernised, by resolution they have succumbed to unconvincing tribal spirits and sorcerers, and have reverted to a `primitive', tribal way of life wearing feathers, skins and beads. So appalling were these original films that these producers were considered with scorn by the established film industry (if it even was aware of them). At the same time, the infamous and now defunct Department of Information considered their products so crude that it set out to secretly capture this segment of the industry and use it to produce `quality' black local versions of American-type movie heroes. One Johannesburg distributor/producer, in fact, declined to continue distribution of the Van der Merwe films once he realised that his audiences were offended by them. The Van der Merwe stable later films moved away from the `back to the homelands' themes and incorporated popular genres such as gangster movies and other urban style contents.

The director of A Herd of Drums was given the freedom by his producers to develop his ideas, though he was told to remain within very tight budgets. Total cost with prints for each film was R25-30 000. It was shot in three-and-a-half days. The use of five crew members was relatively large for this kind of film, which often managed on a cameraman, sound recordist and sometimes an assistant. Only the interpreter/actor was black (male sangoma) in A Herd of Drums).

Lee took his task seriously and during pre-production of Herd of Drums consulted various specialists on his use of cultural symbolism, language and particular use of props and characters. An anthropology professor advised on matters relating to sangomas (indigenous healers) and the myth that he wanted to portray. A sangoma was employed as a consultant on the set itself (an "urban house-girl" or domestic servant). The film was shot in a real kraal and the `tribal' extras-the singing women-- "are a tourist attraction up there [in Zululand]" (Lee, interview).

Though Lee wanted to cast a white female wife for the black student to reflect the contemporary repeal of the Immorality and Mixed Marriages Act, complaints reaching the producer from some of the crew prevented this casting. Like many films aimed at blacks, the film has an entirely black cast and there is no hint of national location other than through the Zulu dialogue. Lee explained:

The ethnic references, "a Herd of Drums" - for a start - is a particularly Zulu, but also African phrase for sacred drums ... I got that from Lyle Watson's book. The title suggests the whole dramatic premise of the movie: it revolves around the drums. [The initial idea was to use the white woman] who knows absolutely nothing about the mystical traditions of African ways and an African guy that is still very much in touch with it. The appearance of the Sangoma from the past- I am not sure I successfully brought to the fore ...

If I had had the resources to actually use cinematographic techniques it would have been more clear that initially where the fellow is tied to the tree for stealing the drums, that is supposed to have taken place 100, 150 years ago before civilization had come to Africa. Now the story mus go forward. I am suggesting that the sangoma has supernatural powers, in much the same way as African folk lore relies of the materialisation of ancestors, communication with ancestors. I see the sangoma in that script as being the caretaker of the drums. While the drums are in existence that sangoma has been charged with looking after them. This is something I actually went into detail about - whether there are guardians of drums. In fact there are a select few wise people of a tribe who will be given the responsibility of looking after the sacred rain drum, in this case, they were death drums.

This use of rich `tribal' references and the injection of them into the conventions of a horror movie was ill-advised because it displaces the context away from tribal imagery onto a set of connotations derived from a totally different cultural experience and social context. Lee replied that he was using the tribal imagery as a tool in the horror genre. He chose the horror idea first and then his subject.

A Herd of Drums is neither `back to the homelands', nor `conditional urban'. It has references to a mythical past, while set in a modern context. Continued Lee:

If you want to look at the `higher' message - the social message if you like -it is that we have a helluva lot to learn about our black people. Black people have a helluva lot to learn about our culture. When I say `culture', the Western world goes back to Cinderella, fables, folklore, tales, oral traditions. The oral traditions available to us about the black culture are orientated towards mythical characters and supernatural happenings and spirits. That's why I made the black student's wife a tissy white woman - a stock character. Hopefully she learns through the materialisation of the sangoma, she realises that even though she is married to a black man there is a helluva lot she can learn from black culture.

Why choose horror conventions to lubricate this message? Lee replied:

I looked at the movie industry in this country . Nobody's gone into horror, nobody knows about special effects, nobody knows how to make arms come off and make it look real. I want to do that, because it is a necessary part of the film making process. The only special effects that have gone into the African film industry are things like gunshot wounds etc. Nobody had gone into the more artistic side of creative special effects (2).

Despite the very short production period, there is an attempt at creating an appropriate mise-en-scene, the camera is consciously directed and cutting, while slow, at least makes an attempt to create a sense of rhythm and relationship. Unlike the Afro Film and TV titles which simply have 11 minute takes, this film does have a marginally discernable cutting structure, and evidence of directing performance for camera angles, camera movement and framing. The Afro Film and TV titles, in contrast, merely hold the action within the frame which is a sort of moving proscenium arch.

However, the lighting is inept (perhaps the video copy was a poor one). Shadows, for example, clearly locate the low angle of the light(s) and are not used to enhance the mise-en-scene convey thematic information. The images are unidimensional, lacking in suitable exposure and depth.

The monster may be convincing for very young children. Paradoxically, however, the gory detail when the monster rips off the drunk's arm makes this film unsuitable for children. Andrew Tudor (1974: 180) argues that genre films are "a relatively fixed culture pattern" are "only rarely disturbing, innovative or openly `deviant'". Genre movies use "violence as the ultimate necessary solution to crucial problems" (p. 213). The violent solution in film is very much a Western phenomenon and legitimises the dominant cultural responses of a hegemonic culture (i.e. white in South Africa). The horror movie genre emanated from a mythical, central European setting, the Transylvanian mythos. While the genre has proved geographically mobile, it lacks a capacity to convincingly handle concrete cultural references. Themes and narratives are narrow and straightforward and its conventions are unidimensional. The basic narrative, the `seek-it-out-and-destroy-it' pattern is clear in A Herd of Drums. In this film, it is the materialised sangoma from the past who seeks out the murdering monster and does it to death though casting a spell on it. Perhaps this use of the sangoma is the central redeeming element of the narrative.

Unfortunately, Lee's intuitive interpretation of the horror genre as far as conception is concerned does not extend to execution in the film itself. The slippage between the ideas as articulated in the interview, and what appears in the script and subsequently the movie is acute. The viewer is just not given enough information about the characters, the monster or the situation to make the symbolic connections between the diegesis and the pro-filmic event. It may be counterargued that Zulu audiences may well be able to fill in the missing symbolic information and make sense of the movie at the level of the sub-text. Even so, this is problematic. First, most of the viewers of this film would be children whose knowledge of cultural myths may be culturally remote; second, the film is very much a white re-presentation of blacks to themselves which may be considered patronising, particularly in view of the racist content of previous Van der Merwe films. Third, and most important, is the hidden ideological assumptions that inform genre films. These are the reassuring representations of an acceptable social order. What is `acceptable' is usually defined by the producers, not by the audience. As Lee himself put it:

These producers are in a Western system, and they say `Right!. Let's try and do something for black people'. What resources are actually available to them?' They will go to a library, or a bookshop, the Central News Agency, and they will look around and dig around for literature on black people. What do they come up with? Bedside stories, traditional. `So, let's show our interest in the black people by looking at their culture and tradition in an effort to try and understand them'. That is actually a statement I have heard from these producers. `Let's have a look and let's remind black people where they come from. Let's show them some of their culture'. They (sic) are using the film medium the same way that we have Shakespeare. Shakespeare is part of our culture, the Western culture, the same as we have fables that is part of our mythology, Zeus, Greek mythology as seen in The Clash of the Titans . To try to go anywhere else is running into trouble with a racist government. Remember, the industry has been relying on the government, so you don't make waves otherwise you don't get subsidy. Finish.

The inordinate emphasis so often placed by makers of films aimed at black audiences on `culture' - `theirs' and `ours' - perpetuates the idea of the nobel savage, of `difference', of `their world'-`our world' and of ideological closure. A Herd of Drums differs from the `back to the homelands' genre in that it locates the action in an urban setting, but injects this setting with the spirit of the sangoma materialised from the past. In the original intention Lee wanted to `marry' elements of these two worlds through the casting of a mixed married couple. The insistence by the producer and crew that a black woman be used instead, however, negated this `intercultural' intention. The "higher message" of the film as it turned out is thus not that "we have a lot to learn about black people" or vice versa, but is a paternalistic endorsement of white myths about what whites think constitutes black culture, religion and traditional medicine.

A Herd of Drums is a horror of a movie.

Note.

1. Ronnie Isaacs of AIM Films used special effects in a number of his films made since 1980.

References
Murray, J. (1992). How greed killed the industry. In Blignaut, J. and Botha, M. (eds): Movies - Moguls - Mavercks. South African Cinema, 1979-1991. Cape Town: Showdata, 255-266.

Tomaselli, K.G. (1988). The Cinema of Apartheid. Smyrna Press: New York. See Chapter 3: "Films For Blacks".

Tudor, A. 1974: Image and Influence. Allen and Unwin, London.

Filmography
A HERD OF DRUMS. 1983. 60 mins. 16mm. Written and directed by Dale Lee. Produced by Gary van der Merwe.

Author: Milbrodt, Natalie
Date: 1998
   

"Everything a camera sees is real--The problem is whose reality are we seeing and who are we when we are looking through a camera?"  -John Marshall

Content 

Reassemblage is a poetic docu-essay about the people of Sengal.  The filmmaker, Trinh T. minh-ha, has assembled an unusual combination of silence accompanied by footage, a black screen with sound track and images accompanied by sound.  None of the sound is synchronized with the footage.  Trinh T. minh-ha's voice intermittently narrates the film.  She speaks, softly, eerily, about the people of Sengal and her role with them as a filmmaker.  The film does not have a traditional plot or story line.  It is a series of images that she associates with ideas \par in her work.  The film is visual poetry.  Trinh uses repetition to make the same statement take on a second meaning or to emphasize the importance of an idea.

 The Hunters is a more traditionally produced film.  It is a film made by the Marshall family in the 1950' s.  It has a plot which sometimes deceives the viewer to keep the story moving forward.  The people in the film are not actors and they are "playing" themselves, but this film is not a pure documentary.  The film focuses on the men in the community, but also shows women who work as gatherers for their families.  The film outlines the typical social conventions of the civilization and explains the essence of what the people are saying.  Marshall narrates the film, the voices of the Ju' hoansi are audible, but subtitles with their words are never provided.  The plot begins in a difficult time in the civilization's existence and ends with the comfort brought by the men in the community.  The conflict that makes the body of the movie is based on a classic Man vs. Nature paradigm.  The men leave their small community to hunt until they kill a large enough animal to feed the whole civilization.  The story follows their adventures trailing a giraffe, which they eventually kill and bring home to their families and friends.  The men distribute the meat to everyone and the film ends with the hunters telling their stories of the hunt.

Analysis
At first glance, Reassemblage and The Hunters seem to only contrast each other despite the similarity of their civilizations.  Their structure and the directorss' choices of subjects are quite different.  Their production is separated by thirty years which has brought tremendous change in the field of Anthropology.  The trend has shifted from finding evidence evolutionary primitive cultures and studying their social structures, to examining representations of subjects in past studies.  The initial observation of difference is valid, but it is not the only commonality between these films.  It is important to examine what both filmmakers present as well as the meaning of their explanations.  Both John Marshall and Trinh T. minh-ha exhibit a great deal of involvement and self-awareness in making their films.  While these films are quite different, they are both works of creativity and observation.

 The Hunters shows the influence of western culture in its form more than Reassemblage.  As stated earlier, the film's primary theme follows the western literary paradigm of Man vs. Nature.  Its structure is based on a popular western plot structure:  introduction, appearance of conflict, rising action, climax, descending action, and resolution.  This forward thrusting plot structure is male in nature, especially in contrast to the fundamentally feminine nature of the circular plot structure in Reassemblage.

 Trinh organizes her film into layers of circular themes and images.  The first layer of circular imagery are the breasts of the women she films. 

Trinh shows an excessive representation of breasts intentionally to make a point.  The breasts represent new life, they symbolize womanhood. There are many images of the women nursing small children and breasts moving with the rhythm of the women's bodies as they work pounding food for their families.  Trinh directly addresses the issue of people thinking that documentary films with bare breasted women are pornography.  She explains that the nudity of the women does not "reveal the hidden, it is its absence." 

By this she states that the women do not hide themselves, they therefore r reveal nothing when they do not cover their breasts.  They have no socialized ideas about the indecency of breasts like western women.  They should therefore be understood in the context of their own social mores instead of those of the west.  The next circular images are the large pots in which the women pound corn into edible grain for their families.  Trinh shows them using the large bowls and then feeding their children with the food they have made.  Both the breasts and the bowls are life sustaining objects in the film.  The circular structure of the film denotes the circle of life.  The primary subjects in the film are women, children, working the earth and reaping its products, dead, decaying animals, and insects.  Trinh's images tell a symbolic story instead of a literal one.  The order of these images follows the same order.  The film began with women and some of the only footage of men.  Next, we see children and babies with their mothers.  The film focuses on women and children and then on their working relationship with the earth.  Next, it switches to images of rotting animal corpses, dust storms, and insects.  These serve as symbols of the death and decay in the Sengal population.  After this, the images return to the children.  The next subjects are adolescent girls wading in the river followed by a young woman expressing her disagreement with polygamy.  The film ends after this statement hinting at the possibility of social change to come in Sengal.  It also brings the story line back to where it began, thus forming a circularly patterned plot.

 The Hunters presents the masculine contribution to the survival of a community.  Marshall shows the men's responsibilities in providing for their hunting and gathering civilization.  They too are concerned about their children getting enough milk from their mothers, but their role in feeding the children and the rest of their community is to hunt. Hunting is represented as less constant, but more demanding work than that of the women.  Marshall shows hunters often returning to the community without any kill after a day in pursuit of prey.  Hunting is necessary to keep everyone's diets balanced.  They use all skins and other parts of animals they hunt as well as the animals' meat.  Even little boys practice hunting for when their community will need them to hunt for everyone.   Marshall shows a young boy calmly killing a muskrat he has caught in a trap.  He is proud to hang it on his father's hut as a contribution to the family's food supply.  He has been trained to kill for a purpose. Most western children are squeamish about killing animals and considered deviant when they enjoy it.  The need to hunt for food is not prevalent in most of the western world and therefore a sensitive topic.  Much like the breasts in Reassemblage, killing is re-presented by Marshall. He provides information to lead the audience toward judging the Ju' hoansi by their own standards instead of those of the west.  The killing of the giraffe is sad to watch, but the hunters' actions are justified knowing the need the community has for the meat and the respect they show to the animal.

 While these films have obvious differences, such as choice of subjects and plot structure, they also have important characteristics in common.  Both filmmakers see the value of non-westernized cultures. Technological life processes are carefully examined in each film.  The civilizations' way of life is presented respectfully.  Another similarity is the attitude Trinh and Marshall share in regards to the role of the camera.  They both see the camera as a "window we can move around," or as a "recorder" and not organic like a human eye.  Through the camera's lack of reasoning facilities, these directors have realized the importance of their influence.  They struggle to choose between creativity and observation as their main goal as directors.  They choose to include both, but express them differently in their films.  Marshall manipulates a fictional story into his film.  Trinh makes a filmic collage with her documentary.  Both of these directors deserve praise for their originality.  Their unique approaches to films about cultures that have been represented by others, are the reason for their films' popularity.  Artistic and scientific superiority are rarely found in the same individual.  These common characteristics bind Trinh and Marshall together in the excellence of their work.

References
MacDougall, David.  Beyond Observational Cinema. Ed. Paul Hockings. Berlin:  Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1995

Tomaselli, Keyan. (1998).  Powering Popular Conceptions:  The !Kung in the Marshall Family Expedition Films of the 1950s.

the following are the things I would like you to change in the reviews.  Please do not take their bluntness as disrespect for your work with the papers, it's just more difficult to communicate these changes effectively with polite requests in front and back of each suggested change.

Author: Dodd, Vanessa
Date: 2000
Other Authors: Jeffrey Sehume
75 Minutes
Colour
Video by Craig Foster
Earthrise Productions
Directors: Craig and Damon Foster    

Synopsis
The Great Dance describes the life of the !Xo people of the Kalahari desert in Botswana. It is told by !Nqate (meaning ‘always walking’) Xqamxebe, a San Bushman hunter. The film depicts the hunter’s skills in hunting and tracking, his traditions and beliefs, and, unlike films of the nature of The Gods Must be Crazy, the way in which his lifestyle is altered and compromised as a result of the impact of the Western world and modernity. This film seems to attempt to understand San cosmology. Great Dance gives an idea of the free, self-reliant lifestyle of the Bushman in the past, and the actuality of his life in the present.

The documentary opens with a clear, extended wide shot of a blue sky coupling with the dry brown wasteland of the Kalahari. A San son of this sky and wasteland reaches out to the gods in an enchanting cry for rain. The voice of the narrator, the popular South African television soapy star, Sello Maake ka Ncube, begins relating what the story is and will be about. A story is the wind, it comes floating from far off the hills. We are San-Bushmen, sons and daughters of first people - our names have come with the wind to you, these are our stories. Dry hunting-holes and white pans tell of the season in which this story is told, a dry season. But even in such times people have to live: I am a hunter, bow and arrow hunter, and runner, we talk gently with our hands and read animal stories. The scene is set for a narrative of a method of hunting that will also tell a tale of social organization of one community of San-Bushmen, their cultural celebrations, and ultimate political dislocation from their land and consequently, from their spirits and livelihood.

Critique
The Great Dance differs from the Gods films in that it depicts the Bushman less as an idyllic and romanticized source of amusement for ‘civilized’ Westerners, and as more as a highly skilled, dedicated and intelligent expert in the intricate arts of tracking and hunting. The film shows the San's extensive knowledge of nature and how they are able to track animals by studying the faintest of prints in the baked earth. One scene shows kudu being pursued for four hours before the one God has set aside is finally exhausted and allows itself to be caught. The hunter is shown to be tireless in his endeavours to feed his family. Everything is shared, the hunters do not get any extra meat; they are glad to have food to take home to their village. They seem to show respect for the animals they kill, not wasting anything, and believing that the animal’s death will give strength.

The hunting scenes also show the way in which the Bushman's environment has changed and degenerated in recent times: once we were near animals, now we must walk far to find them. They have been told that they do not own their land or their animals. The women also have to go far to look for food. In another hunting scene, the gemsbok they have been chasing run into a wildlife preserve, and they know that they have to leave them or be put in jail. They are sad and hungry because animals are dying of diseases and going to waste. !Nqate is concerned that some of his people do not know about hunting, they have become lazy and spend their time looking after the black man's cattle.

Like most documentaries on San-Bushmen, Great Dance commemorates the superior hunting skills and adeptness of these people in hunting animals for food and their closeness to nature. This closeness is highlighted in the video by collaborative efforts that hunters share with other ‘animals of nature’; we see where cheetah passed, he will lead us to his kill. They prepare for the hunt, done jointly with womenfolk, through anointing hunting arrows with plant contagions to destabilize the hunted prey. This goes some way in confirming their ‘scientific’ knowledge in matters of survival among scarce resources. Hunting itself is a sophisticated and dangerous venture. One must be careful to remember that flying insects can carry a man's sweat to the prey, [it'll] know you are there.

From a technical point of view, Great Dance uses the camera as an actor in the narrative. The manipulation of images and sound augurs well in driving and accentuating the great hunt. The hunt for the springbok, for example, integrates the knowledge the Bushmen gain through their tracking skills which enable them to find their prey. Interestingly, it is in such scenes that the colour of the images changes to black and white. The effect is to freeze the setting in time as if it occurs in flashbacks. This demonstrates the ability of the Bushmen to know exactly what has already happened by glancing at the tracks on the ground. They know that a springbok was being chased by a cheetah, as they see both sets of tracks and note that they were made at the same time. Thus they gain a mental image (which the audience sees in black and white) of a cheetah pursuing a springbok, which guides them to a successful hunt. The Bushman’s skill in hunting is seen to result from his insight into the behaviour and instincts of his prey.

Great Dance emphasizes the historically famed collectivity of San society. This is demonstrated in the preparation for hunting, how meals are shared and in the social organization of the camp where we meet this community of San in the Kalahari. Specifically, the makers of Great Dance go to some length to indicate that even if a particular hunter may kill an animal, the prey may be another's depending on the owner of the of the arrow and the contagion with which it is anointed. The film indicates gender relations in the community to pronounce that the role of women is not only confined to collecting Gemsbok cucumbers, tsama-melons, and making crafts for government projects.

Political issues filter into the narrative during and at the end of Great Dance. Regardless of the fact that San primarily survive and depend, for their material and spiritual needs, on access to land, the documentary does not fail to highlight the broader power dramas that are at play. Land is used as a political tool for constituency-based lobbying, as actors in the documentary relate the fact that land is taken away from their community to make way for cattle farms, by both the Botswana and the South African governments, and for wildlife preservation.

Apart from emphasizing some of these issues of land dislocation, gender relations, social organization, others aspects in the documentary add to the progressive importance of Great Dance.

The effect of globalization is one other theme that manifests itself in the documentary. Globalization has affected the once independent ways of life of this San community. This is reflected in the manner of their dress - Western clothes, and the combination of indigenous entertainment with radios. It indicates that the makers of the documentary were concerned with presenting as ‘realistic’ as possible a portrayal of contemporary San society.

It is evident that the !Xo people's culture has not remained uninfluenced by the Western world. The San do not wear the skins and loincloths of N!xau in the Gods Must be Crazy, but ragged old cast-offs of modern man. They have a tape recorder and smoke cigarettes. They are not strangers to money: the women sell the necklaces they make, and the men work on government projects in exchange for money or food. The !Xo people are aware that our ways are being changed. !Nquate says sometimes we feel we have no future. He is very concerned that their children should learn their culture. His father taught him how to hunt, what fruits to eat, how to tell when rain was coming, and his desire is for this knowledge to be passed to future generations. After the hunters have caught the kudu, he says that they know that they will be respected as hunters and as men. But what about their sons? They go to school and learn English, which is good, but they must also be taught the ways of the dance.

Dancing is a significant theme in the film, and is possibly in a way symbolic of the residual San culture and previously traditional ways of life. The word for dance in the !Xo language also means to revere or to show oneness. They believe that tracking is like dancing because the body is happy, and when this happens it is a great dance. They also dance to bring rain, and to celebrate when they have food. The people believe that they were put on the land by God, and that when you are tracking and dancing you are talking to God.

Thus in The Great Dance, dancing seems to represent joy and fulfillment in the !Xo people's culture. As the film ends, !Nqate is dancing beside a fire and then, as words appear on the screen telling the audience that since the making of the film the !Xo people's individual hunting rights have been revoked, and that they still hope to gain rights to the ancestral land where their forefathers hunted and gathered for 30 000 years, we no longer see him dancing.

In all, Great Dance is an important media statement on the heroism of a community of San-Bushmen. It makes significant inroads into developing a more conscious, balanced portrayal of the of life of San-Bushmen in present society with all the pressures of social and cultural integration, bearing in mind the attendant political pressures on the lives and cultures of these First people of the Fourth world.

Further reading: Tomaselli, K. 2001. ‘ We have to work with our own heads (/Angn!ao): San Bushmen and the Media’. Visual Anthropology, forthcoming.

Acknowledgements:

This research is partly funded by the Natal University Research Fund. The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation: Social Sciences and Humanities toward this research is also hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and not necessarily attributed to the National Research Foundation. The larger project is being co-ordinated under the research leadership of Professor Keyan Tomaselli, Graduate Programme in Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban. We also thank Craig Foster for making a copy of the film and supporting documents available for this research

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1983
Other Authors: Nofikile Nxumalo, Claire van der Merwe
Place: Johannesburg
Published: South African Labour Bulletin Vol. 8.8 and 9.1: 120-122

Copyright: Authors    

Trade unionist Neil Aggett died in detention on 5 February 1982. Directed by Mark Newman and funded by the InterChurch Media Programme, A Film on the Funeral of Neil Aggett records one more incident in the struggle for democracy in South Africa. The film begins with brief white captions on a black background outlining the history of detention, the reaction of workers to Aggett's death and the subsequent 100 000 strong worker protest... that is all.

The film does not examine the context of Aggett's death, the context is taken as given, the mourners are the film's audience, its inner working their everyday experience. This assumption locates funerals as acts of resistance. In a country where mass processions and open air political gatherings are banned, funerals have become sites of ideological struggle, the terrain on which those who have died in the cause of freedom provide the inspiration for those who remain. Death is part of the process of freeing life from repression. It is for this reason that the film focuses on the funeral of Neil Aggett rather than on some aspect of his life, his medical work or his dedication to trade unionism.

While the opening and closing shots are of the cemetery and graveside, the greater part of the film shows the procession of the 15 000 mourners as they move from the church to the graveside.

Crowds singing and chanting, carrying posters of Aggett (bearing the inscription “Lived for his Country - Died in Detention”), shaking tins, throwing pamphlets out of buses, and raising clenched fists as they move urgently towards the camera en masse suggests the forward movement of the struggle. Recurring symbols of crosses, candles, fists and feet punctuate the image. The crosses and candle have connotations of religion, legitimacy and martyrdom, the fists and moving feet indicate the ongoing action, active resistance, and the idea that the struggle continues despite casualties. A close-up of a fist punching the air is a symbol of black power and relates the person to the class struggle as a whole.

The mourners are not weeping as might be expected, but angry, determined. The death of Aggett is not a

setback, but an encouragement to march forward. Though they acknowledge his loss (in the speech), they do not retreat. Blacks and whites stand together and their grim faces are juxtaposed with a close up of a white toddler. The background music that accompanies this shot is Nkosi Sikelel’i Africa, over which a speaker states that "all these brutal suppressions of leaders by the state are d under the justification that they are for the 'security of the state"'. Juxtaposed with the image of the white girl, this rings very hollow indeed.

When the coffin leaves the church the mourners reaffirm their commitment in a freedom song: "Aggett wethu Somlandela noba siyaboshwa” ("we shall follow our Aggett even if we are being detained or killed"). Juxtaposed with this shot is the crowd of mourners running in the streets, followed by busses and cars. There is a great rush forward. By contrast, the camouflaged security police with their dogs are moving ineffectually against the direct of the human tide. Their confusion is heightened by the change in song from eulogising Aggett to "Ayesaba amagwala ayadidizela" ("cowards are afraid and confused"). The camera is part of the procession, it moves with the crowd and sees the three policemen from this perspective. A conventional news camera might have emphasised the power of police over the unruly workers. Newman's camera, however, shows them as the 'enemy' and powerless against the march of history.

The film emphasises the process of resistance. Unlike Awake from Mourning which isolates the Soweto school riots of 1976 from the general struggle, or This We can do for Justice and Peace, which imagines that a humanist intervention will alleviate suffering, this film is part of the class struggle. It derives out of working class experience and though a lesser act of resistance than Aggett's fate, as cinema, the film "is a struggle at one remove", to quote Jean-Paul Fargier. It is not a political weapon in the same way as is trade unionism, but is connected through ideology. This film is not aimed at an intellectual petty bourgeois audience, but the working class itself. The way it is made, what it takes for granted, its use of direct address in the form of speeches in English and Zulu and use of song make it immediately accessible to this audience.

The final scene in the film shows Neil Aggett's grave being filled and covered with earth. In the background people are singing, which continues after the picture has faded: the struggle goes on; the event may be over, but the process which occasioned the event has yet to be overcome.

A Film on the Funeral of Neil Aggett is derived from a working class consciousness, was produced in an organic relationship with it. Its audience is its actors; its momentum is dependent on their experience.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
Other Authors: Ruth Tomaselli    
SYNOPSIS

The popular memory of sophiatown, the first black urban area in South Africa to be bulldozed for whites under the Group Areas Act.

"Freedom Square" refers to the square in Kliptown (although one also existed in Sophiatown) where the Freedom Charter, subsequently adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) was drawn up at a mass gathering in 1955. "Back of the Moon" was a shebeen (speakeasy) in Sophiatown where journalists and artists drank and talked. Sophiatown was an overcrowded black freehold area abutting Johannesburg. The film is a testament to a community forcibly moved to Meadowlands, Soweto, in spite of resistance from its residents.

CRITIQUE
Freedom Square is about the popular memory of Sophiatown of the generation that lost it. It is about romantic memories reconstructed thirty years later by the people who once lived there. As a popular memory, the film has merit. As history, it does not. But as a memory of history, Freedom Square opens up a variety of historiographic questions. It also raises the perplexing problem of how to represent history on film or video.

Historical events are shown in the form of newspaper cuttings, newsphotos and newsfilm. Patronizing Movietone and Visnews clips of Hendrik Verwoerd and other National Party spokesmen provide ironical glimpses of apartheid ideology as they speak `for' the people they have dispossessed. Verwoerd tells us that "apartheid" has been misunderstood, that it's really a policy of "good neighbourliness" - a claim still being made by PW Botha at the end of the 1980s. A member of Parliament claims that blacks don't oppose apartheid - only agitators do. Shots of Triomph (Triumph) follow. Triomph replaced Sophiatown as a white Afrikaner suburb of Johannesburg after its former black owners had been forcibly removed. The cynicism of naming the area `Triumph' was not lost on those forced out of their homes.

The black interviewees- ex-gangsters, journalists, truck drivers, lawyers and gamblers - do not talk about politics in the film. They do not mention the squalid conditions of Sophiatown, Nor resistance by its inhabitants to removal. Neither do they address broader structural questions on the nature of apartheid other than describing Sophiatown as a `black spot' threatening "a pure white cancer". The film does show news footage of resistance and protest but does not unravel how this came about, how it was organized or the failure of the African National Congress to prevent the removals.

The interviewees wanted to, and did, talk about gangs, gangsters, and gangster movies. In the pre-television era, movie-going was very popular and a way of momentarily escaping from the slum environment. The people interviewed talked about the myth of Sophiatown, rather than Sophiatown itself, or how the myth was made. Indeed, they were partly the makers of the myth through their recently published novels, a play script, and other forms of creative expression.

Gibson and Kentridge had intended to make a documentary. But the result is a documentary intertwined with narrative codes. Freedom Square draws on television address for interviews, lit with a style emulating film noir, to connote the mystery and romanticism of gangs and gangsterism. The film noir genre of the 1940s was vividly remembered by the interviewees, who often drew their gang names from films, for example, `the Americans' who wore "zoot suits", `the Gestapo' and so on. Shebeen names also came from American movies or songs.

The `good'-`bad' film noir dichotomy is, however, inverted. The good guys in the film- the gangsters -were the `bad' guys of the time. A flick-knife thug of the 1940s who modeled himself after Humphrey Bogart is now a preacher. This `good-bad' sign inversion occurs because gangsterism was one way of coping with the slum conditions under which people found themselves living in Sophiatown. In hindsight, it was a positive response to a negative situation - even if the effects on non-gangsters was often violent. Other codes used are theatrical - the re-creation of Sophiatown life through incorporating scenes from the play entitled Sophiatown , workshopped by the Junction Avenue Theatre Company. The result is a dramatized marriage of the signs and codes of `reality' (documentary) and `fiction' (drama). Some interviewees were stage `performers,' interacting with the real life performers- the interviewees - creating a metonymic relationship to a reality that has lived on in myth rather than in actuality. The interviewees provided the continuity between the two styles-documentary and the dramatic enactment.

The film, then, is unambiguously about the contemporary myth of Sophiatown that has been salvaged from the state's destruction of this community thirty years ago. The signs and codes of lighting, clothing, mis-en-scene, framing and structure constantly remind viewers of their structured relationship to a long gone reality. The closing shots, for example, intercut between monochrome newsfilm of a demolished Sophiatown and shots of the actors striking the background sets of the play, still lit in film noir style. These are the same sets that backgrounded all the interviewees, whether in Johannesburg, London or Lusaka. Through this understated reflexivity, Freedom Square becomes a refreshing example through which South African film makers are beginning to develop popular styles which reflect the real and imagined contexts of their subjects. The film responds organically to aesthetics intrinsic to the, if now displaced memory of, historical conjunctures, and translates these in a way which makes sense to contemporary audiences which were both part of, or not part of, the situations being recalled.

Unlike so many South African documentaries where the omnipresent `Voice of God' relates the `truth', Freedom Square allows the narrative to develop through its interviewees, and through re- creating the atmosphere of the times by inserting original footage from Come Back Africa (1959) and Magic Garden (1961), and from Drum magazine photographs and newsfilm footage. It is a great pity that copyright clearance for an earlier film, African Jim (1949) could not be obtained because of the disappearance of the copyright holder. African Jim contains irreplaceable footage of the famous Jazz Maniacs and the clubs in which they played.

The film makers had wanted Freedom Square to speak about political mobilization. But they eventually accepted that politics was not part of the popular memory of Sophiatown. The romance was preferred. So the film's makers responded to this memory, itself split as if through a prism, depending on who was remembering what. The film could be accused of not contextualising the less than romantic processes which brought Sophiatown into being, and of reductively compacting complex history with the opening statement: "(Sophiatown's) jazz, journalism, ANC politics, and proximity to the white suburbs singled it out as a target for the newly elected Nationalist government". Cause and effect are not examined, and neither are historical processes. The emotional closing by ex-gangster, now poet, Don Mattera, encodes resistance: "(The Boers) haven't won ... they will never win - not while men have memories; not while men can write down". But this emotion which threads through the film invites us to forget the destruction of Sophiatown, and what it did to its people. But, as I have already argued, the film is not an explanation of history but a document on how some have remembered it.

Some critics have commented on the pivotal interview roles played by Bishop Trevor Huddleston, who founded the British anti- apartheid movement, and journalist Anthony Sampson. The narrative comes back time and again during the first half of the film to Huddleston's contextualisation of events in Sophiatown, where he ministered, and to Sampson in the second half of the film, as he reads from his books on the era. These two long standing ant-apartheid campaigners, both living in London, become the main narrators by default. Though this gives the impression of a `white' interpretation, this was not the film makers' intention. Huddleston and Sampson were sufficiently distanced from their experiences in Sophiatown to offer the background, and describe the processes against which the popular memory of its former inhabitants was encoded.

Nadine Gordimer is intercut with scenes from Come Back Africa as she comments on the excessive drinking that eventually killed journalist Can Themba, who is seen and heard in Come Back Africa inserts. Gordimer concluded that liquor made cross-racial contact easier. But this was done in shebeens rather than on the political terrain. The headiness of the Sophiatown atmosphere and cultures of resistance were not easily extended into a structurally damaging political opposition to the apartheid state.

The makers of Freedom Square and Back of the Moon had attempted to recuperate images of struggle, resistance and popular culture from an historical urban experience which was pivotal to the resurgence of Charterist politics in the '80s. But Sophiatown's people had passed on. And the ANC had been unable to prevent dispossession or sustain Sophiatown's vibrant, smoky culture which arose with the criss-crossing workers and intellectuals, migrants and journalists, gangsters and politicians, who drank and talked and wrote and lived their experiences of apartheid in the cities. The history of removal is always painful, but the history of romance is not. The film is perhaps a testimony, then, to an era whose symbolism is more important in forging a democratic future than was Sophiatown's actual history. In mobilizing against dominant myths, counter-myths emerge and build in popular credibility until, in tandem with nationally unfolding processes of resistance, they overwhelm them. Triomph may exist in the concrete, but Sophiatown lives on in memory, itself given form in films, poetry autobiographies, plays and novels. And the memory will outlast apartheid.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
Source: African Media Project, Michogan State University
Copyright: African Media Project     48 Hours

1990. CBS-TV. Produced by Dan Rather

TOPICS: South Africa, Apartheid, Propaganda, Civil War, Sociology, Politics.

USES: A, U, G, V,

Background on conditions prevailing at the time of Mandela's release and unbanning of the ANC and other liberation movements should be provided. The nature of the civil war must be explained to put Dan Rather's simplistic explanation of `black-on-black' violence into perspective.

SYNOPSIS

This magazine program was made shortly after the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. CBS newscaster Dan Rather's in-depth news program, 48 Hours, deals with the period immediately after the release of Nelson Mandela on February 13, 1990. It provides a good example of the way in which the US media report international events in terms of their implications for the United States.

The program consists of several segments, each portraying a different aspect of various South African lifestyles, from the very poor to the very wealthy, black and white and so on. 48 Hours begins with a lead introduction by Rather. Because of his familiarity as a newscaster his presence lends an air of `objectivity' to the program. This icon of Rather, wearing his usual tie, is supplemented by the connotations of `authority', `respectability' and `trustworthiness'. The program ends with a closing statement by Rather which reinforces the idea that what has been viewed is `real'.

CRITIQUE

Far from being a balanced, objective, representation, 48 Hours is replete with over-simplifications and ideological constraints which seriously undermined any pretense of `fair and accurate' reporting. On a similar note, before and after the commercial breaks, a graphic of a hi-tech camera is positioned such that when returning to the program, the viewer is actually able to peer through the `lens' onto the `real world' being revealed. This camera device gives the viewer the impression that events are occurring `as they really happen'. The fact that the camera crew are `eye-witnesses' on-the-spot of the occurrences also lends the program a spurious sense of credibility. That the program is social construction of a particular American view is concealed, however.

Since the primary concerns of the corporate US media revolve around capital, it is not surprising that the South African individual portrayed in the best light is a black businessman. This man broke out of the stigma of Soweto poverty on his own, studied in the United States (obviously!), and became successful, which in capitalist terms, means very wealthy. Indeed, the section which portrayed this man, entitled "The Good Life", began with a narration dubbed over shots of a huge house with all of the fineries one could imagine: "This is what the good life is like in South Africa. A big house, the swimming pool, the tennis court, and servants, of course", says the narrator.

Living illegally in a white neighborhood, the black businessman is portrayed as a shrewd entrepreneur able to get around racial segregation laws by setting up a dummy corporation which owns his house. Choice of this man as a mediator suggests that business people don't really have to be ethical in terms of following the letter of the law. The unwritten code in business practices stems from the idea of the law as `fair game': as the narrator admiringly states, he "managed to get around the law by hook, by crook ...". This notion comes through the narration again later: "In a sense you have taken a journey and left a lot of your black brothers and sisters behind. You have no obligation to stay poor just because other blacks in the country are poor". The narrator fails to mention that there is also not an obligation to participate in the kind of business activities which caused so much of the poverty brought on by apartheid as the only means to `get ahead'.

The black businessman's appearance for the most part fits easily into an American business discourse. He is dressed in typical business garb; a dark-grey, pin-striped suit, white shirt and red paisley tie, carrying a briefcase. In fact, the South African is wearing the same type of clothing sported by Rather, the Voice of Authority himself. The businessman, `the man in the suit' thus becomes an index for `successful black South African businessmen'. Symbolically, the man and his role are articulated as the best solution to South Africa's problems. The implication is that even black South Africans can be saved if they take the capitalist route. Finally, the businessman prides himself on his, and his educated black friends', ability to converse about the stock exchange and Wall Street, while knowing how to simultaneously hold a glass of champagne in one hand and light a cigar with the other.

Both the narrator and the businessman underplay class differences as a major part of the South African conflict. Instead, they rely on a simplistic analysis which reduces the conflict to one between races only, rather than of opposing politico-economic alliances struggling for hegemony. Near the end of the segment the interviewer suggests: "Everything has to do with race in South Africa". The South African's profound response is "Yes sir". The notion of an individual rather than a collective or a community-based struggle for self-improvement is reinforced as well.

A typical scene has the individual conversing intimately with the interviewer. Close-ups are constantly used to connote familiarity, trustworthiness and respectability. The businessman, comfortable and complacent in his successful emulation of the white bourgeoisie, "thinks things are going to change". Indeed, he certainly "hopes so". No indication is given of how this change is going to happen, though, save for his continued hope and capitalist endeavors. Overall, the segment is framed in such a way that the implication of capitalism in apartheid itself is entirely suppressed.

48 Hours also succumbed to racial discourse in its presentation of prospects for a black-majority ruled South Africa. Immediately after showing President De Klerk giving a speech on taking "a bold step towards eventual negotiations with the black majority, talks which could lead to a new constitution", a camera switch is made to a chanting black `mob'. Simultaneously, a voice-over says that "a state of emergency stays in effect". The positioning of "emergency" with the toyi-toying crowds connotes a mood of legitimate alarm about the possibility of chaotic, disorderly `black domination' outside of capitalist solutions involving of blacks.

The idea of black-induced chaos is reinforced in a later segment entitled "Black Against Black" which reveals "tribal warfare" between the black masses. It starts with a glimpse of the "daily harvest of the killing fields in South Africa's Natal province". The narrator mentions that in three years of fighting in Natal 2,800 people are believed to have been killed, He continues: "For whites, this bloody fight for power is their worst nightmare come true", as if blacks are inherently or genetically disposed to inter-tribal killing. Finally, another `mob' of chanting, jumping blacks is shown as the narrator says; "this is what all South Africa could be if blacks were to take power". At the level of appearance, there is a mass of black people with swords, guns and decorative attire. At the indexical level, the `mass' becomes two specific opposing groups representing Inkatha and UDF respectively. These warring groups in 48 Hours are made to stand for chaos, lack of control, opposing `tribes' and `Otherness'. As myth, the `mass' stands for `inter-tribal violence', possibly leading to South Africa's economic disintegration. The mass symbolizes the futility and dangers of collective action. The program's message is that the real solutions lie in the individualistic survival tactics so successfully accomplished by the businessman discussed above.

In the latter part of the program, blacks are usually presented as faceless mobs: an Inkatha fighter is interviewed, although he is barely comprehensible in English and no translator is provided. This makes him appear stupid, strange and untrustworthy - one of those `tribal others' who does not really know what is going on except, as the interviewer suggests, that his "men are fighting to kill the enemy". The warriors are said to be "pawns of bloody battles between makeshift armies", while "the comrades" are out defending UDF territory. The comrades cannot speak for themselves. They are nameless, generic faces shown without dignity, without family, without humanity: just "comrades", "pawns of bloody battle," "fighting to kill the enemy". This segment plays up political and economic divisions between the various black constituencies in terms of tribal warfare. "Since Mandela's release", the narrator concludes, "the violence has spiraled out of control".

In conclusion, 48 Hours is successful only in its ability to construct a reality of the South African situation that will ultimately serve corporate media structures and hence US interests. The meanings it creates result from an ideological position which grants full legitimacy to capitalistic hoarding, individual self-advancement and utter contempt for collective process. (`The American Way' is the only way is Rather's message).

(Reviewed by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1990).

Author: Dye, Michael
Date:
   
Flame employs a manipulation of the position of its audience to discuss transitional aspects of Zimbabwean society after liberation. By using the title character as the symbolic center of a narrative otherwise cast in the stylistic guise of documentary, it engages the shifting perception of her role and meaning in the historical context. In a series of flashbacks the narrator invokes the Bush war in Southern Rhodesia, and the heroic, nearly iconic position of Flame as a soldier of that movement. Her personal losses mount during the conflict, small tragedies that are a point of identification for the audience, but she never wavers from the cause of independence.

By contrast the present day finds Flame aimless and uncertain. The point of view of the narrator is brought into focus and Flame becomes a more complex figure, one that reveals the conflicted nature of a society so long enmeshed in fighting that the conception of a future without it has changed allegiances irrevocably. She becomes the one fluid element in a recital or litany of the African history of Rhodesia and, in her symbolic relation to the text, illuminates the system-wide collapse of a once shared identity. What is emotionless in the narrative is precisely the absence of defining ideals not based on opposition endemic to former colonies. Thus, Flame is a representation of the unfolding reexamination not only of history but of the people within it, and the progressive psychological effect upon lives in passage from one form to another.

The role of Third Cinema in transitional societies increased to absorb its new function of arbiter and truth-teller, a task given it in large part by an audience tacitly aware of the long slant of African filmmakers toward social realism and consequent identification with the oppressed. Armed with the authority of such credentials artists suddenly free of pervasive censorship found themselves well suited to the formulation of a new identity. At the same time they were faced with a society splintering in freedom. The plight of Flame, who seems not merely aimless but at least passively ostracized, was an experience widely repeated. "A concerted effort to crystallize national struggles and identities may be an indication of a society that is moving to regain its belief in itself." For the filmmaker, then, identification of Flame as a symbolic point of contestation among a people who are looking forward at the expense of rejecting the past altogether is the crucial first step in any elaboration of the founding ideals that will bind them together under one state. As a docudrama the film educates by bringing revolutionary theory into the mainstream. At the same time it personifies the immensity of change, so that the issue of Flame's acceptance within society is seen in the light of its implications for the ultimate rejection of the colonial conception of a rebel. The character is faced with a kind of dull hostility, with in fact the same uneasiness that marks the relationship between audience and filmmaker. The people of Zimbabwe were immediately confronted by the stark fact that involvement in the global market was crucial to survival, and revolutionaries quickly became embarrassments, engendering both guilt and distance in the populace self-consciously enjoying the fruits of victory. Ukadike describes the characteristic of "immediacy" as "the invocation of past events to explain the present situation, or even the use of present events to amplify past event in order to make them more immediate"; here, Ingrid Sinclair utilizes a narrative structure embodying both approaches. Past and present alternate. The context of Flame's dislocation becomes apparent, and as a symbol attempts to reconcile them. There is no clear resolution save that left to the viewer.

Further Reading
Ukadike, F. (1995). "The Other Voices of Documentary: Allah Tantou and Afrique, je te Plumerai", Screen (1995).

Author: Garritano, Carmela
Date: 1998
   

In fact, the bourgeois phase in the history of underdeveloped countries is a completely useless phase. When this caste has vanished, devoured by its own contradictions, it will be seen that nothing new has happened since independence was proclaimed, and that everything must be started again from scratch (Fanon 1993:176)

Before any images appear in Bertucelli's film Ramparts of Clay, the preceding quote and the line "1962 - after Tunisia's independence" are displayed on the screen. The quote comes from Frantz Fanon's essay "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness" (1963). In this opening segment, Bertucelli invites us to consider reading the film as a critique of post-independence Tunisia. And if we, as viewers, accept his invitation, we read the story of a young woman who is alienated from, and dissatisfied with, life in a secluded village on the edge of the Sahara as an analogy for post-colonial Tunisia. Like her, this newly independent nation is still caught in its past, still subjected to exploitation, still severed from yet servile to the outside world.

Fanon criticizes the "national bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries" for not being "engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor labor" (p150). Instead, he contends, the middle class's "innermost vocation seems to be to keep in the running and to be part of the racket". The racket refers to the colonial agenda of exploiting the resources of the colony which "it exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of underdevelopment and poverty" (p159). In Ramparts of Clay, we witness the mechanics of the "racket". Uneducated and poor villagers pound stone into granite and chisel salt from rock for a pittance, while the fruits of their labor is hauled away by large trucks. It is a Tunisian, speaking Arabic and not the French of the colonial master, who sits behind the ledger, dispenses pay to the villagers, and directs the trucks full of stone as they leave the village for the city. Dressed in a suit and tie, he represents the newly liberated bourgeoisie, who as Fanon predicted, become complicit in the exploitation of the masses and revoke the promises made at independence.

Independence has brought no relief to the Tunisian villagers pictured in this film. The misery of their situation is signified through the film's protagonist, a nineteen year old woman, trapped, like her country, in what Fanon calls the bourgeoisie phase, a liminal space between autonomy and dependence. The young woman longs for the freedom and independence she associates with the larger world outside of the village. She is no longer a child, but although an adult, unmarried woman, her movement and choices are restricted by the norms of her village. Cross-cutting brings into stark contrast the relative freedom the men have to leave the village for work and the limited access the women have to anything outside of the compound. The film places the male and female realms in juxtaposition: the open expanse of the Sahara and the freedom the men have to venture into the desert is set against the dark, cramped spaces inside of the compound where only the women, small children and old men remain. The film shrouds these female spaces in darkness and shadow, suggesting that the village women occupy places and roles that limit their movement and autonomy. Throughout the film the camera adopts the young woman's perspective and looks out from the inside of compound doors and windows. One stunning shot includes the frame of a window, from behind which the camera pans the landscape. The suggestion seems to be that the young woman has little opportunity to enter into the male sphere although clearly the desire to have the freedom to leave the village is strong.

Like the newly independent country that has visions of liberation for all, the young woman sees glimpses of the life she desires. Fragments of the outside world enter the village. An educated woman taking a census drives into the desert; a caravan stops for water; trucks loaded with stone depart for another place, and school books contain pictures and words which stand for things unknown to her. The reality represented by these signs, an existence outside of the compound walls, does not exist for her, but near the end of the film she performs an act of resistance that brings that reality closer. Tunisian soldiers, who like the Tunisian businessman speak Arabic, occupy the village because the men have gone on strike to protest their low wages. The men sit outside the compound and the soldiers surround them, preventing the men from moving, eating, or drinking while the soldiers eat bread and sardines and drink water from the well. The young woman joins the resistance of the men by escaping from the compound at night and stealing the bucket from the well, preventing the soldiers from getting water. Subsequently, the soldiers leave the village and the strike ends. Here, the two sides of the analogy collapse. The independence of the village from the control of the Tunisian middle class and the army which fortifies it and the protagonist's quest for freedom overlap. The young woman's gesture signifies her stance against her own oppression by the patriarchal hegemony of the village and represents the entire village's resistance against its oppression by the middle class.

At the conclusion of the film both the village and the young woman stand on the threshold of change. The village's successful fight against the army suggests that perhaps change is in the air. As Fanon explains "exploitation, poverty, and endemic famine drive the native more and more to open, organized revolt" (238), and Ramparts of Clay chronicles one instance of revolt against the oppression of the Tunisian masses by the middle class. The young woman refuses to return to the life she lead before the strike. In the final scenes of the film, we watch her act out against her prescribed role in the village. She allows the bucket to fall into the well without retrieving water, and when an old woman splashes the young woman's face with chicken blood as punishment for her impudence, she submits without flinching. The final episode of the film watches the young woman move into the expanse of the Sahara. The camera stands above her and as it climbs higher and higher, the woman gets smaller and smaller as if the desert were absorbing her. She is "free inside (her) loneliness" the song assures us because "there is no doorway back to the past." It appears as if she has finally escaped her entrapment. She, like her country, moves beyond the past and toward the next phase of liberation.

Further Reading

Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. Constance Farrington, trans. New York: Grove Press.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
THE DUTCH IN SOUTH AFRICA

TOPICS: History, Holland, South Africa, Colonization, Propaganda

USES: A

SYNOPSIS
A conservative history of Dutch colonization of South Africa after 1652. Made by a Dutch company, the film's interpretation of Dutch South African colonial history is very similar to the official apartheid version. The seeds of apartheid are blamed on the Dutch East India company's 17th Century social policies. It is only at the end of the film that apartheid is hastily mentioned as having become a conversation piece. In an attempt to redress the lack of historical enunciation on the Jan van Riebeeck era, who arrived at the Cape in 1652, the film dwells on the conflicts that occurred between the colonists and a later governor, Simon van der Stel. This film, however, has little to say about the slave economy which was legal at the Cape but not in Holland itself.

CRITIQUE
The text is illustrated with period re-creations of paintings, documents, contemporary location shots and models. Despite these extensive resources available to the producers, the film is basically a sanitized history constructed by uncritical members of a former colonial power. The Dutch in South Africa is riddled with omissions of events and policies which would have required critical elaboration, and blames conflicts with the settlers on "belligerent Bushmen" and "Hottentots who did not want to work". Despite these statements, the narrator claims that no-one was at the Cape when the first European voyagers arrived. The first blacks arrived at the Cape, viewers are told, when the Dutch robbed a Portuguese slave ship and put them to work.

Vague statements like "Black tribes wandering south" do a disservice to the history of population migrations in Southern Africa, and perpetuate the dominant white myths of white settlement before blacks arrived from the north. The National Party did not get into power in a "landslide victory" in 1948, but barely obtained 37% of the white vote. It was able to dislodge the ruling Jan Smuts United Party government because of the skewed delimitation of constituencies. That the majority of the (black) population were denied voting rights isn't even mentioned.

While unfortunate racist colloquialisms might have unintentionally slipped into the narration, the omissions, images, music and emphases reinforce a paternalist view of both Dutch and South African history unfolding in the absence of complex economic, social, imperialist and cultural processes.

The Dutch in South Africa is true to a conservative Dutch historiography, but it lacks the dialectic of the history of the indigenous people whom the Dutch, and later the British, came to subjugate. The film lacks the signposts of an official apartheid history as, for example, the narrator's neutral voice entirely lacks any sense of irony as he mentions the origins of race classification under the British, and the 2nd Anglo-Boer War which just `happens', as if outside of historical or economic impulses.

The film is not totally irretrievable, however. Used in a critical context, teachers could employ it to show how official histories are constructed to serve contemporary ideological purposes. Monuments like the Cape Town Castle built by Van Riebeeck and the houses of the early Dutch settlers continue to provide ideological rallying points and are maintained by cultural capital with a vested interest in maintaining images of the official past. The Dutch in South Africa offers a benign interpretation which needs to be unpacked in terms of other voices of history.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   

DESTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT

1987. 52 minutes video only. Produced by Scope Films.

Directed by Toni Strasburg. Distributed by California Newsreel.

TOPICS: Military Tactics, Apartheid, State Terrorism, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola.

USES: U, and V.

Definitely not suitable for high school or younger audiences.

SYNOPSIS
Destructive Engagement chronicles South African military destabilization of the Frontline States between 1976 and 1987. The film's title is drawn from a book of the same title, whose authors were consultants to the producers. The film offers gut wrenching images of the tragic results of the Reagan Administration's policy of `constructive engagement' with regard to conflicts in Southern Africa between 1981 and 1988.

CRITIQUE
Constructive Engagement was the way in which `quiet diplomacy' was implemented through increasing business and moral contacts between the US Administration and the South African government. During this time, Reagan supported the South African state, while refusing diplomatic recognition to the communist-ruled Angola. Paradoxically, the USA was Angola's largest trading partner, and its oil fields were operated by American corporations. The film concentrates on the shocking human consequences of South African military aggression, its effect on people, families, children and life in general. The film's graphic images humanize the abstract media statistics of people maimed, killed and mutilated.

Destructive Engagement elicits an emotional viewing experience as it systematically reveals and describes the nature of direct and indirect South African Defense Force (SADF) destabilization in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Angola. This film brings to mind images of the holocaust and those of the atrocities perpetrated in the Korean War (see Korea:The Unknown War- PBS - 1990). The SADF caused atrocities to be perpetrated on the civilian populations of Angola and Mozambique by working through surrogate groups of `bandits': the Mozambican Resistance Movement (MNR) in Mozambique, UNITA in Angola and the Matabele gangsters in Zimbabwe. As such, the film contests the Western conventional wisdom that UNITA is an actual guerilla movement, or that the MNR is anything but blood-crazed mercenaries and forced conscripts. They are presented quite simply as the forces of destruction used by the South African government to destabilize the Frontline States.

While the facts of grief, disfigurement of civilians including children, mass murder and so on have been well documented, Destructive Engagement tends towards a conspiratorial analysis through omission and allusion. These techniques are found in both the world's left- and right-wing media, each serving the stereotypes propagated by their opposing interests. The SADF, for example, argued that the African National Congress (ANC) was armed by Eastern Bloc countries. De facto, therefore, the ANC was controlled by Moscow, and must be communist, working in the interests of Soviet expansionism. The detailed identification of weaponry in media reports suggests that weapons come ready packed with ideological instructions. Just as in the Western media, AK47s indicate Soviet ideology, the arms used by MNR are automatically assumed to have been supplied by the SADF.

Destructive Engagement reports the murder of forty white farmers in Matabeleland after Zimbabwean independence in 1980 by Matabele dissidents in these crude ideological terms. The film interviews a white farmer who says he is unaware of who the controllers of the killers are. The narrator, however, claims to know the answer, arguing that the bullets originate from South African sources, and that they have the same markings as do those found on Renamo weaponry. This explanation, a key element of the film makers' argument relating to SADF destablization of Zimbabwe, is inserted without elaboration.

The film also glosses over the Nkomo/Mugabe split, in which Nkomo was forced out of the Zimbabwean cabinet on that country's independence. The attacks on white farmers have to be understood within the context of this power struggle. Evidence certainly suggests that the white farmers were pawns in an incredibly vicious conflict between the two major political groupings in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's ZANLA and Nkomo's ZIPRA. It is possible that the SADF took advantage of this conflict, but this does not make the SADF a cause of it.

In addition, the section on the Matabele dissidents needs much more explanation than is offered by the film. To cover up problems in the Frontline States and to blame all of them on South Africa is to romanticize the application of power and coercive hegemony in the Frontline States themselves. Another omission which makes the South African intervention seem more ad hoc than it was is the film's ignorance of theories of war.

The Total Onslaught, the SADF's label for `communist expansionism' against South Africa, gets one mention, but is not explained. While the film does make connections beyond South Africa to international sources of capital financing the RENAMO war against FRELIMO, it does not follow these institutional links through. As such, the film needs an introduction which explains the theory of destabilization, and what the SADF was hoping to achieve.

The film does underline the human consequences of destabilization. A definition of the South African army emerges from the perspectives of its targets. "An army doesn't fight people, it fights another army," states a FRELIMO officer. Says a Mozambican information officer of the MNR, "People don't run away from other liberation movements."

The film is well organized and intelligently illustrated with maps and sub-titles. However, Destructive Engagement ' should be used with circumspection. The images of the dead and mutilated victims are extremely gruesome and may not be suitable for young viewers or those who might reconstitute what they are seeing in terms of Western myths about Africa. Mozambican media officer, Carlos Cardoza, for example, comments on reports of mutilations: "Some of them are too horrible to talk about and the Western media would move into an hysteria about African backwardness instead of blaming the very people they supported- apartheid South Africa."

(Written by Keyan Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990. Edited by Carmela Garritano, 1997)

Companion reading:

Johnson, P. and Nyerere. (1986). Destructive engagement. Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990/1
Other Authors: Ruth Tomaselli, MSU Evaluators    

THE CRY OF REASON

1988. 56 minutes. Video. 16mm.

Produced by Robert Bilheimer, Ron Mix and Kevin Harris

A biography of Rev Beyers Naud'e's politicization and shift from the Afrikaner establishment to becoming a vital personality within the freedom movement.

TOPICS: Religion, Social Change, Sociology, Anthropology, Resistance.

USES: I, U, G, A and V.

SYNOPSIS
This is an exceptionally well structured film which elaborates the role of the Church in struggle. The central character, Rev Beyers Naud'e, develops a systematic theology of resistance and liberation to oppose the theology that underlies apartheid, to which he subscribed as a young man. Naud'e's autobiographical narrative of his fundamental political shift shows why it was so difficult for Afrikaners of the 1960s to break out of their racist ideology. The film symbolically indicates the psychic wilderness that Naud'e had to traverse, never to return, or be allowed to return by his culture or group.

Racists do not normally recognize racism in themselves, but in this film we see how Naud'e wrestled free from what he initially thought were God-given tenets about racial social ordering. He was ostracized by Afrikaners because of their sense of betrayal, not because his ideas were particularly revolutionary. The film shows that both whites and blacks are caught in the vice-like grip of apartheid: blacks suffer grievously because whites have incarcerated themselves in a psychological prison legitimated by a theology of oppression.

Naud'e explains why apartheid is such a compelling theology to Afrikaners. He shows how the suffering it causes blacks is concealed in a belief system that offers the illusion of apartheid as a way of solving differences between people of different cultures. "The Afrikaner mind" which foregrounded the moral and ethical basis of apartheid, within which he was imprisoned until the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, persuaded Afrikaners of the justness of their cause. A compelling tenet of this belief system was that disobedience to the state entailed disobedience to God. The materiality of this belief is witnessed in interview after interview of ordinary Afrikaans-speaking whites questioned in series like The White Tribe of Africa, and single programs like Girls Apart, Children of Apartheid and Dan Rather's 48 Hours, made soon after the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.

CRITIQUE
Certain historical omissions need redressing in The Cry of Reason. The film makes no reference to the Dutch Reformed Church's (DRC) Cottesloe Conference in 1960 when it declared apartheid a heresy. Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd had mobilized racist discourse within the Church's constituency to outflank the DRC and force it to recant this declaration. The film also lacks a sense of the institutional, constructing Naud'e by emphasizing him as an individual not organically connected to an emergent social movement of the 1960s. The film, for example, is silent about Naud'e's activities between the time of his ideological shift from the DRC in 1960 and his resignation from the Church in 1963. Also, the narrator talked about the "Black Consciousness period", showing pictures of Mandela, and then only Biko. This, states the film, was a period when blacks moved out on their own to break white domination. Naud'e's relationship to BCM is not clear, and Mandela had little, if anything, to do with black consciousness.

However, the individualizing of the person, Naud'e, does offer empowering possibilities: the film offers an affirmative dimension of how individuals can make a difference when circumstances permit. Naud'e, in fact, opened a space for religious dissidence in South Africa, first formalized in the Christian Institute which he established and later, the South African Council of Churches.

Despite his banning by the state, Naud'e remained enormously influential, and found mass support amongst blacks. Naud'e describes his banning as "the most meaningful, fruitful, and fulfilling period of his whole life", a sentiment which recalls the three commentators in Robben Island, who also emphasize the positive dimensions of their experiences in prison. These statements show how the government's isolation tactics achieved the opposite of what it intended. The state unintentionally empowered individuals by cutting them off from their constituencies, and providing them with the opportunity of turning adversity to advantage. They found ways of dealing with their imprisonment, whether under house arrest or in jail, which reinvigorated their collective practices once they were freed. Despite the film's cult of leadership rubric, Naud'e remains a humble, socially-concerned person, who exudes love and compassion.

The production crew have a way of making films that make the most sordid of backgrounds appear idyllic. The sequences of the squalid Alexandra township is shot against a pink dawn, making the sense of irony between beauty and poverty more poignant. The camera's focus on the faces of small, unspoiled innocent children, heightens the tragedy by contrasting them with children in coffins and hardened 16 year olds who attend school heavily armed. Images of great and intense beauty are destroyed from within -- a metaphor for apartheid.

Images and narration work symbiotically to reinforce or hold each other at a distance in a relationship of tension. The scene of the dead boy in a coffin is contrasted with a defiant poem from Two Dogs and Freedom. The sound track is saying that Two Dogs and Freedom encodes the hopes and aspirations of the youth, but the visual cautions this optimism with depictions of the consequences of this hope. But the body shown is not a twisted mangled grotesqueness; rather with its face covered in a gossamer of gauze, it has an ethereal beauty, a metaphor for what peace can and eventually will be, both literally in the present and materially in the future.

The Cry of Reason speaks to a variety of audiences at many levels simultaneously, from the literal to the symbolic. The film never speaks down to its audiences, but empowers them as individuals. In this, The Cry of Reason offers an affirmative dimension of the anti-apartheid Church in struggle. In so doing, it removes itself from other films that so literally index the litany of atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid government.

DISTRIBUTORS: Southern Africa Media Center

(price range video sale $195 rental $75; 16mm sale $850 rental $95).

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, Ruth E Teer-Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990/1)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1997
    CORRIDORS OF FREEDOM

TOPICS: development, war, colonialism.

USES:

SYNOPSIS

In 1981, the nine independent countries of Southern Africa formed the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). Corridors of Freedom tells the story of its formation and purpose. SADCC's aim was to promote regional economic coordination in order to free member states from South African domination. SADCC attempted to coordinate transport, communications, energy, reforestation, and water management in the face of South African attempts at destabilization. SADCC provides a potential model for a post-apartheid South Africa.

CRITIQUE
The video uses news clips, news material, maps, and diagrams which illustrate the region's transport corridors. Nonetheless, the film does not easily stand on its own and requires extensive supporting materials for the viewer to understand the fuller picture. The news clips, for example, are never identified, so the connection between the visuals and the narration is one of association rather than of direct connection.

The film differs from the usual films on Africa as it shows black governments doing something positive in the face of South Africa's hostilities. The viewer sees that development is occurring, even if under siege. It is thus an affirmative film which describes international cooperation in the face of South African economic domination and military destabilization. One example of cooperation is the construction of the Beira Corridor, which was opened by a rail line and guarded by Zimbabwean soldiers. Beira is a key Mozambique port serving the landlocked countries of Zimbabwe. Zambia, Botswana and Malawi. Beira reduces reliance on South African and Namibian ports and redirects economic resources to Mozambique. The film shows that armed convoys were needed to repulse American, Portuguese and South African supported Mozambican Resistance Movement (MNR) rebel attacks. Drought and other problems facing rural peasant farmers are discussed. The film demonstrates that the farmers want to be self-sufficient and do not want to rely on food aid. It explains how Zimbabwe coordinates farm security and training.

The slow pace of the film gives viewers the opportunity to see the countryside, look at the people, hear them speak of their conditions, and watch them at work.

(Written by Keyan Tomaselli, 1997)

question viewers must ask themselves is, "Should these men be forgiven for what they have done?" The question, like the film itself, positions the camera, and its invisible viewers, in the role of confessor, charged with the power to absolve the sinner from his sins. The camera in this episode of "Common Ground" sides with Mentz and aims to present Mentz's confession as worthy of absolution.

Mentz unburdens his soul to the camera, admitting to the crimes he committed and trying to explain why he committed them. Although in one sense Mentz uses the camera to make his case, the camera also turns Mentz into an object and reifies its position of authority by constructing the truth of Mentz's confession. The camera of the documentary filmmaker seems to simply capture the truth on film. But this episode provides a clear example of how the camera constructs the truth it presents. Extreme close-ups of Mentz's face as he struggles to explain why he did what he did at Vlakplaas coaxes our sympathy for this Afrikaner who grew up believing that blacks were communists, the enemies. We watch as he weeps while giving his testimony before the Commission, and the narrator describes the loneliness and despair Mentz feels while the camera observes him in all his vulnerability, showering. This personal space solicits our acceptance of the truth Mentz seems to wrench from deep within himself.

We see Mentz in his private, personal life, walking the grounds of Vlakplaas on a sunny day in casual, civilian clothes and relaxing with friends while John Lennon plays on the radio. The camera enters into Mentz's personal space, his personal life, and, it would have us believe, his mind. We judge him not by the evidence of the case, but by our ability to see inside his soul and understand what he has done. He is human, just like us, the victim of a warped ideology, and sorry for what he has done, the episode claims. We, like the panel of judges who sit on the Commission, are asked to forgive Mentz, and as the facts are presented to us, it would be hard not to sympathize with him.

We become readers of Mentz's face, his gestures, and his words. We watch him weep and wonder if he is sincere, and in this way, we make our evaluation of him. Michel Foucault claims that the confession, unlike its historical predecessor the Medieval trial, produces truth not as the result of a test, but as an act of interpretation. Truth is then produced by way of a network of power relations where the confessor reconstructs his tale to a judge, who then reads his tale and participates in any production of meaning, or truth, which is claimed to reside within the confession itself. "It is no longer a question of saying what one has done ... but of reconstructing, in and around the act, the thoughts that recapitulated it, the obsessions that accompanied it, the images, desires, modulations, and quality of the pleasure that animated it" (Foucault 1990:63). The episode spends little time examining either the crime itself or evidence about who is responsible for the crime. Instead, we learn about the man and his motivations. The camera mediates our analysis of Mentz and reconstructs his crimes by interviewing his friends, his ex-wife, his lawyer, and Mentz himself. Our judgement can only be based on how we read the man, and the camera enacts a great deal of authorial control over its viewers.

In the end Mentz's victim's wife cannot forgive him. However, we, as viewers, are urged to absolve the man from his sins. The lesson to be learned is that confession brings redemption and, as the narrator tells us, "only truth will heal wounds." The question Matshikiza asks at the beginning of the episode, "Should these men be forgiven for what they have done?" is superfluous because, in this program its answer is already given.

Further Reading

Foucault, Michel. (1990). The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.

Date: 1987
28 minutes. 16mm Video
Produced by Ron Hallis and Opera Hallis
An impressionistic record of timbila music in Chopiland in Mozambique.    

The video blurb dates the origin of the timbila to the early 16th Century. The narration opens with comments made in 1562 by Father Andre Fernandes on the Chopi enjoyment of music. African history is thus referenced to early recorded European contact. Hallis should rather have stated that Fernandes' remark was the 'first recorded reference to Chopi music ...'

Timbila is an ensemble of instruments or, generally, the music of the timbila. The mbila is a single instrument which contributes to timbila music. The dances that accompany the music are called 'dancing timbila'. These distinctions are not clear in the video.

The video reveals the mbila manufacturing process, the kind of woods and other components used, the bees wax used as sealant, the congut membrane, goatskin strips for cords, and the tempering of the wooden keys with fire.

The Western conception of music scales is used to explain Chopi music. Chopi scales, however, are quite different. Hallis's explanation describes the timbila as being tuned to minor whole tone. Musically, this is impossible and contradicts work done by Andrew and Hugh Tracey who argue that the timbila is tuned to a equi-heptatonic scale of seven equal steps.

Chopi Music situates timbila performances in the context of a chidilo, a family celebration remembering ancestral spirits.

The video offers tantalizing glimpses of the political dimension of Chopi music in, for example, a satirical reference to the "humiliated colonialists (the Portuguese) fleeing the powerful forces of liberation". These references are not developed or explained. Timbila players turn specific moments and events into performance. The post-independence period offered such a moment. Before independence, timbila players sang and praised, or criticized local colonial administrators.

Post-colonial timbila music is similar to pre-independence music. The words have been changed to capture the most significant post-liberation events. The genuflections by the ensembles to FRELIMO and Samora Machel seem to have replaced other, less political topics. These players may want to ensure that their lives and 'struggle' is written into Mozambican history -- or perhaps they are trying to curry good favor with the new rulers.

In general, a timbila group has one current repertoire which is performed on all occasions until replaced in toto by the next. One must ask, then, to what extent this group is pre-selecting its words and mimes in terms of the current repertoire and whether the filmmakers were aware of this. To what extent is the crew's presence itself encoded into the music and movements? One woman, for example, clearly dances for the camera, almost willing it to focus on herself as she swirls amongst the other dancers.

The growing use of modern carpentry tools with which to make timbilas is seen but not remarked upon. Neither does the video discuss the effects of modern technology on construction, and sounds, of timbilas. Rural instruments are vastly superior to the urban instruments. Hallis touches all these issues but does not elaborate on any of them.

The video emphasizes musicians, dancers and their instruments, but does not systematically relate the music and movements to the social relationships occurring within the misa. Because the film de-emphasizes the social relationships, the close-up shots of the animal sacrifices -- a goat's throat being cut with the blood spurting into a container, and the decapitated head of a cow being strung up on a tree-- may reinforce the Western stereotype of Africa as a continent populated by primitive black savages. Though the narration does briefly state the significance of the sacrifices after the deeds have been done, the camera's fetish with bloody scenes, and its exclusion of the human relations going on around the animals beyond the frame, which should have been the focus, results in fragmented ethnography. This fetish with isolated detail continues with the narrator stating that the cow's head is raised as the "proud culmination of the slaughter" -- upon which the "hired timbila orchestra begins to play, marking the beginning of the feast and happy celebration".

There is a vast difference between the positive religious connotations of 'sacrifice'; and 'slaughter', which has pejorative connotations of wanton and random killing. The narration itself sometimes speaks in the 'ethnographic film code' popularized in The Hunters (1958). This discourse offers a mystical but reverentially poetic and timeless set of non-sequiturs. Such descriptions are often meaningless to audiences and even to anthropologists lacking this code.

Overall, the video is useful in explaining how timbilas are made, but less so with regard to Chopi cultural practices.

Keyan G Tomaselli
University of Natal, Durban

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
CHILDREN OF APARTHEID

1987. 49 minutes video only. Produced by CBS, USA. Produced by Brian Ellis, CBS Reports. Narrated by Walter Cronkite.

TOPICS: Children, Apartheid

USES: UE, M, H, U, G, A.

CRITIQUE:
An emotionally engaging film of young people's attitudes and responses to apartheid. Visually, the film suggests balance and objectivity. Shots and interviews of black resisters are balanced with scenes of whites either supporting or opposing apartheid. Rozanne Botha, daughter of State President PW Botha, is contrasted with Zinzi Mandela, daughter of the then imprisoned ANC leader. But as the camera sweeps through the country, this clear argument-through-contrast becomes obscured as these opposites are complicated by race, class and other variables.

The `two' sides of the story are initially identified as `black' vs `white'. But because many of the white children interviewed and imaged are anti-apartheid, the contrasts between black and white are diluted. The program does not develop contrasts within the separate communities, for example, anti-apartheid white schoolboys set against pro-apartheid white schoolboys, and similarly for black pupils. Furthermore, the interviewees are not representative of all shades of youth opinion within South Africa. Those interviewed, however, speak articulately for themselves, no matter their ages.

As with many other films made in South Africa, a degree of self-reflexivity is present in references to problems in the making of the program. These include working under states of emergency, the potential danger to interviewees, and the fact that Cronkite's contribution was constrained by his tourist visa. Many of the interviewees, especially those involved in violence against collaborators, disguised themselves to protect their identities, thus heightening their fear of possible state and violent recrimination against them. Among those introduced by Children of Apartheid is 17 year old Godfrey Dlomo. Already jailed four times and tortured, Godfrey was found murdered five days after being re-detained by the police following his interview with the film crew.

The film's image and narration tend to generalize inductively from the particular to the general. Images and people are not sufficiently located in terms of their contexts. The multiracial private school where the boys debate politics so freely is not identified, and the percentage of children attending this school in terms of the total white schoolgoing population is not provided. Viewers are told that it is an integrated school; however, there is no indication given about the percentage of black boys who attend the school.

Cronkite provides shots of young Xhosa men in the Transkei painted white and describes the attendant ceremony as an "ancient tribal circumcision rite". The metaphorical white skins signify for Cronkite an ironical medium of attaining the manhood denied them by the dominant white society. Cronkite, however, misses the social significance of the ceremony, and that it has been transformed into a way of coping with urban influences. This is indicated by the upturned bus wrapped in canvas used by the initiates as a temporary shelter. The radio on one of the initiates' shoulders, which blasts out African-American rock music, and the bits of clothes worn, meshed with traditional garb, are indicators of ritual adaptations. Cronkite does not state that, like many African traditions, both the form and content of these African social rituals have changed over time. Older forms are maintained, but the meanings are transformed into modern urban roles. In colonized societies, people participating in rituals often play roles denied them in the dominant social systems. These are reflected in the film in the role playing of military leadership, aggression, rebellion etc. Whereas the narration indicates that the smearing of the white chalk wards off "evil spirits", the "paint" is also a means of maintaining cleanliness as initiates are not permitted to bathe during the ceremony. This section thus slides myths about tribes into a broader argument, and inadvertently perpetuates `tribal' stereotypes which undermine the film's political statements about apartheid.

Contrasting the Xhosa initiates with shots of the Afrikaner Voortrekkers (boy scouts) climbing cliffs is symbolically and religiously inapposite. This form of opposing imagery could communicate the idea that blacks have not yet emerged from pre- modern times, even if the initiates themselves stated their preference for living in America, and in spite of the fact that Cronkite cynically extends the label `tribe' to white Afrikaners.

Cronkite is quite clear that apartheid is not `dead' as Rozanne Botha implies, having thoroughly internalized the reformist National Party discourse introduced by her father. The film's makers also understand apartheid in more than simply skin color terms, and accept it as a form of legislation ensuring cheap black labor. The narrator mentions the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) but does not elaborate on the key role it played in the politics of apartheid. Interviews with both young and old rural Afrikaners suggest a Biblically predicated race war, an opinion, however, which is not shared by the DRC as a whole. This sense of manifest destiny is contrasted with the young black "revolutionaries" who already consider themselves at war. Their targets are not whites in general, but black collaborators and individual policemen who have tortured them.

Cronkite's reference to `black-on-black' violence exonerates the government of complicity, and the simplistic way in which the media often frames the conflict. The pictorial and verbal references to `necklacing' in which township teenagers execute collaborators is not adequately set in context, and is not shown to be the exception made-the-rule by sensationally dramatic media coverage. Godfrey, however, explained this practice as "revolutionary justice" with reference to the Russian and French revolutions, but condemned it.

Children of Apartheid is a significant contribution in that Cronkite helped to legitimize anti-apartheid activity to ordinary viewers of commercial TV networks. The film unambiguously conveys its central message that despite Botha's reforms, blacks continue to live in poverty and oppressive circumstances, but that some whites are seriously questioning the system. The cryptic narration consistently questions the South African government's platitudes, but Cronkite's occasional flippancy also suppresses historical processes and causation. The film ignores the connections between apartheid and the American capitalist system that existed at the time, even though some of the white students courageously refer to the connection between apartheid and big business.

One gets the impression that Cronkite is on a moral crusade, while the black youth are waging a brutal war and progressive white youth are still debating the injustices of apartheid. Conservative white youth has a naive trust in government, and Rozanne Botha total faith in her father who "sometimes makes mistakes".

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1995

Other Authors: Maureen Eke and Vincent Khapoya    

CHANGING THIS COUNTRY

1988. 58 m inutes. Produced by Peter Entell. Distributed by California Newsreel.

TOPICS: Labor and Urban Sociology, Politics, Anthropology, Unions, South Africa, Apartheid.

USES: S, U, G, A

SYNOPSIS
Portraits of four union shop stewards in Port Elizabeth, working for General Motors, Plascon Paints, the Pick 'n Pay hypermarket and the National Union of Metal Workers respectively, are woven through the documentary on unionism in the 1980s. The film reveals the structural impediments of apartheid on their job advancement and improved quality of life through workers' descriptions of how they are forced to live. Workers are shown actively working to change the conditions in which they find themselves.

The workers explain how shop floor issues and industrial disputes are connected to struggles in communities, themselves located within the national struggle for democracy. They constantly emphasize the value of organization in resisting oppression. An idea is given of procedures at union meetings, and the expectations of union members. The relationships between workers and management are discussed and one or two brief examples are shown.

CRITIQUE
Because it is aware of the determining processes of class, state and capital, the film links apartheid legislation into this triad. The interviewees themselves make these links, and identify the enemy not as `whites', but the alliance between the state and capital which, in the way it is played out in South Africa, makes whites dominant. This state-capital alliance extends beyond South Africa through multinational companies like General Motors (GM).

One disturbing scene is of a white supervisor cavalierly flinging work cards at scores of outstretched arms looking for a day's work. While their pleading voices jostle for this official's attention, the former GM shop steward tells that these unemployed scabs are trying to secure work while the actual workforce is out on strike. Management is thus able to divide the solidarity of the workforce by employing scab labor. This scene suggests something of the inhumanity of capitalism as it was manifested in South Africa. The camera has the official standing dominantly above the job-seekers on an outside staircase. This framing of the visual relation of power establishes him at the apex, but the analysis offered by the workers shows a subtle and complex understanding of issues of race and class and their inter-relationship, thus undermining any legitimacy the official has. The interviewees talk about whites who have joined the struggle and their unions, and the need to work with people as people rather than as `blacks' or `whites' or `coloreds'. The unionists thereby imply that whites have also been trapped into their attitudes by their own class determinations and their consequent relations to capital.

The effects of the four legal pillars of apartheid, the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas and Land Acts, and the Separate Amenities Act on the different `race' groups are shown visually. Superimposed over these images are impressions of the respective Government Gazettes which made them law. These composite shots reveal the legalistic nature of the system, which demands obedience to `the law' irrespective of its injustices. Some of these Acts were lifted subsequent to the film's release, and COSATU, banned in 1988, was unbanned in February 1990, and the emergency regulations lifted. Though the legalities have since been removed, the interviewees make clear that discrimination remains in employment and hiring practices, and in terms of the capitalist class structure itself.

The visual track is extraordinarily well constructed and gives viewers time to take in the vistas of Port Elizabeth and its poor dormitory towns where its workers reside. Viewers hear the wind, the local sounds and African music. They see the streets, the factories, the stores and the places where each of the interviewees work.

A major fault of the film is that it skirts over the development of the black labor movement in the early '70s, discussing neither the struggles to revive unionism in South Africa, nor the way the state attempted to co-opt the emerging union movement through legalizing unions and attempting to shape their development in an apolitical direction. The debates and conflicts within the movement between the different ideological positions, the non-racial COSATU and the Black Consciousness NACTU are not mentioned. Neither is the fact that COSATU only emerged in 1983 after national consultations within the previous confederation, FOSATU, on the desirability of politicizing work-related issues in terms of the national liberation struggle.

Changing This Country underplays the worker-capital/state struggle in the development of unions since 1973, giving the false impression that unionism was willingly conceded by both capital and the state. The film's major strength, however, is that it examines the problems of individuals within the less visible politico-economic structures which locate them into their subaltern working class positions.

The other anomaly is that none of the shop stewards interviewed belong to NACTU, the second largest federation, even though the film is prefaced with captions stating that it is about `black' unions as opposed to a specific labor grouping. COSATU and COSATU's discourse of non-racialism are foregrounded in the film, and BC is hardly mentioned.

Overall, this is one of the best films available on South Africa and apartheid. The four workers speak clearly and directly. The film is well paced and gets its message across without didactic preaching or playing up of the victimology developed in so many other films. Developments in February 1990 endorse the film title's affirmative dimension.

BOETIE GAAN BORDER TOE

1984. Directed by Regardt van den Berg. Distributed by Ster-Kinekor

`The Farm', that old archetype of Afrikaner solidarity, is no longer acceptable in these days of total strategy or post-total strategy. It has been totally replaced by the image of 'the Border' -- that new site of struggle against an abstract enemy -- communism (and blacks "with a capital K").

Like the earlier films on `the Border', Boetie Gaan Border Toe is a continuation of a racist justification of war, the SADF, and politicians. Only this time, the `enemy' is present through his absence. He is not a dark, inscrutable character as in Grensbasis 13, he is an abstract force, somewhere in the bush, firing mortars and machine guns at a bunch of happy-go-lucky roofie (novice) graduates. The major function of this baptism of fire is not political: it is fundamentally a character-forming experience that matures the characters and changes them into `comrades', and efficient killers where three months basic training failed to knock them into shape.

The film is a mish mash of the refusal to bow to discipline or the seriousness of war seen in MASH, Private Benjamin and Stripes, the images and sounds of Pop Shop, and traditional Afrikaans film genres populated by scheming ambitious fathers, spoilt Afrikaner city-reared boereseuns (sons of the soil), mansions located on the urban farm, fast cars and the inevitable `coloured' servant, in this case, a `Jeeves' who could have come straight out of PG Woodhouse.

In line with developing conventions of the South African war movie, there are two male protagonists. The one, Boetie, is Afrikaans-speaking. He is rich, carefree, irresponsible, and foolhardy. The other English-speaking, is an incompetent motor mechanic who has dodged the draft for four years and has now been cornered at a time when his wife is just about to have their first child. The couple live with an Afrikaans-speaking housemate who falls for Boetie. The oppositions are bourgeois Afrikaner boereseun vs working class English mechanic; indiscipline vs discipline; ambitious parents (Boetie's) vs unambitious children (Boetie); jetsetting versus immobility.

Unlike previous South African war films, the two boys are not true opposites. The one is not hard, tough, determined, the other soft, sensitive and impressionable. They are both hard and tough, but in different, mainly class-oriented ways. The buddy-buddy system works in a uniquely subtle way. All the troepies (troops) are insolent and, at first, disinterested in the army and its way of life. They live in a world of urban fantasies and make-believe discos.

Notwithstanding the demonology of the disco in previous Afrikaans films, the film remains an affirmation of the SA Defence Force. The affirmations work at two levels. The first is the film's realisticness. The detailed mis-en-scene, the performances of the actors, the actual locations and the total believability of the action create a sense of realism seldom seen before in a previous South African film. This film translates the quotidian experience of people who have undergone army training and encoded into the text the common sense experiences of many generations of draftees during apartheid. It does this through realism, through recounting the events and experiences of hundreds of thousands of recruits in a convincing manner. Everybody knows that basic training is a waste of time, conducted by stupid corporals -- the PF (Permanent Force) being the `lowest form of life' -- who are the first to succumb in battle, if they go to battle at all -- while the civilians keep the `terrorists' at bay. This initial period is punctuated with officious behaviour by NCOs who pride themselves on the strength of their voices, the speed with which they can swear or say witty things, and the authoritarian manner which governs the very way they walk. These small-minded insecure small-town little men cause a cameradie to develop within the bungalow which provides brief but welcome respites to the boring and harsh treatment of basic training. An example is where the platoon pretend they cannot hear the corporal's order to halt because of the noise of a helicopter landing. The platoon marches off the parade ground - through a band practicing - until they concertina against a display tank which happens to be in the way. Anybody who has been to the army is able to identify with these antics- whether or not - they enjoyed their military sojourn.

The second and, perhaps, more disturbing method of cinematic affirmation of the SADF is performed by the satirical and comic elements of the film. Traditionally, the major function of satire has been to ridicule folly and evil by subjecting them to irony and scorn. In Boetie, however, this didactic and corrective function is replaced by a humour that operates on the level of lampoon and slapstick rather than moral indignation, and this has the disturbing effect of clouding the real issues at play in a strangely euphemistic way. Political expediency, the `military mentality' and, most importantly, the legitimacy of the SADF's role in Namibia are the basic issues this film tries to address. The first two issues are treated in a quaint satirical way. The third is only referred to obliquely. The problem with satirical portrayals is that the characters are presented as unsual exceptions. The political figure, the step-father who bribes Boetie to leave university and join the army to help him win a by-election to which he has been challenged (a direct spoof) on the recent Nat/CP `Battle for the Berge'), is basically a caricature of political expedience who stands apart from the more seriously represented politicians. The military mentality that is represented by the stupid, foul mouthed, civie hating, bad-mannered, right-wing korporaal who has been sent back to bossies (bush) from the border to train new recruits is also presented as an exception in a well-un, tolerant, humane and civilised army represented by the gloating efficiency of other corporals and the sophisticated gentility of the Commandant. His idiotic behaviour is contrasted with the gloating efficiency of the other corporals, and the disdain and disapproval of the Commandant, who insists that he treat his troops as mense, as people.

The director thus makes fun of this `deviant' character who is not allowed to go to the border because of his inability to teach his men to cope in a war situation. The mis-en scene of just about every shot is extraordinarily well executed with tremendous attention to minute detail - props, settings, special effects and performance. For the first time in a South African war movie we see the idiosyncracies of individuals in a convincing manner. The army `dudes' are not stereotypically paternal, incorrigibly confidant, fastidiously patriotic. The troepies are not universally willing, single-minded soldiers of apartheid. They are surly, bewildered, resisting, and get their own back by pretending to misunderstand orders. The commandant is not inscrutable, distant, ramrod stiff. He is sensitive -always wincing at the stamp of the corporal's boot in his office. He stoops, is retiring and protects himself by merging into his seat behind his desk when reported to by the over-eager corporal.

Forty Days, then, the SADF is presented in a sympathetic light, as a fatherly institution which protects its troepies from stupid NCO's, insisting on the humane treatment of the soldiers. This stupid korporaal ' is the straw man. He is the character through which the director reaffirms confidence in both stupid korporaals who come into their own in action, and the incompetent training so often meted out in SADF camps. To anyone acquainted with career politicians and PF members, these figures probably emerge as realistic types and not as exceptions at all. The satirical treatment of their antics acts as a form of euphemism that clouds the unpleasant reality of their roles. Furthermore, these satirical touches serve to draw attention away from the basic issue that any war must come to terms with - the moral legitimacy of the conflict.

Throughout the film, the morality of the border war is played down in favour of the humerous story-line of the main plot and the corny human drama of the sub-plot. The only political references made are to the particular expedient being plotted by the step-father and this serves to draw attention away from the more fundamental political/military question. At the end of the film, the military involvement issue is resolved in a totally apolitical way with Boetie leading his comrades on a counter-attack after their contact with the faceless enemy and returning with a newfound maturity and strength of character. This confidence is immediately shattered when he discovers that his old enemy, now fried " die korporaal " has been shot, and out of this shattered psyche comes the most unsettling element of the film - that of his joy when he sees the corporal is not dead, and it suddenly all seems worthwhile. So the political function of the military in the operational area is played down in favour of unique character nurturing. The spoilt Afrikaner brat reaches a maturity based on humanism through his military experience and this serves to debunk the `old myth' of military incompetence ( die korporaal ) that has been satirised in the film.

Boetie follows a development in Hollywood war films where the horror and stark reality of war and the underlying ideological and political themes that were the subject of anti-war films like Twilight's Last Gleaming, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home and The Deerhunter have been replaced by the uncritical humour of Private Benjamin and Stripes and by the euphemistic romanticism of An Officer and a Gentleman and Purple Hearts. Boetie is a combination of comedy and romance and, as such, it subtly misses the essential point and endorses the official view of mobilisation in the South Africa of that time. This level of propaganda is, of course, much more subtle and, therefore, effective than the traditional patriotic war films like Grensbasis 13 that followed The Green Berets. For obvious reasons, South Africa had not then yet gone through a phase of critical anti-war movies as had America.

The surface text masks the ideological content of the sub-text, that of English-Afrikaner relationships, and the influence of capital. In the conflict-love story the love triangle is between the insiders and the outsider, the latter being the evil urban Afrikaner who has turned his back on the volk, and who stands for capital, initially English-dominated capital. In Boetie, capital is represented by his domineering father who tries to buy political credibility by bribing Boetie to join the forces with R100 000. The director makes fun of this bumbling, self-important bourgeois step-father. He lives in a huge American style mansion and owns a Rolls Royce. Boetie is the result of over-indulgence and is fuelled by his possessions (a Porche, for example), while conniving as far as his father is concerned.

Boetie's friend, the motor mechanic whom he meets on the way to camp, is poor and apparently without parents. He joins up because he has to. This was the first time in Afrikaans film that audiences are presented with a working class as well as bourgeois characters who are friends. Where previous Afrikaans films showed an embarrassment with the `poor white' origins of the Afrikaner

group, in this film such self-consciousness is absent. Symbolically, this class relationship stands for the power of Afrikaner-dominated capital over English capital, a recent development in the political economy. While this imbalance is overdone with regard to the characters, this is functional to the narrative, for at an ideological level the film is justifying the rapprochement of English and Afrikaner as a `new class' which has to work together for the defence of the country. The new class extends to include the Afrikaans-speaking valet.

There are no Afrikaner-English antagonisms in the film. Everybody's in the army together. Even the corporal has to acknowledge this when faced with an uncooperative platoon. The Commandant persuades the corporal to get the best out of his men by being nice to them. When they respond, the corporal cries that he could only do it by licking Boetie's " se gat " (arse) and by speaking English to the " soutie " (salty - as in `salt penis'). Thus, even the army - which had the public image of being an Afrikaner-run killing machine - had to accept the new class and language alliances. Again, this is an affirmation of the way the Defence Force was going about reflecting the consensus politics spawned by the `new dispensation'.

(Originally published in Afrikaans as "Boetie Gaan Border Toe ", Die Suid-Afrikaan, Winter 1985, 43-44.)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
Web Publication; 1998
Source: African Media Project, Michigan State University

Copyright: AMP    

BIKO: BREAKING THE SILENCE

1987 55 minutes. Produced by Tripod Productions, Mark Kaplan, Richard Wicksteed and Olley Maruma. Directed by Edwina Spicer. Distributed by Filmakers Library; California Newsreel.

TOPICS: Politics, Apartheid, South Africa, Resistance, Sociology, Human Rights, Film Making.

USES: U, G and A.

The organizations mentioned in the film should be explained prior to viewing.

SYNOPSIS
Explains the rise and development of Black Consciousness (BC) in South Africa and Steve Biko's role in it. This is a powerful and dramatic biography of Steve Biko, the BC leader who was brutally tortured to death by the Security Police in 1977. The film weaves into its narrative interviews with Biko's BC associates, and Donald Woods, whose books on Biko internationally popularized his humanist message. Further interviews with film director Richard Attenborough while in production in Zimbabwe of Cry Freedom during 1986 explain Attenborough's rationale in the making of the film, and what he and Woods' hoped to achieve by bringing the terrifying impact of South African police repression to the cinema screen for the first time. Attenborough explains that he needed a subject about apartheid that would not become immediately outdated. The fact that Biko's story is about both black and white situations offered additional advantage he says. The documentary is illustrated with excerpts from Cry Freedom, often accompanied by voice over commentary of the actual participants in many of the events re-enacted. The producers of Biko, South Africans and Zimbabweans, use the fact of Cry Freedom's Zimbabwean location to discuss the development of film making in that country. Attenborough refers to the expedient rhetorical challenge by the South African government that he make the film in South Africa. Woods complains that Reagan and Thatcher see apartheid "as no more than a misguided mistake", and that Cry Freedom was made to alert "this segment of the world" as to the real nature of apartheid oppression.

CRITIQUE
Biko fills in many of the gaps unarticulated in Cry Freedom. These relate to Biko himself, BC philosophy, the transference of philosophies from BC into the United Democratic Front, especially following the Soweto '76 uprising. Still, a lot more background is needed for a full understanding of Biko. This film could be shown after Cry Freedom to illustrate concepts, organization and strategies simplified by that film's narrative which foregrounds Woods' perspective of Biko. Interviews with Woods and Attenborough show how Cry Freedom negotiated the contradictions of big-budget film making through using the Woods character as the mediator between the black reality on screen and international white audiences in the cinema. This was a tactical move to secure finance and distribution to ensure that the film was made.

Biko has a complex political structure which may create the impression of "disconnected and poorly organized" sequencing ( Choice, 1988). At the level of form, the film fails to distinguish between re-enactments from Cry Freedom and actual newsfootage. Sources of newsphotos, especially of Biko's corpse are not identified.

The textual ideology works at three inter-related levels: the white liberal interventions of Woods and Attenborough, the non- racial ideology of the UDF which dominates the documentary's perspective, and BC which is used to background the popular UDF shift away from black exclusiveness. This latter strand is edged out of the film's explanatory thread.

The link from BC to UDF is provided through an interview with Cheryl Carolus who acknowledges BC as a formative influence in her political activism and the black cultural arena generally. She argues that BC filled the vacuum caused with the banning of the PAC and ANC in 1960. Carolus, however, now sees the importance of the UDF's racial inclusivism. Mandla Langa, a writer, also states that the broader struggle is more important than the narrow exclusivisms that developed in BC after the passing of Biko.

The relationships between anti-apartheid organizations were not understood by the police. Biko had called for unity between his internal Black Peoples Convention (BPC), the Pan Africanist Congress and ANC. Thabo Mbeki, of the ANC's Dept of Information, tells that the police learned of this call, and incorrectly assumed that BPC fell within the ANC, and that Biko was killed because he did not have the information on ANC structures the police wanted. Sidney Kentridge, council for the Biko family, observed that had the police known of Biko's local black and international reputation, they might not have killed him, or allowed Kruger to get away with his infamous comment on Biko's death `leaving him cold'. This statement is illustrated with a scene of a political meeting from the film re-enacted from an actual incident where a National Party functionary congratulates Kruger for allowing Biko the democratic right to starve himself to death.

The idea of a race war as suggested by Cry Freedom is cautioned in Biko which emphasizes the non-racial ideology that emerged out of the June 1976 Soweto uprising. The AZAPO National Publicity Secretary, Muntu Myeza, re-frames the black/white dichotomy as privileged vs underprivileged, suggesting that capital, rather than only the white state, is implicit in the causes of repression. BC was not at that time anti-white, the lesson learned by Woods, after being summoned by Biko after he was banned to King Williamstown in 1973.

The sequences on the rather abruptly introduced split between the predominantly white liberal National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in 1967 and its black members need clarification. Biko and other blacks were members of NUSAS but led a break-away because they were unable to actualize themselves within a predominantly white institutional structure. The racially differential legislation which imposed different conditions on the various race groups produced a different set of conditions for white students, including black students at the `white' liberal English-language universities. The conditions experienced in the newly developing `tribal' colleges added another level of state control. The film ignores the subsequent working relations that occurred between NUSAS and the SA Students Organisation (SASO), and the fact that the black students were intellectually trained by NUSAS. The split between NUSAS and SASO was not a confrontational one as suggested by the film, but rather one of strategy.

Biko differs from films made by liberal directors who suggest that state violence is an aberration and ad hoc. Rather, it shows the systematic nature of police violence in South Africa that is usually overshadowed by what the populist media reductively call `black-on-black' violence between blacks themselves. The culpability of doctors Tucker and Lang, who did nothing to prevent the police from abusing Biko, is mentioned, though nothing is said of the 8 year, extremely acrimonious struggle that occurred between the liberal and conservative sections within the Medical Association of South Africa, on disciplining these medical apologists for the police. An interview with Dr Wendy Orr, who publicized the continuing abuse of prisoners after Biko's death by police and prisons personnel with the tacit approval of these state employed doctors, hints at the institutional nature of torture.

The methods of torture and humiliation used by the police are chillingly described by Orr, and by Langa, who was himself tortured. Woods reveals the cooperation occurring between the West's intelligence agencies, especially Argentina, and the South African security police spreads international complicity for structural repression. Biko, and the films about him, alerted audiences to these connections between the West's intelligence agencies. The justification for the use of "constructive violence against the regime" (Langa) after the killing of Biko in 1977, began to be accepted, the BC's prior commitment to working within the law notwithstanding. As Biko states in the film "A struggle without casualties is not a struggle".

Finally, the relationship between the myth of Biko and that of Mandela needs elaboration. The discourse of the man representing the "idea" mentioned in Remember Mandela is also found in Biko. Biko talks of "An idea (BC) whose time has arrived". Later, the narrator tells viewers that in the eyes of the state "ideas were now acts of terrorism". This is said in the context of the re-enacted courtroom scenes, reminiscent of how Mandela used the courts to make statements which would otherwise be censored. By killing Biko, the state hoped to kill the idea - BC. Biko, as the narrator, intones, "was to become one of the greatest symbols of resistance to apartheid rule in South Africa". The idea encapsulated by Biko later transferred to Mandela, as the international media and diplomacy resurrected this living symbol in place of the now dead one.

Further Reading:
Choice (May 1988), p. 563
Landers Film Reviews (Fall 1988)
Tomaselli, K.G (1993). Disarticulating black consciousness: a way of reading films about apartheid, Communicatio, 19(2), 45-51.
Woods, D. 1987: Filming With Attenborough. Penguin

Author: Garritano, Carmela
Date:
   
SYNOPSIS

Quartier Mozart (1994) tells the story of a Cameroonian neighborhood where a young girl, "Queen of the Hood," wants to understand what it would be like to be a man in her quartier. Mama Thekla, a local sorceress, grants her wish, transforming "Queen of the Hood" into "My Guy," the stud of the neighborhood. My Guy, encouraged by his group of friends, pursues "Saturday," the beautiful daughter of "Mad Dog," the local police chief.

CRITIQUE
Hip-hop music, quick pacing, jump cuts, and similar MTV cinematic effects create what Awam Amkpa describes as "a pastiche of imageries and stories strung together for maximum effect for the urban youths in most African countries who constitute the majority of cinema audiences" (1998). It is these artificial lines drawn between theory and film and First and Third Worlds which Quartier Mozart straddles. Bekolo as narrator positions himself as both critique and filmmaker. The film is both a comment upon African and Western filmmaking and a film about post-colonial Cameroon.

Quartier Mozart sits on the margins of cultural displacement. Jean-Pierre Bekolo, a Cameroonian who lives and works in Paris and travels to Africa to make films about Africans, literally lives between the borders of the First and Third Worlds. As an emigre, Bekolo complicates, as do so many exiles living in both the First and Third Worlds, any simplistic definitions of home or identity. As a filmmaker, Bekolo defines himself against those conventions traditionally associated with African cinema and aims to produce a "popular" cinema for "an African public" (Bekolo in CNR Online Catalogue). Bekolo sets himself apart from filmmakers like Gaston Kabor'e and Bassek ba Khobio who, he argues, make films for Western academics and film festival audiences that Africans themselves do not spend money to see. According to Bekolo, Quartier Mozart is made for Cameroonian audiences who "can see themselves and be amused". Bekolo describes himself as an African populist filmmaker, making films for "real" African audiences. Yet, at the same time, Bekolo shows his films at festivals and academic conferences. The claim that he is a filmmaker for the people, made to an audience of literary critics and film scholars, the majority of whom teach in American universities, at the African Literature Association's 1997 Conference in East Lansing, Michigan, points to the complexities involved in securing any artistic product in either the First or Third World.

Quartier Mozart speaks to the contradictions and negotiations demanded in a post-colonial culture. The film entertains, and the topics it address -- gender-switching, sex, violence -- are storylines suitable for any American soap opera. The film's preoccupation with style, Gabriel might contend, detracts from its social value. These judgements unravel, however, because they assume that we can divorce form from content, style from politics, and in Bekolo's film, the form of the film is the politics of the film. The film is as much about a Cameroonian neighborhood as it is about filmmaking, representation, power, and identity. The opening segment of the film, for instance, introduces the film's characters to the audience, but it also might be read as a parody of ethnographic films about Africa. The camera, like the camera of the "unobtrusive" ethnographer, records "reality" while the "objective" narrator, who assures us that in Mozart he "see[s] it all" provides introductory information about the story we will soon experience. Unlike the observed objects in an ethnographic film, however, Bekolo's characters name themselves; they tell the audience who they are. The camera is not concealed while a realistic scene unfolds before it. Bekolo's camera moves around each character, while each character looks into its lens, confronting its presence.

Bekolo mimics ethnographic filmmaking about Africa and reminds us that ethnography augments a system of domination where Western subjects, see, study, define, and control African objects. His mimicry makes a political statement. As Keyan Tomaselli (1996:45) notes, "Dominant codes and meanings are not invulnerable. They are susceptible to aberrant decoding, co-option, persuasion and can be overthrown". Bekolo decodes ethnography by de-naturalizing it. He unveils what Trihn T. Minh-ha (1989:59) calls "the formula dear to both fictional and factual films ... the more sophisticated the recording technology, the closer to the real the film practice is said to be". In the opening scene and throughout the film, Bekolo does not hide the technology behind the reality he constructs, but calls our attention to it, reminding us that the real is never objective or neutral, but always invested with bias and power. His film functions as a theoretical statement about representation and, in its self-referentiality, erases the distinction between theory and film. The theory is the film.

Unlike many African films, Bekolo does not return to traditional Africa to discover "the Third World's source of strength" (Gabriel 1989:32). Mozart is far from the village, and its citizens look toward modernization and the icons of the West- Lady Di, Denzel Washington, Micheal Jackson -- for inspiration. Bekolo's film is not about looking backward in order to re-construct a romanticized African past out of which will emerge the answers to all post-colonial difficulties. His characters are adept at appropriating the modern and traditional props which surround them in order to be self-defining subjects in a post-colonial Third World culture. The Western clothes they wear become significant aspects of how each character names him or herself. Saturday wears toe-nail polish, large earrings, high heels, tight skirts and heavy make-up to articulate her feminine identity. Atango, the tailor, dons a tuxedo jacket and dark glasses which set him apart as a ladies man. My Guy sews buttons on his jacket and patches on his cut-off shorts to personalize the clothes he wears as a man. The button covered shoulders of his jacket resemble the epaulets of a military officer, but his imitation is too feminine, and he wears a clue of his "real" gender on his masculine body. Their dress is not traditional, but the garments and uniforms each wears become a part of the process through which each character strives to name and locate him or herself.

Bekolo does not position the traditional and modern as polar opposites; instead, the traditional and the modern spill into each other. Mozart residents turn to witchcraft as readily as they call on political nepotism, or the family priest, to solve their problems. When Queen of the Hood wants "to see," she wants to be like the narrator who tells us he "sees" it all; she wants the power reserved for male subjects in a patriarchal society. Mama Thekla uses sorcery to give her access to a male body, and hence to the male spaces of Mozart: the soccer field, the backroom of the tailor's shop, a space at the checker board in the local bar, behind the wheel of a car. Witchcraft proves more effective than, but as ubiquitous as, the political deal-making in which Mad Dog engages. The disembodied voices transmitted over the radio and walkie-talkie act on the lives of Mad Dog and his family and the entire neighborhood. Unlike sorcery, however, this mysterious political power shifts and changes without reason or explanation. Mad Dog successfully maintains his position until the system of patronage on which he relies crumbles. When his boss looses his job, we know that Mad Dog's fall is soon to follow.

Gabriel credits Third World film with creating an indigenous film style by using long takes and long or wide shots to construct a spacial orientation for the viewer instead of a temporal orientation, as is the case of most First World films. Although Bekolo uses wide shots and long takes with notable frequency, he none-the-less creates a clear sense of spatial orientation. The space of Mozart is fragmented and cluttered; quick jumps from one scene to the next, medium shots and close ups, a shifting camera perspective, the off-center placement of characters in a frame, and the use of low and high angle shots are a few of the techniques Bekolo employs throughout the film to create this sense of a fast-moving and fractured space unique to this third world neighborhood. The rural landscape is far removed from the urban encroachment Mozart experiences, but this does not make Mozart less African, or less indigenous, than the village landscape portrayed in Kabor'e's Wend Kuuni. Bekolo represents a different African space, one marked by post-colonial politics and globalization, but one that still contains traces of what we might identify with a "traditional" African way of life, like the market and the gathering of gossiping women at the community well. Bekolo's characters live amidst an amalgam of traditional and modern artifacts, and they assemble pieces of each world to get by in their daily lives. Fragmentation characterizes their space. Far from presenting us with a romanticized look back at "traditional Africa," Bekolo represents an African culture continually re-assembling and re-making itself.

Bekolo creates a film that resists the notion of cultural purity advocated by Gabriel. Gabriel's genuine cultural recognition is underwritten by an essential African identity which is preserved, in art, by restoring the African out of the influences of Western technology, content and style. Quartier Mozart asks us to conceptualize African identity and culture not as static entities frozen in time, but to imagine cultural identity as a performance. In fact, the film posits gender-switching as a metaphor for the performance of post-colonial identity. Characters "wear" and "perform" their gendered and cultural identities, and the uniforms they adopt signify the positions of power, or vulnerability, they hold in their patriarchal, Third World culture. Identity is not portrayed as an essential quality of either one's Africanness or man/ womanness; it is constructed and re-constructed by appropriating the props and playing the roles of men or women. Queen of the Hood transforms into a man because the only way she can have access to the power men have is to be in a man's body. The penis becomes the signifier for patriarchal privilege. Panka's handshake is feared because with the touch of his hand, he can shrink a man's penis and turn him "into a woman." My Guy is the envy of his friends because his "big brother" is so large. "Big brother" is also the name used by Mozart residents to refer to Mad Dog, and when Mad Dog is in bed with his new wife and reaches into his night stand to remove his gun from it, he tells her his "big brother" will protect them from any evil his first wife might try to do to them. "Big brother" labels those things, and the person, associated with patriarchal power in the neighborhood. It is these props, and the roles assigned with them, which make one a man. My Guy learns how to perform as a man from Atango, who coaches him in the game of "scoring" with Saturday. Atango's use of sports terminology to describe My Guy's pursuit of Saturday suggests that part of being a man is playing the game of objectifying women. To have sex with a woman gets you into the club.

Similarly, the residents of Mozart adopt Western dress, admire Western movie stars, and decorate their walls with posters of Western models and rock stars. What might be read as sign of the West's spreading influence over African culture might also be understood as Africa's appropriation of Western culture. Although it is Denzel Washington who Saturday longs for, it is with witchcraft that she says she will win him. The boundaries between Africa and the West are semi-permeable. As the discussion between the three men in the bar points out, there is no escaping the exchange between the West and Africa. "Good for is Dead" reads the magazine Paris-Match and, at the same time, he argues that Micheal Jackson stole his music from Manu Dibango. On the one hand he readily absorbs Western culture, while, simultaneously, he decries its influence on and piracy of Africa. Even African Americans, who aren't really African, the men suggest, adopt part of their identity from Africa because they "admire us Africans." The discussion ends abruptly when Atango proclaims that political discussions over what belongs to whom or who is really African are, in the end, "useless." And maybe this is one idea the film leaves us with: to sever culture into what is and what is not African or to evaluate a film according to which of its elements are or are not Africa, "sidesteps the problem of appropriation - of Africa's intellectual cannibalization of the West" (Jewsiewicki 103). As Jewsiewicki says of the influence of Western culture, and the Western market, on Zairian painting, the influence of the West is real and unavoidable. But taking from the West and re-articulating the "Western" in a way that transforms it into something African is a powerful act of re-creation. A popular painting, like a popular film, he argues, "re-creates what everyone already knows, and invites the participation of all present" (99).

Popular films, like Bekolo's Quartier Mozart, are shaped by and actively shape the localized contexts in which they are produced. They are "sites of emergent consciousness" as well as zones where new identities play themselves out. Popular forms, Karen Barber argues, occupy a "shifting, mobile, elusive space" which is "continuous with both the `traditional' and the `modern' categories and which deconstructs all the oppositions which sustain the binary paradigm" (8). This "space" resides between the traditional and the modern and might be depicted visually as being contained by a porous boundary which allows for a continuous flow and exchange between the old and the new.

The old way of reading popular texts, extricating the authentic Africanness from the shell of an artifact contaminated by the Western world, misses the point. We cannot glean any understanding of the complexity of popular texts by forcing them into the traditional/modern polarity. Instead, we need to see the popular as a hybrid form which operates within a specific historical and cultural moment. Homi Bhabha labels the hybrid form a "borderline work of culture." In The Location of Culture , he notes, "Such art does not merely recall the past as social cause or aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent `in-between-space', that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present" (7).

Quartier Mozart is all about the tensions, co-options, and discourses through which post-colonial peoples defines themselves, and by means of which Third World filmmakers create popular products. The film offers new possibilities for reading and evaluating Third Cinema, and might even begin to articulate a new relationship between art and politics.

Further Reading

Barber, Karen, ed. Readings in African Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.

Bhabha, H. (1989). The Commitment to Theory." Questions of Third Cinema. Jim Pines and Paul Willemen, eds. London: British Film Institute.

--- (1984). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Gabriel, T. (1989). Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Films. Questions of Third Cinema . Jim Pines and Paul Willemen, eds. London: British Film Institute, 1989.

Tomaselli, Keyan G. (1996). Appropriating Images: The Semiotics of Visual Representation. Hojbjerg: Intervention Press.

Trinh T. Minh-ha. (1089) Introduction, Discourse, 11(2), 5-17.

Zacks, Stephen A. (1995). The Theoretical Construction of African Cinema, Research in African Literatures Fall, 26(3),1 6-17.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date:
   

BALISANA: HERDERS OF LESOTHO

1993. 32 mins. Video Only. Made by R Letlema, T Quinlan, S Schmidt and C Scott. ISER, University of Durban Westville, South Africa. Distributed by Smyrna Press, Box 021803-GPO, Brooklyn, NY 11202.

USES: U, G, A

SYNOPSIS
Balisana focuses on the life and work of the basotho herders in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. Herders recount their struggle to rear livestock at the remote grazing posts in the Maluti Mountains. They discuss other issues crucial to their survival. The video, the first on the topic, is a collaboration between herders, video makers, an anthropologist and an ecologist.

THE LESOTHO VIDEO HERDERS PROJECT

Explorations in Visual Anthropology

Companion text to the video, Balisana. Written by Chuck Scott. Published by Intervention Press, Aarhus, Denmark, in association With Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. 1994.

123pp. Photographs. Maps. Transcripts. Script. Appendices.ISBN 87-89825-04-7

REVIEW
Imagine academics on donkeys. Imagine the donkeys carrying video equipment over the Drakensberg mountains. Imagine remote Lesotho herders seeing these strange white men on donkeys with even stranger equipment - things that look at you but which cannot see!. The equipment has nothing to do with sheep or cattle. It won't harm the animals, but it has no benefit for them either. What possible use could this equipment have? Why are these white men looking at people and sheep through their black boxes?

Lesotho Video Herders is an extensive report of a three year project undertaken by Chuck Scott as an Honours student in the Centre for Cultural and Media Studies (CCMS) and Tim Quinlan, an anthropologist in the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville.

Where Quinlan was making the video with Steve Schmidt on the herders themselves, Scott made a video on the making of the video. This book is essentially about issues that need to be taken into account when film makers and anthropologists `look' at others. But it is also about these others looking at the crew - `us looking at them looking at us.'

Scott draws his theoretical framework from Sol Worth's visual anthropological notions of films of culture rather than only of those `about' culture. He applies a framework developed in Myth, Race and Power: South Africans Imaged on Film and TV (1986):

(Intention) - Anthropologist-Producer-Process-Subjects-Audience- (PURPOSE).

This integrated model incorporates the AUDIENCE and USE of the video into the picture. The result is an intricately detailed case study which examines the production cycle from the original idea to multiple screenings amongst the subjects themselves. Amongst the issues discussed by Scott are power and crew-subject relations; the tensions between the technicalities of production and the demands of anthropology; the processes of video production and how these affect representation of the herders, and interactions with them.

Scott also critically examines the recent and somewhat naive claims by some South African videomakers about `community video' as a panacea for marginalised voices. Shared video making does on the one hand permit the subjects to transcend academia and project their voices into networks from which they were previously excluded. But, on the other hand, the extent to which these recorded voices have an impact on national policy-making procedures and forums is not clear in the Lesotho case.

The successes of video advocacy and subject-generated films are startling when one learns about the Kayapo use of video in Brazil. This society used video technology as an integral component of their campaign to stop the World Bank financing a dam which would have flooded vast tracts of the Amazon basin inhabited by themselves and many other indigenous societies.

Scott's book an video is one of a number published by Intervention Press, a new, vibrant and progressive publisher of books and newsletters on visual anthropology. Intervention aims at providing a voice for visual anthropologists who put theory into practice in ways which benefit the subjects as well as those who write about them.

As such, the `new' anthropology about which Scott speaks has much in common with video production practices which aim to enhance cross-cultural communication, development support communication, and which, most crucially, addresses the problem of unequal power relations when `we' look at `them'. While the video might assist the herders make their opinion felt in the forums of state, it might also help them understand something of the media-driven outside world. As Scott concludes: "Our adoption of community video methods has instilled in us a sense of accountability to the herders, and, for the present, we remain the custodians of their `voice'" (p.69).

Keyan G Tomaselli

First published in Rough Cut, 1994. Johannesburg: Film and Allied Workers Organisation.

Author: Dye, Michael
Date: 1998
Source: African Media Project, Michigan State University

Copyright: Michael Dye    

ARISTOTLE'S PLOT

Directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Cameroon.

TOPICS: Postmodernism, Imperialism, Representation

CRITIQUE
Aristotle's Plot breaks Teshome Gabriel's theory of Third World film by embracing and engaging postmodernism, Americanism, and popular culture without exploiting them or being swallowed by them. Rather, Bekolo rides off these `enemies', using the giants' power against them, achieving a provocative and fearless point of view which reassesses the role of film as it applies to Africa, culture, and everything else. The first few scenes of Aristotle's Plot make the subject at hand very obvious. Songs about movies, discussions about watching films, making films, scenes in which people buy movie tickets and sex in the movies leave the audience no room to think about anything but film.

Bekolo spells out his intentions in an early line in the film: "If African films are shit then Africa is shit." By highlighting the connection between a culture and its medium, Bekolo is pointing out the need for films which are both socially responsible and in touch with their audience. Though Bekolo's films seem like an incredible break from the theorists of the past, he is actually equally if not more committed to making Africa a leader in the film industry. His disgust with mindless Hollywood escapism is clear as cuts between the reality of a movie audience and the flatness of the movie they are watching. He gets us more interested in the discussions on this side of the screen. He is promoting the evaluation of films which is vital in making film an intellectual medium.

But bekolo does not stop at discrediting movies and Hollywood as being worthless. Instead, he realizes the potential of film by suggesting the impact of Hollywood films on African audiences. Not only do they begin to speak about films as if they are real, but individual viewers take on names like Bruce Lee and Schwarzeneggar and start envisioning themselves inside the action, part of the plot. Many artistic filmmakers, at least in America and presumably in Africa, claim they have no interest in making Hollywood films. But given the rare chance to be a part of something that masses of people will see, they abandon their disclaimer. Bekolo decided that it would be better to tackle the power than to complain about it.

Bekolo seems to criticize people who take film too seriously and are unable to enjoy it for what it undeniably (but not solely) is -- entertainment. Alfred Hitchcock referred to people who thought too much about the logic of the plot as "plausibles". Bekolo similarly mocks the governmental investigation into how "dead" characters reappear later on in other movies. This subPlot even resembles a film noir characteristic where an investigator trails a mystery, often stopping inside places like bars to question and lead the audience through a tour of the dark world which hides from the surface. In a way, Aristotle's Plot does exactly that. It takes the audience on a tour of all the hidden absurdities and contradictions of the films they take at surface value.

The film takes on a new kind of realism as it often positions itself somewhere between the viewer and the screen. We are observing not just the people and not just the medium but the actual experience of the people interacting with and being affected by the medium. Because we are watching a film about people watching the film, Aristotle's Plot purposely becomes its own contradiction. It refuses to pretend to be above the contradictions which seem almost inescapable to any film. As Bekolo says about E.T., the filmmaker, his strength was in the fact that he understood the contradictions. "His own audience related more to Clint Eastwood than the traditional spirits." Because film is a complicated medium in which illusion reveals truth, Bekolo realizes the importance for filmmaker's to be honest about their subjects, their art, and especially themselves. What he puts on the screen deals with and affects everything and should not be restricted by a limited set of rules. Film is a boundless medium with undetectable results as a hilarious line in the movie illustrates. "Are you telling me Cinema is man, is place, is everything? Are you Cinema?" questions an officer. The filmmaker replies, "I am cineaste." Similarly, Bekolo seems to be telling us that he and his film are part of this world. Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but this film reminds us not be trapped in someone else's constructed plot.

(Written by Martin Shea, MSU, 1998)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
28 mins. Hugo Casirer and Nadine Gordimer
Web Publication: 1998
Source: African Media Project, African Studies Center
Copyright: AMP    
TOPICS: Apartheid, Resistance, Theology

USES: H, U, G.

This is one of the few films which deals with the problems of the colored South African community. The story is told through the experiences of the Rev. Alan Boesak. Boesak was a colored minister in the apartheid-supporting Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) who ministered to a colored community.

Boesak talks about the new Tricameral Parliament (inaugurated in 1984) which incorporated Indian and colored South Africans into selected state structures, but which excluded blacks. The non-racial United Democratic Front (UDF) was established to oppose this new system. Boesak was elected as one of the UDF Patrons. He talks about the institutionalized and physical violence of apartheid and the dilemma of state violence and how to respond to it. The key to peaceful change, he says, is in the hands of whites, not blacks (because they have the power).

CRITIQUE
Narrated by James Earl Jones, this film is made for American audiences, and thus simplifies certain issues. The film, however, is well structured for this audience, and implicates Western and US interests in propping up apartheid through economic cooperation and the Reagan Administration's policy of `constructive engagement.' Boesak points out that after the world outcry against the killing of Biko, no one died in detention. But with the election of President Reagan, people, once again, started to die. For Boesak, this is the meaning of `constructive engagement.

A key influence on the Afrikaans-speaking Boesak was the Rev. Beyers Naud'e, a former Broederbonder (Afrikaner Brotherhood) who broke with Afrikaner Nationalism, but tried to reconstitute the DRC from within. He persuaded Boesak to follow suit in the DRC Mission Church, the colored arm of the DRC. Boesak realized that the reform tradition does not de facto support racism. He believed that his Mission Church could take the lead in liberation.

Boesak and Naud'e tried to get apartheid declared a heresy. This was accepted by the World Alliance of Churches. Boesak was then elected its president. White DRC members found it difficult to agree with Boesak even when the International Alliance, of which the DRC was an affiliate, denied the moral justification of apartheid as argued by the DRC.

Boesak and Naud'e are made out to be saints in this film. But where Naud'e continued serving the cause of justice, Boesak became embroiled in adulterous relationships and was accused of embezzling funds from Norwegian churches and spending the money on a lavish lifestyle rather than for the development projects for which they were intended. The African National Congress (ANC) tried to stand by him because he was at this time the leader of the ANC in the Western Cape (one of the two of nine provinces the Congress lost in the general election of 1994) . The ANC-dominated government then offered Boesak the South African ambassadorship to Geneva. The government, however, eventually was forced to withdraw its offer because of the allegations relating to fraud. These allegations were supported by the accountant of Boesak's Foundation for Freedom Justice, who was himself convicted of fraud. Boesak then went to Canada where he ministered, and returned to South Africa in April 1997 to face a host of charges, including fraud and embezzlement, laid by the Norwegian Churches and the South African Attorney General. Boesak was given a hero's welcome by his supporters and some members of the Cabinet. Boesak dismissed the charges against him as `struggle accounting.' But what this alleged fraud points to is the manner in which Boesak led the struggle while at the same time allegedly enriching himself after victory, thus muddying the very cause for which he was previously prepared to sacrifice his life.

(Written by Keyan Tomaselli, 1997. Edited by Carmela Garritano, 1998)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan

Date: 1998

    AFRICA, SEARCH FOR COMMON GROUND

1997. 13 part TV series, 13 X 25 mins. Co-Produced by Common Ground Productions, Washington DC, and Ubuntu Film and TV, Cape Town, South Africa. Produced in English, French and Portuguese. Series producers: Jonathan S Deull and Mark Kaplan. The English-language host is John Matshikiza.

TOPICS: Peace, Reconciliation, Law, Human Rights

USES: U, G. A, V

The viewing of these programes will require considerable contextualization for classroom use.

SERIES PHILOSOPHY
Each program explores a particular conflict and how it is being resolved. Stories are told by local people whose search for agreement on pressing problems gives name to the title `Common Ground.' Ubuntu's work is premised on the assumption that the media can be constructively used in managing conflict, and in community and nation-building.

The series suggests that there is an Africa comprising people constructively working to meet challenges and resolving conflicts. While success is sometimes elusive, the organizations involved in conflict mediation are not waiting for someone else to come to the rescue.

SYNOPSES
1. Thokosa Video Dialogue
Thokosa township was during the 1980s, and most of the 1990s, one of the most violence-ridden urban areas in South Africa. Video cameras are given to two commanders, one from an ANC-aligned Self-Defence Unit, the other from the Inkatha-connected Self-Protection Unit. Once mortal enemies, these two commanders take on the difficult and shared task of making videos, from their respective positions, about the killings and conflict, which have racked their communities. Their respective stories are tracked over six months. The videos are used as points of departure in a joint meeting of hundreds of community representatives drawn from both ANC and Inkatha. These self-generated recordings provide a way of mediating the experience, positions and hopes of the respective sides in finding common ground.

CRITIQUE : See Thokosa and Mentz2.

2a. Congo (former Zaire): When Everything Falls Apart In the waning days of the Mobutu regime, people in Kinshasa return to traditional mechanisms to reduce conflict. We witness a `tribal' court, in which the plaintiff, the accused, the lawyers, judge and jury, act out their dispute via song and dance - and come up with a solution accepted by the whole community. The case at hand involves the same plot of land sold by the chief to different buyers. The first buyer lost the land because he could not afford to build on it immediately.

CRITIQUE
Made in an ethnographic style, the video describes how traditional forms of expression and conflict-resolution re-emerge in the face of the breakdown of national law and order. The camera joins the swirling dancers in a Rouch-type cin'e trans and reveals via its mobile participation in the meeting the structure and progession of the performance and adjudication.

2b. South Africa: Breaking the Cycle
In Alexandra Township, on the edge of the greater Johannesburg city, we meet abusers and victims working to break the vicious cycle of domestic violence. Crucial to this strategy is the involvement of men as apart of the solution. Brief case studies and actual participants are recorded in actual role playing exercises.

CRITIQUE
The video includes intimate footage of men especially participating in group exercises designed to raise their awareness of abuse of women, and of the way that they in particular have behaved. Facilitators are both men and women who locate the problem within their communities in larger networks of behavior which have no race, class or geographical boundaries.

3a. Rwanda: The War Crimes Tribunal
Following the genocide of the mid-1990s, the international community is trying to bring the perpetrators to justice before an international tribunal. Prosecution is an arduous, complicated process, and did not go smoothly during the first two years. Charges of inefficiency and mismanagement abound. This segment examines the difficulties inherent in re-establishing justice.

3b. Burundi: Reconciliation Radio
Neighboring Rwanda is Burundi, where animosities between Hutus and Tutsis have resulted in the deaths of nearly a million people. In Rwanda, hate radio was used to incite ethnic violence. In Burundi, however, radio is a means of promoting understanding and reconciliation. At Studio Ijambo, Hutu and Tutsi journalists work together to provide balanced news, features, and even soap operas. This segment spotlights journalists who risk their lives for reconciliation in Burundi. (From brochure)

Reading :

Gatwa, T. 1995: "Ethnic Conflict and the Media: the Case of Rwanda", Media Development, XLII(3), 18-20.

4a. Mozambique/Angola: Cleansing the Past
Fifteen years of civil war has isolated previously warring factions. Here, a young man - a former FRELIMO rebel, seeks to rejoin his community. His family is dead, and the villagers remember him only as a killer. He is put through a rite of exorcism, and then resumes his life as a fisherman.

CRITIQUE
The video reveals the power of indigenous rituals in stabilizing societies and communities ruined by war. Such rituals have psychological and legal power and help to reintegrate alienated individuals back into society.

4b. Rivers of Fear: Bridges of Trust
Despite progress toward peace and the formation of a Government of Reconciliation and National Unity, three decades of war have left Angola a deeply divided country. Mutual fear and mistrust make it difficult for people from both MPLA and UNITA to settle their differences. The bridges have been destroyed. Here, we witness efforts to rebuild trust. (From brochure)

5a. Uganda: No Party Democracy
We accompany President Yoweri Museveni who leads a "no-party democracy". Uganda is establishing an alternative model for African problem-solving and governance. Arguments for and against this system in relation to high economic growth are presented.

5b. Liberia: A Peace Process with Teeth? ECOMOG
In response to the war that destroyed Liberia since 1989, its west African neighbors dispatched a peace-keeping force, ECOMOG, to stabilize the country. Following a poor start, the Nigerian-led ECOMOG is getting the job done. But in the light of Nigeria's own human rights violations, questions are asked about this country's motives. General Malu, leader of ECOMOG, talks about Nigeria's role in rebuilding Liberia. (From brochure)

6. The Hunt for Witches
Set in the Northern Province of South Africa, this episode discusses why people are killed on suspicion of being witches. Interviewees discuss how to mesh legitimate traditional beliefs with modern conditions of life. The use of traditional healing methods in stemming witch-related violence is examined. (From brochure)

9. Between Confession and Prosecution - Truth and Reconciliation
A former policeman who applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for his role in 21 murders. The question asked: can the truth heal his wounds and those of his victims? The video reveals the policeman's testimony to the Commission. Wouter Mentz was a good policeman: he had unknowingly arrested an Askari, a guerilla now working for the state, for murder. Mentz was recruited into the Vlakplaas covert operations group, and found himself involved in assassinations. His loyalty to his Vlakplaas colleagues, however, prevented him from acting as a state witness. His only recourse was thus to apply for amnesty.

CRITIQUE: An effective expos'e of how ideology works to legitimize illegal covert actions which include murder: Mentz testifies that his boyhood friends were black, and that he thought he was fighting communism rather than black people. His story is one of how Afrikaners who break with their past become isolated, ostracized and very very lonely. He lauds his victims' families, some of whom have taken him into their worlds, on the basis of what little trust remains. The TRC is the only body permitted to offer absolution, and this program reveals the strength of the ritual of confession in healing a traumatized nation.

For additional critiques see Mentz1 and Mentz2 .

10. South Africa: Under the Baobab
For generations the ancient baobab tree stood at the heart of the Makuleke community, bringing shelter, nourishment, and providing a meeting place. In 1969, however, the Makuleke were forcibly relocated by the South African government, Their land was incorporated into the Kruger National Park. In the mid-1990s the tree is again a meeting place: the Makuleke are seeking restitution for their land; and the Parks Board is wanting to preserve the land for conservation. The two parties try to reconcile conservation with community needs whereby the Makuleke regain ownership and manage the land for conservation purposes. Initial differences are settled as both parties come to appreciate the other's point of view.

CRITIQUE: see Baobab

13. San Soldiers

1997. 25 minutes, Directed by Cheryl Uys.

SYNOPSIS
Omega military base in Angola, 1984. San children are being taught in Afrikaans at School. But the South African army (SADF) decides to disband 31 Battalion three years after its arrival.

The basic argument is between the SADF informants and the San themselves. The SADF discusses their taking on the Angolan San as soldiers as their solution to a refugee problem which threatened the `extinction' of `bushmen' who had been displaced by the war. A San man says, however, that the San refugees were told to join the SADF or get bombed. Some were beaten to death. "Here officers actually killed their own men for not wanting to join the SADF: ... we were treated like animals." The problems started after the departure of Col. Delville Lindford who had set up the base. Lindford is quite paternalistic - he loves `the people'. After Lindford left, however, some San soldiers were singled out as agitators, and killed, sometimes in front of their families. Some left the army but rejoined because of a lack of work. His memories are different to those of the San - shots of helicopters, dead San, machine guns, children with white doll, illustrate the San's own narrative.

When Omega was shut, 5,000 soldiers and their families went to the Northern Cape, at Schmidtsdrift. A Trust was set up, with San serving on the Trust. They were permitted to stay in South Africa, or go to Namibia or Angola. As South African citizens they can apply for land, says Derek Hanekom, Minister of Land and Agriculture.

Both the black and white South Africans see this San group has displaced people rather than as true Khoisan. The Tswana also have claims on the Northern Cape, reject the San as not black enough, and refuse live with them. Whites in the area claim that if the San join the SADF they will become `extinct'. Hanekom talks in reconciliational terms about serving in the ANC-led government with the originators of apartheid - we are all citizens: this is the only point of departure, he says.

CRITIQUE
Mythologizing of the San is a weakness in this episode. This is unwittingly facilitated by unacknowledged use of SADF propaganda film footage, which identifies the San as a "gentle people" coming from "nowhere", with no "industry" and their becoming "civilized". Even John Matshikiza uses the word "extinction" when discussing their future.

San Soldiers is, however, a useful update on The !Kung San: Resettlement, though dealing with a different group, some of whom passed through eastern Bushmanland as war refugees. It is the first South African made film to challenge the SADF interpretation of events, and the first to reveal how San were forced into the army, brutalized, and then moved to Schmidtsdrift, with their assent.

Further Reading

Douglas, S. (1997). Reflections on State Intervention and the Schmidtsdrift Bushmen, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 15(1), 45-66.

CRITIQUE OF THE SERIES
The series brochure states that "a search for agreement can be as dramatic as a soap opera. At the same time, the programs undermine the view that Africans are incapable of solving their own problems". This is an accurate statement, but one of the problems of some of the programs reviewed here, especially, No 13 on San Soldiers, is a continued mythologizing of this group in both the video and the Series publicity which talks of `extinction' as if the San are a separate species. Inappropriate and unacknowledged use of archival footage within the program itself conceals (and legitimates) actual SA Defence Force propaganda, which is used here without irony to visually illustrate the narration. These kinds of errors can easily generate interpretations opposite to those intended.

A general problem relates to inadequate information on specific issues. While the programs will make sense more easily in an African context to African viewers, in for example No. 6 The Hunt for Witches, the inadequate framing of the topic does little to dissuade the skeptical non-African viewer that Africans are not savages, superstitious and irrational. Conversely, programs like Thokosa, reveal the time-consuming, dangerous and hard work that Goes into resolving intra-civil war within one township. This kind of program goes a long way towards meeting the goals of the series. The visual title sequence of crowds, seething black masses, Africa on the move, plays to Western myths about an overpopulated continent with often irresolvable problems. If programs are to be sold to countries outside of Africa then questions of imaging, coding and reception are crucial in ensuring the intended interpretation amongst audiences in the First and Second Worlds.

On its own merits and for African audiences, however, "In Search for Common Ground", is a affirmative series which really does try to provide African perspectives. In this aim it is largely successful. Many of the episodes, eg. 3b (Reconciliation Radio, 4 (Cleansing the Past), 9 (Between Confession and Reconciliation) and 10 (Under the Baobab) are living testaments to the ability of people to confront and then put the past behind them in a spirit of constructive reconciliation. This is the real `magic' of Africa and Africans.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1998)

THE ZULUS

Instructional levels: All

Courses: history, African studies

Keywords: war, spear, colonialisation

SYNOPSIS
This film features a dramatic re-creation of a battle against the Ndwandwe to the North. The narrative centers on the feelings, fears and thoughts of an eighteen year old warrior.

LONGER CRITIQUE
This is a decontextualized dramatic recreation of a supposed battle between the Zulu and the Ndwandwe to the North. The narrative centers on the feelings, fears and thoughts of a new eighteen year old warrior. Poetically shot, with a sense of Zulu ritual rhythm, the video is short on history and long on aesthetics - Discovery Channel style: closeups, suspenseful voice-over, slow motion etc. The Zulus is beautifully shot, but not very educational except for one graphic about the horn military formation. The key new tactic of fighting close-up as opposed to throwing spears is mentioned. However, nothing is said about the history of Zulu national formation.

The film reveals that wars have a defensive purpose, even amongst the Zulu.

Historical contextualization as to the rise of King Shaka and the mighty army he developed is needed when discussing this film. While dramatically told, viewers get little sense of the broader war strategies developed by Shaka, and how these differed from neighboring armies.

The narrator speaks in the present tense, rather than the past tense, thus tending to downplay the fact that this is a film about the history of Zulu war tactics.

The facts are accurate, but the information provided by facts tends to get overshadowed by the poetic representation.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1997)

ZULUS AT WAR

1995. 30 mins. Series: History's Turning Points. Produced by Greg Lanning, Transatlantic Films and The Learning Channel

TOPICS: Zulu, History, War

USES: M, H, U, G

SYNOPSIS
The young British immigrant Theopolis Shepstone and the Zulu Prince Cetswayo are the antagonist and protagonist in this film. The European settlers's hunger for land brings them into contact with the Zulu and armed clashes result. Cetswayo is captured and taken to Cape Town. He visits London and tries to persuade the British to return him to Zululand. Although he is eventually enthroned by the British, his nation is divided into thirteen groups, and Zulu power broken. Shepstone retires at the War Office in London.

CRITIQUE
This film portrays Shepstone as being caught up in the conflict between the Europeans and the Zulu. His grasp of African languages and customs earns him the respect of the Zulu; yet, he betrays Cetswayo whom he has come to know well. At the end of the film, Shepstone regrets his attack against the Zulu. The film features a re-enactment of the battle of Isandlwana (1879) at the actual site. Here, the Zulu slaughter the British by surprising them. The British rifles overheat and the soldiers run out of ammunition. The Zulu rush through the gap and crush the British.

The history as told by this video seems superficial, reductive and, at points, inaccurate. The British victory at Rorke's Drift, which followed Isandlwana, for example, is not mentioned. The visuals do not provide the viewer with any sense of the scale of the battlefields or the movements on them.

(Written Keyan G Tomaselli, 1996. Edited by Carmela Garritano, 1997)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
WITNESS TO APARTHEID

1987. 58 minutes - Color 16mm, Video. A 70 minute version is also available. Produced by Sharon Sopher and Kevin Harris.

TOPICS:Resistance, Apartheid, South Africa, Civil Rights, Politics, Social Movements, Health, Children, Women.

USES: S,U,G,A and V.

An introduction to apartheid and the contextualization of the history of the changing nature of state repression would provide a good foundation from which to view the film. It should also be explained that state repression in 1985 occurred as a response to increasingly successful organized

LONGER CRITIQUE
Coverage of black juvenile victims of institutionalized torture in South Africa, and black and white `witnesses' to the effects of apartheid on dissidents is the subject of this film. Comments made by Bishop Desmond Tutu on the pragmatic limitations of peaceful change occurring in South Africa thread the film's story about torture, resistance and white attitudes. However, an insufficient identification of dates and locations within an ahistorical reportage interrupts a clear sense of process. The producer tries to correct this with an addendum at the end of the film with details on the fate and/or ideas of the `witnesses' (doctors, a psychologist, a businessman, a white rugby player member of a black club) interviewed a year later. One was assassinated; another left the country, the rugby player was charged with arson for burning his own house down, and so on.

CRITIQUE
The overall statement made by Witness to Apartheid is that working for justice in itself justifies non-peaceful means. The dialectic between justice and violence, the best exposition of which is the Kairos Document, is not mentioned. Not mentioned either is the theological argument of the SA Council of Churches (SACC) that peace cannot precede the attainment of justice. Tutu's empathy with users of violence, though he does not condone this, is thus not contextualized within its institutional and theological origins.

Although many `witnesses' are interviewed, they are not shown to be representative of wider organizations or constituencies. `Witness' Johan Fourie's activism, for example, is couched within the discourse of humanitarianism, not his membership of a detainees' support group. His shuffling of detainees back and forth thus appears to occur in a quite unorganized vacuum. The only clue that a broader structure exists is heard in the addendum when he refers to "our meeting". He, and other white `experts' interviewed, like the doctor, businessman, psychologist, and the rugby player, are included as exceptions to white opinion.

The black victims are shown as belonging to popular ant-apartheid organizations. White activists are portrayed as guilt-stricken liberals floundering in their own sense of irrelevance. Their linkages to the mass action of black children through medical, legal and other organizations opposing the state are suppressed. Sopher also forgets the contribution of her South African crew which was able to obtain access to people through the network of organizations of which their members were part.

Highly articulate organizationally based black spokespeople are intercut with a repetitive vox pop in the street of a single articulate white of inconsequence, a Mrs Botha, whose bigotry is made to speak `for' all unexceptional whites, as is a white `madam' commenting on `her' maid. Where the black interviewees had the benefit of preparation and structured situations, the white vox pop respondents found themselves off-balance when intercut with the structured interviews. In this way, the film conceals any sense of the System being larger than individuals. This is identified in the false question asked of ignorant or right-wing whites in the street - `have you been to a black township?' Permits, states of emergency, and violence precluded whites from going into townships as individuals in 1985, though most whites would not have ever visited a black area. A lot of the conservative whites interviewed had British accents -but no comment is offered on this contradiction, or why British immigrants should be thought to stand for all born and bred white South Africans.

No explanation is offered of why children are at the forefront of struggle, rather than adults. Situations are presented rather than explained. A static view of peoples attitudes and methods of repression is the result. A repeated criticism is that the film depicts the children as passive victims of a sick society, not as actors in their own right, pursuing methods of resistance which resulted in police action against them. Even though they were identified as members of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) etc., some stated that no change would result. These pessimistic statements did not reflect the general feeling of hope by people opposing apartheid that fundamental change would occur at the time the film was made.

On the positive side, the film graphically exposes viewers to the horrors of the effects of torture on its victims. It shows blacks resisting and being harassed. An especially important scene relates to the retail boycott of Port Elizabeth where peaceful action gained tremendous ground for the democratic movement. The white-black political linkages that developed from the ensuing cooperation between that city's Chamber of Commerce and the black resistance were again individualized into an interview with another `witness', the chairman of the Chamber and his `opposite', Mr M Jack of the black community. This was a crucial development in blacks empowering themselves through the organization of grassroots democratic networks. Yet the significance of this was entirely missed in the film.

A degree of reflexivity is included in the sketches of the crew being arrested, and Sopher's chilled apprehension as the visual flashes back to the methods of torture previously described by Tutu, the psychologist and others. These arrests interrupted an interview of a family on the loss of a son. In this scene the camera is not just recording, it and the film crew is part of the target by the Police, providing an acute feeling of immediacy.

A similar creative use of `raw' material was the audio of the undertaker as he described the nature of the wounds sustained by black children in protests. The undertaker's voice was complemented by a blank screen as he was detained following his informal off-camera talk to the crew. The ethical question of a producer's responsibility to one's subjects arises out of this consequence, as it seems that other interviewees were similarly harassed after they had been filmed. Were the interviewees made aware of the likely consequences? Were they prepared to face them? What support could they expect from the film's producer and her lawyers in such an event?

The `Witnesses' comments are not put into perspective. Tutu, for example, is asked why the government thinks one camera team is a threat. His reply is visually supported with a riot policeman yelling at the camera crew ... no sense of process is given.

Witness to Apartheid is an American liberal humanist view of struggle which suppresses the complexities of political organization to make it less threatening to US liberal audiences which see the world comprising individuals rather than collectivities.

Though an extremely powerful film with vivid images of police action, of wounds and the wounded, and of doctors and psychologists discussing the physical and emotional scars of the victims, this strength is also the film's weakness. School audiences to which the film has been shown are left with an incredible sense of hopelessness. But the conditions under which blacks were suffering at the time were not considered hopeless within the democratic movement to which most of the people interviewed belonged. This contradiction is intensified by the addendum.

(Reviewed by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1986
Extracted in revised form from Tomaselli, K.G., Williams, A., Steenveld, L.Tomaselli, R.E. (1986). Myth, Race and Power: South Africans Imaged on film and TV. Bellville: Anthropos Publishers.    

THE WHITE TRIBE OF AFRICA

1972. BBC. 4 X 60 mins. Produced by David Harrison. Narrated by David Dimbelby.

A number of films which investigate the Afrikaner objective of separate development have appeared since 1960. Each of these --South Africa Loves Jesus, The Defiant White Tribe, The White Laager, The White Tribe of Africa-- try to explain apartheid in terms of the arguments presented by the Afrikaner, but against the background of British libertarian ideology.

The messages of most of the above films are occasioned by apartheid which is interpreted as a purely Afrikaner cultural phenomenon. Although South Africa was of military and economic importance to the West during the Cold War, its apartheid spatial organisation of society was, paradoxically, portrayed as having little connection with Western capitalism. National cultures founded on capitalism present themselves as exemplars of such ideals as `freedom' and `equality'. Apartheid, as a distorted form of capitalism, they feared might bring into disrepute the political economy on which Western culture is founded. The `solution' to this political impasse was to present a picture of South African history and political economy as the result of the machinations of a deviant `ethnic' group -- as shown by such titles as The Defiant White Tribe, The White Tribe of Africa The White Laager.

The ideology of the Afrikaner group is abstracted from its political and economic foundations and is presented as a pre-industrial hang-up, a fanatical adherence to cultural and historical symbols and a fight for Afrikaner survival against all odds. This interpretation denies a class analysis of the state and thus presumes that Afrikaners were a homogeneous group without internal fragmentation such as the verligte (enlightened) or verkrampte (reactionary) tendencies. This a-historical account ignores the role played by British imperialism in the proletarianisation of Afrikaner after 1900. It is unaware of the subsequent development of Afrikaner nationalism as a response to the penetration of British capital into the South African economy. Absent from these series are depictions of English-speaking South Africans and the supportive role they played in maintaining the position of capital within racial capitalism. It is against this background that we will analyse the four-part series, The White Tribe of Africa.

Ideological Gaze
This schema is useful in examining the structure and levels of signification in The White Tribe of Africa. The camera's gaze can be best understood as the overall socio-political and economic context which motivates the making of the film. In this case, the operation of the BBC-TV production crew (which included a number of South Africans) took place within the consensus of the liberal capitalist discourse prevalent in Britain. Hence, the camera's gaze in The White Tribe of Africa is a cinematic reflection and confirmation of libertarian ideology.

The film maker directs the viewer's gaze so that she/he identifies with this British liberal ideology. In The White Tribe of Africa, the interviewer, David Dimbelby, is both `film maker' and `actor'. As actor he signifies the ideology of liberal capitalism which he espouses in the act of making the series. Thus the viewer's gaze is directed by Dimbelby, and often at Dimbelby, so that audiences identify with his position.

Dimbelby ensures that the viewers' gaze sometimes sympathises with the Afrikaners when he identifies them as a poor struggling people trying to find a new Jerusalem. At other times Afrikaners are depicted as heartless monsters. By objectifying them in this way, capital can stand aloof, insinuate a difference, and hence castigate an `other' (in the Sartrean sense) so as to absolve itself of the practices it is castigating.

The gaze within the series directs us to the textual conflicts: Afrikaner against `black' South African; and Afrikaner against `Briton' --both historically, and in the making of the programmes. This gaze is exemplified by PW Botha's steady, supercilious stare at the interviewer (who signifies British liberal capitalism and for an Afrikaner, British imperialism). The camera zooms in to close-up and very close-up shots which capture Botha's steely eyes and the disparagement in his gaze. The action of the camera engages our sympathy for the interviewer (both as signifier and signified), and thus confirms the presentation of Botha as symbol of apartheid ideology, denying it its links with responsible capitalism.

The object of the various gazes in the series is myth. There are myths on both sides of the camera: the myth of the 'oppositional' film maker seeking truth and challenging a chimira; and the myth of the white tribe of Africa. We shall examine the myth of the film director first.

The Director and Objectivity
Myth is a chain of related concepts which form the connotation of the signified (Barthess 1973). When the letters 'BBC' flash onto the screen, they become a signifier for the structure of the BBC, and the second order meaning of this signified is the myth of the BBC: that is, that the station produces programmes which are 'impartial', 'balanced' and 'objective'. Yet these very qualities are used to locate the programmes within the consensus of the dominant liberal ideology which informs the practice of television production in the United Kingdom. This structure of production confirms the myth of the liberal-humanism of the British, who could be seen as a metonym for the West. This is clear from a sequence regarding the West which ** ie series. The interviewer asks Botha what he feels about the West's attitude to South Africa's apartheid policies. Here the interviewer and 'the West' signify 'proponents of humanism and freedom'. In contrast' Botha and South Africa signify oppression. Thus the interviewer locates himself within the ideology of the freedom\_loving Western capitalist democracies, and his product, the films, are seen both as a confirmation of his position, and as a means of penetrating an opposing situation.

The text has a complex structure because there is a constant interplay between the two myths. The interviewer is at the nexus of this interplay: he is not an independent information gathering source, but a signifier. He signifies the liberal democratic side of the 'balance' paradigm, which is placed in opposition to the undemocratic forces signified by the Afrikaner, the 'white' tribe of Africa.

The Myths of the 'White' Tribe
Dimbelby presents the myth of the Afrikaner by creating two images of them:

1. of a beleagured group of people trying to seek a place of freedom and peace in an alien and hostile milieu; and
2. an inscrutable enigma ruling South Africa.

The first myth is predicated upon images of rural settler folk; their cherished ideal of finding a new land; their innocence and naivety, but also tenacity and courage in the face of hardships; their strong religious convictions; their triumph, seen as a gift from God and a justification for their actions. This myth comes straight from the paradigm of colonialism presented by colonisers.

The liberal film maker, however, also presents 'the other side'. The Afrikaner also signifies a monstrous machinery of oppression indicated by the police and armed forces. The very machine-like bureaucracy is also portrayed as being an inaccessible enigma. This myth of 'oppressor' is propounded in various ways in the series. For instance, a 'black' woman student who is interviewed describes the Afrikaners as "stupid". We see an image of her putting her **a sign which indicates the irrationality of the group about whom she is talking. A second example concerns a 'white' man and 'coloured' woman who cannot marry because they have been classified differently. They both speak of Afrikaners as if they were a breed apart. They suggest that things might have been different if the government had been of English stock. The couple simply do not "understand" the Afrikaner mind.

By emphasising the tribal aspect of the Afrikaners as portrayed in the myth, the film maker removes them from a paradigm which could explain them and their policies in terms of the capitalist ideology on which the South African and British economies are predicated. We need to ask two questions: Firstly, is the government policy inscrutable and irrational, and secondly, if it is not, then why does the director present it this way?. One could suggest that apartheid policy is perfectly clear, ascertainable, and rational in terms of its ideology of racial capitalism. A possible reason why the series presents the National Party policies as inscrutable and irrational is that they operate from within the same ideological field as British libertarianism. The only objections 'fair-minded' Britons have is to the institutionalisation of racism (which might hinder the workings of international monopoly capitalism). Apartheid is therefore presented as being economically irrational because the film maker -- through his a-historical analysis -- is unable to identify the class basis of how this contributes to a brutal form of capitalism.

Verbal Codes
The verbal code is pre-eminent in establishing the director's view of the South African situation. This is effected by the kind of questions he poses. These are informed by a humanist ideology, which borders on sentiment, for example, "How do you feel about ...". These questions are put to both 'black' and 'white' persons, and each answer is articulated in terms of personal feelings. Thus a situation arises in which **wster of Defence) saying that he "regrets every death in detention" as he is of a "Christian" people. A viewer who aberrantly decodes this from a different ideological perspective would see the irony in this statement, but there is no sign in the diegetic sequence which suggests this. As a result of this method of enquiry, the structures underlying the situations investigated are never the object of the discussions. In contrast, Anthony Thomas' Six Days in Soweto hammers home its irony in a crude manner that simply could not be misunderstood by any audience (Tomaselli, 1981).

The intereviewer maintains a semblance of 'balance' by interviewing 'all'sides:

1. Afrikaner 'whites' in authority, for example, Brigadier Visser of the Soweto police; PW Botha; Piet Koornhof; the then Minister of Plural Relations, Connie Mulder; and Koot Vorster of the Dutch Reformed Churh. By confronting those representing the ruling hegemony the interviewer situates himself as a force in opposition to them;
2. a 'black' community leader in Crossroads is interviewed. However, despite this 'balance', we see a preponderence of 'white' leadership;
3. 'ordinary whites', for example, farmer Riaan Kriel; and a 'poor white' urban Afrikaner trade unionist;
4. 'ordinary blacks', for example, a migrant worker in a 'city' hostel, his family in the homelands; a middle class doctor; an urban worker and his family in a location 'hovel'.
5. Totally absent, are 'white' English-speaking 'Captains of Industry.

An analysis of the above cross-section of 'blacks' shows that they are always portrayed as victims of the Afrikaner. The mode of discourse thus creates a viewer who identifies with the British point of view, thereby creating a collusion of 'us' against the Afrikaner 'them'. This articulation conceals the historic struggles of 'blacks' against the English-Afrikaner hegemony of the state.

The verbal codes are supported by other codes of film making **sides. Music is used to create atmosphere: the playing of Die Stem (The Voice, national anthem) when the military/political might of the State is depicted; silence when a newsreel of police shooting students is shown. Black and white photographs, newsreel and films are used to show events in the past: the Battle of Blood River and the 1976 "massacre" of 'blacks' during the school boycotts and disturbances. Thus, the viewer's sympathies are for both 'white' and 'black' victims of violence.

Cinematic Style
Cinematographic codes and the cin'ema v'erit'e documentary style are used to endorse the series' authenticity and contemporaneity. The viewer is thus treated to many sequences of the director-cum-interviewer driving out to remote places to interview people and collect the raw data of his enquiry. Of significance is the way in which he is brought into focus and close up every time he asks a 'leading' question. The effect of this camera action is to display the interviewer. We are thus shown democratic capitalism -- symbolised by Dimbelby -- confronting the forces of oppression. The implication is that capitalism and the forces of oppression are mutually exclusive categiories: the myth. Thus, despite the expos'e of a misguided group, the film maker recreates the myth of liberal capitalism. Indeed, Seth Feldman (1977) raises the issue of who we should consider as the subject of documentary films. The White Tribe of Africa is more of an index of the nature of British libertarianism than it is about the 'white' tribe in Africa.

From the above analysis of The White Tribe of Africa, one can see how objective reality is viewed from a particular stance --the gaze of the dominant ideology within the British state-- which thereby controls the 'gaze within the series'. This particular mode of discourse closes off other interpretations of South African reality and produces a monologue in which the illusion is created that the observer and observed exist in different worlds. This discourse exemplifies Paul Rotha's (1936: 134) statement that "Most documentary is only truthful in that it represents an attitude of mind".

Author: Garritano, Carmela
Date: 1998
   
Recent writing on African feminist film making describes two types of feminist films. The first type adopts a humanistic perspective which is reflected in a realistic narrative or documentary filmic form, where, for example, a film demonstrates that women are oppressed through a narrative about the abuses women suffer under a patriarchal system. Finzan is an example of a feminist film of this type. Ken Harrow (1997:136) critiques this approach, arguing that "the symmetries of the Symbolic are not disrupted, nor is there the silence of another order, but the acceptance of the conventional patterns of meaning in the only challenge to patriarchy ... is to do battle on their own terms".

Harrow favors the second approach to feminist filmmaking. This approach is influenced by post-structuralism and the French feminist school. This filmic style refuses to rely, uncritically, on the codes of realism. Realism is problematic for any feminist critique. This is because "such a simple formula occludes the problematic issue of representation" (Harrow 1997:137). To call into question representation is to acknowledge that the `neutral order' of the image is actually the order of the symbolic. The symbolic is conventionally the ground for patriarchal structures (Harrow 1997:137).

In this review, I want to align Ngozi Onwurah's short film, The Body Beautiful, with the second type of feminist practice. Onwurah's film, in its form and content, rejects realism for a filmmaking style similar to the ecriture feminine (feminine discourse) celebrated by Luce Irigaray and Helen Cixous. Luce Irigaray describes feminine discourse as that which strives to:

Turn everything upside down, inside out, back to front. Rack it with radical convolutions, carry back, reimport, those cries that her `body' suffers in her importance to say what disturbs her. Insist also and deliberately upon those blanks in her discourse which recall the places of her exclusion and which, by their silent plasticity, ensure the cohesion, the articulation, the coherent expansion of established forms (142).

Ecriture feminine disrupts any simple link between signifier and referent; it shakes the very foundations of language on which rational and linear thought stand. Feminist discourse is heterogeneous and resists the closure of meaning, and in its desire to be nonlinear, ambiguous, circuitous, and meandering, it suggests other ways of constructing one's identity and ultimately, of defining one's feminist politics.

The Body Beautiful is the story of two women: a mother and her daughter. The mother is white, crippled with arthritis and scarred, physically and psychologically, by a mastectomy. The daughter, a mulatto, possess the beauty of a fashion model. Her body is whole, nubile, and desired by men. The film interweaves the stories of these two women who struggle to come to terms with what it means to be a woman, a mother, and a daughter in a culture where the male gaze is pervasive. The film offers a conventionally feminist message, but the message is not imparted to us in a didactic sermon nor through the simplistic rhetoric of equal rights for all. Instead, it explores with subtlety and intelligence the construction of femininity, the commodification of beauty, and how each of these influences what it means to be a woman.

Stylistically, the film rejects objective realism for two highly subjective perspectives on one story. At no point in the film are we on the outside looking in at objective reality. We are, throughout, within the thoughts of one of the two women. The narrative in not voiced by an omnipresent commentator, but by the mother and daughter. There stories at times touch, and at others overlap, or contradict one another. We are never completely certain whose perspective is most reliable, whose pain is most justified, or who is worthy of our contempt or pity. The film doesn't allow us to identify easily with either protagonist. It asks that we watch and listen to both stories and construct our own truth from what we experience.

The film not only renounces realism, but it subverts the autobiographical form and the humanistic conception of individuality which underwrites that form. The stories of mother and daughter, like the identities of the two women, do not exist in isolation from each other. The daughter comes to define herself not as an autonomous and a complete self (a Cartesian subject), but only in relation to her mother and through the ideologies of femininity and beauty which both women confront, although from opposite ends of the spectrum, as Mrs Onwurah herself acknowledges in the film. Visually, the last scene in the film captures the symbiotic nature of the mother/daughter relationship. Two naked bodies, one deformed the other unblemished, lie entangled on a bed. Yet, from the camera's view, looking down from above, it is difficult to decipher the lines rendering one body distinct from the other.

Realistic codes give way to a fragmented narrative that jumps from past to present, and fantasy, reality, and memory merge and disperse in the film. Mrs Onwurah watches a man eye her lovely daughter, and she longs for a time when men watched her with the same desire. The film cuts to a scene where Mrs. Onwurah and the man stand, naked, in a large room embracing, and we are not sure if the camera eavesdrops on a fantasy, has glided into her past, or is, still, presenting what is "really" happening. The riddle is never solved, even when the daughter enters the scene and watches the man and her mother make love on a large bed. The film leaves us in an opaqueness between what is real and what is not. The "facts" become unimportant because we enter into all of the emotional entanglements between these two women, struggling to be women in a culture that defines gender identity through the eyes of men.

The Body Beautiful moves the feminist debate away from simple formulas and into issues of representation. Can feminism simply embrace the form of the dominant, patriarchal, culture which it critiques and avoid contamination? Or must feminism search for new forms in which to articulate its struggles? This film suggests that feminism is too complex to be wedged into an equal pay for equal work agenda and that we need to search for other ways to represent, and enter into, questions about womanhood.

Further Reading
Harrow, Kenneth. (1997). Western Feminism and African Feminist Filmmaking, Matatu19, 133-149.

Irigary, Luce. (1994). Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell UP

Filmography

The Body Beautiful. Ngozi Onwurah. 1991, UK.

Author: Shepperson, Arnold
Date: 1997
   
W'eand K'uuni is set in the pre-colonial Mossi Empire of the 15th Century. The name means `gift of God', and is given to a young orphan child (Serge Yanogo) whose story is told in the film. The film reflects a different form of life to that of Africa today, but the issues with which it deals are as important now as they were then.

The movie begins with a scene in which a woman mourns the disappearance of her husband. She and the audience do not know if he's dead, but he has been gone for so long that the village community is pressing her to marry another man because tradition holds that her son belongs to the community. Viewers don't know whether this scene is taking place today or hundreds of years ago. The woman decides to run away with her son, to avoid the complications of becoming someone else's wife while not knowing the real fate of her husband.

The action then shifts to a traveller who finds a child, lying in the bush and nearly dead from thirst. The traveller revives the boy, and asks him where he comes from. But the child cannot speak, even though he hears what the traveller is saying and clearly understands him. The shift in action serves as a quite effective narrative device, because not only do the characters in the film not know the story of this child, neither does the audience. (In traditional storytelling fashion, we have to wait on narrative development to see how the child's life plays itself out. There is no `voice of God' to tell us, or `Archimedean Point' from which to view, the way the action will develop.)

Because he can't both travel and look after the boy, the traveller leaves him with some villagers. The villagers are unable to find from where the child comes. So they let a family with just one child adopt him. In this family, the child is given the name which is also the film's title. What follows is a reconstruction of how people lived before the white men came. This part of the movie is very calm, and portrays a life that is almost too peaceful. In a peculiar kind of way, the development of the narrative during this part of the film is characterized by a contradiction between what is shown and what the audience hears.

There is little dialogue, but the musical score seems to intrude: action is continually punctuated by baroque string ensemble music and a sort of trumpet voluntary, which are quite culturally at odds with the African context displayed. After showing the boy living peacefully with these people for a few years, the movie begins to change. Another family in the village has a fight when the young wife does not want to stay with her older husband. It also shows how Poguere (Rosine Yanogo), the daughter of the adoptive family with whom W'end becomes friendly, is punished very much more than W'end is. While these situations are developed, the music begins to shift, with more genuinely African themes and figures beginning to punctuate the score.

After the family quarrel, the scandal is so great that the husband hangs himself in shame. W'end finds the body, and the shock is so great that he suddenly begins to speak. Soon after Poguere, who is very fond of W'end, asks him to tell her where he came from. It is then that viewers see in flashback what happened to the mother shown at the beginning of the movie. Viewers see the villagers calling her a witch, and chasing her and her child away. She runs as far as she can, and collapses from exhaustion and dies while the child is sleeping. When the child wakes up, we see that he is W'end. He runs away from the body of his mother, and after he collapses he in turn is found by the traveller.

Life and Time A strong message in W'end K'uuni is that life before white colonization was not perfect for everybody. Many of the early scenes in the film suggest that precolonial traditional life offered an authentically African kind of democracy. However, it is during these kinds of scenes that the score sounds almost intrusively European in its values. It is as if the director wants to distract those who believe that what can be shown on film is not necessarily what the real story would reveal.

To a degree, it would seem, Gaston Kabor'e uses the soundtrack to alert his viewers against the possibility of too literal a reading of the visual element. The very period of the musical score's origin suggests that the visual narrative is likely to be mediated by precisely the kind of Romanticist ethnographic reconstructions found in many popular documentary films. The scenes in which W'end begins to play music for himself (using a bamboo flute) introduce a kind of iterative musical figure which initially serves as a kind of response to the dominant baroque themes. It is as if the very articulation possible with such a ready-to-hand instrument places the character of W'end into another kind of relationship with the narrative so far.

As the story develops, so the return of W'end's speech seems to pull both sound and picture into some kind of synchronization. We begin to see that precolonial life, while unquestionably different, did not because of this difference provide people with the kinds of chances that democracy guarantees. In the narrative, girls and women clearly do not enjoy the same status as boys and men, and lose virtually all their power in marriage. In a scene which takes place in an urban market, there are clear indications that a kind of caste system was in place, the interaction between wealthy clients and traders clearly betraying the stereotypical thinking characteristic of class-based social relations.

One way people can interpret this film is to believe that traditional ways were necessarily better. Certainly, the visual composition of the early part of the film has been edited in ways which make this view the more plausible. But the movements signified by the growing agreement between the visual, narrative and musical elements of the film suggest that recovery of the precolonial past will not restore some lost democratic order. Musically, the viewer is brought into a dialectical relationship signalled by the score following call-and-response patterns between African and Western themes. In the way traditional storytelling points towards both the narrative's origins and the possibilities of future action, so this dialectic seems to suggest that interpretation of future needs will have to incorporate and accommodate influences from both strands of African historical experience.

Author: Peplinski, Carrie
Date:
   
A common theme between the two episodes of "Africa: Search for Common Ground" is one in which people on both sides of an issue are shown attempting to understand each other. In the first episode, Thokoza , the two leaders of rival political gangs are given video cameras in order to document the conditions of their separate worlds in Thokoza and to interview the people with whom they live. Their videos are then shown to the people of the opposing section. The intention is that through recognition of a shared reality -- despite political affiliations -- conflict can be resolved.

Another episode, Between Confesion and Prosecution , is about an apartheid-era policeman who is testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His life, which is shown to have been destroyed by his part in the brutality, is compared with that of the wife of one of his victims, who is present at his hearing. Not only does the program attempt to facilitate dialogue and understanding between groups but also to identify the true enemy: ignorance.

In Thokosa, the two young men who are given video cameras are enabled to overcome their hatred of each other through their shared documentation. By having video cameras, they become displaced from a purely subjective involvement within the community while simultaneously becoming more attuned to the foremost issues affecting them. As documentarians, the cameras becomes both their eyes and their voices, seeing and speaking for them. In this way, the cameras mediate the commonality of their of their social spaces. They are thus able to move beyond their pre-conceptions of each other toward understanding. This becomes possible only because of the `objective' positions their cameras help them to assume.

Furthermore, by allowing people who are within the situation to comment on it, the program subtly encourages the kind of Third Cinema produced by Brazil's Cinema Novo and the Cuban Film Institute. This takes representation out of the hands of anthropologists, returning power to people who have been constructed as "Other". The subjects of the vidoes become de-objectified once given their own voices.

The comparison of the police officer and the wife of one of his victims in Between Confesion and Prosecution is made by showing how each has suffered. The pain that the victim's wife feels is something which can be universally understood and sympathized with. She has lost her husband, the man she loved. Moreover, her children have lost their father and the household has lost one source of its income. Her tragedy does not need to be explained for the viewer to comprehend her suffering. It is for this reason that the program spends more time trying to gain sympathy or, at least, understanding for Mentz, the police officer on trial. As a confessed murderer, it would be easy for the viewer to characterize him as a monster, refusing to acknowledge the factors that motivated his action or the effect that his actions have had on him. He tells the camera that he became physically ill after the murder. Now he feels stress and has lost many of his friends. Furthermore, his wife has divorced him and he has lost the right to be a full-time father. Shots of him and his wife together before their divorce, voiced-over by her talking about the dissolution of the marriage, are juxtaposed with a shot of the victim and his wife on their wedding day. In this way, the program humanizes both families and equalizes their loss. His is grounded in remorse and hers in forgiveness. Ultimately, neither fully achieves these goals. Mentz remains friends with the men he worked with during apartheid and refuses to testify against them, opting instead for absolution through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After hearing his testimony, the wife of his victim tells the Commission that she cannot forgive him.

However the goals of the program are met by showing both sides. These goals fit with the wider policy of forgiveness and understanding represented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is a positive move in the re-imagination of the nation. Rather than allowing the pain associated with the cruelties of apartheid to dominate policy, amnesty based on full disclosure is far more psychologically healthy than festering bitterness or adopting the same sort of punitive brutality as was practiced during apartheid. This is a new model for democracy. The theme of these two episodes -- mutual understanding toward resolution of conflict -- is the theme of the program, signified by its name, "Africa: Search for Common Ground."

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1991

Other Authors: Maureen Eke  

 

THE TWO RIVERS

1985. 58 mins 16mm Video. Produced by the Murunzi Motion Picture Co. Directed by Mark Newman

The Venda poet, Rashaka Ratshitanga takes us on a "journey" through the history of his people's dispossession by the "Boers", and later apartheid South Africa.

TOPICS: Orality Studies, History, Anthropology.

USES:

Considerable contextual information is required to understand this film.

CRITIQUE
The film opens with white scrolled captions on a black background which states:

The narrator of this film, Rashaka Ratshitanga, lives in Venda, a rural area of South Africa. Recently the South African government declared Venda an 'independent state' in accordance with their policy of apartheid. For his opposition to this policy, Rashaka has been detained incommunicado for a prolonged period by security police. Rashaka spent twenty years as a migrant labourer in Johannesburg and returned to Venda in 1975. He is a writer and a poet".

Later on Ratshitanga says to camera, "Let me take you on a journey into the heartland of this country following the course of the two rivers which are now forging the destiny of my people".

Historically, The Two Rivers is the story of the Venda people and their subjugation by European colonists. We are presented with an idyllic picture of Vendaland prior to the coming of the Europeans -- Rashaka mentions the various conflicts between the Vendas and their neighbors, as well as the Boers; and indicates that until the British arrival in the late 19th Century when they overthrew the Venda King, they were a stable and independent people.

At another level, The Two Rivers is also the story of Rashaka Ratshitanga - the man, the poet. This story, however, is quite dislocated as Rashaka-the-narrator tends to get lost and separated from the film's narrative. The result is a tension of subjectivities between the oral telling by Ratshitanga and the visual recordings of the crew. Ratshitanga, instead of offering an interior participatory point of view, rather offers an exterior observational perspective of his story and that of 'his people' (Maingard 1986). On more than one occasion, for example, Ratshitanga undermines his own intention and presence as story-teller by walking out of frame (Maingard 1986:22). The camera seems, in parts, then, to sometimes be following a narrative thread separate to that of the narrator's, especially when he is talking about Johannesburg.

Why does this film seem aligned with the apartheid government's perspective, as most evaluators claimed? Or does The Two Rivers subvert language in order to communicate certain political messages? Ratshitanga does not make any overt anti-government statements. The word 'apartheid' is never mentioned. On the one hand, this is consistent with his literary character as the chronicler, the teller of truths, the objective narrator. On the other hand, this objectivity is sometimes undermined when he asks such provocative questions as the meaning of independence for the Vendas; or when he makes provocative statements about Soweto being a city of violence; or when he degrades the issue of the Anglo-Boer War (19899-1902); or accuses the British and the Boers of being the dispossessors of the Vendas. The director's choice of film shots/images to associate with some of these statements point to a subtext which perhaps neither the government's censors nor some anti-apartheid viewers could identify.

The problem in identifying the political position of the film stems from the (if erratic) authority given Ratshitanga by the film crew, complemented by incorporation of 'dominant' apartheid discourses. The narrator, as do the film makers, fail to develop clear visual and verbal oppositional discourses through which to articulate their message. As an exterior representation of the narrator's self, Two Rivers tends to relegate its subjects to silence, preferring the film makers' direct address perspective. Jae Maingard (1986:35) concludes that: "It would seem that the film maker [Mark Newman?] has wanted to elevate rural, ritualistic societies above any other form of society and in doing so has inscribed his own romantic notions of such societies into the film, with the help of the narrator, who represents a similar view". " The Two Rivers is a predominantly imperative text" (Maingard 1986:37).

It is the imperative, seemingly non-political position adopted by the film's makers, despite Ratshitanga's harassment by the Security Police, that led most evaluators and many audiences to conclude that the film was pro-government, and therefore uncritical of apartheid. Because the film's makers deliberately decided against using the word, 'apartheid', however, does not make the film pro-apartheid propaganda (see Steenveld 1990:132). This assertion will be clarified below as we try to identify the codes of the imbongi and the film makers attempts to translate them from the oral to the visual medium.

Themes of the Imbongi:

• the two rivers -- symbolical -- a white river of white culture and a black river of black culture, which according to Rashaka, merge in Johannesburg.
• the dispossession of Venda the people by South Africa represented in the loss of the land; and the death of certain Venda customs such as the age group initiation rites. Ratshitanga refers to himself as one of the last initiates of the boys' adolescent initiation rites.
• the South African bantustan policy -- Venda was one of the so-called independent homelands. Ratshitanga questions the meaning of independence for the Venda's, pointing cryptically to the "signs" of independence: Western economic colonization (Kentucky Fried Chicken); a brewery industry; ironically one of the crippling outcomes of colonization is a high rate of alcoholism among the colonized; the wasteland that Venda has become; and poor housing. He also points to the complicity of Africans in their own disempowerment -- the leaders of all the homelands are implicated in this role.
• migratory labor to Johannesburg represented by the emergence of a new black/African culture or city -- Soweto. This resulted in the loss of children and human resources from Vendaland -- people drawn to the glitter and illusory promise of jobs in South African urban areas. This migration began after the 1930s. Ratshitanga names himself as one of these migrants.
• the conflict of cultures which is a prominent theme in the writings of African and other colonized peoples. Here there are two major conflicts -- a) the initial European/African cultural conflict; and b) the new African (Sowetan)/white South African (Johannesburg) cultural conflict.
• the general violence of apartheid -- Africans as victims and perpetuators of violence.
• the role of the emerging African youth (particularly in the urban areas) in the new South African society.

The Imbongi as Narrator
Ratshitanga is a poet, a literary critic. Therefore, he is the most appropriate person to tell the story of his people. In traditional African societies, Ratshitanga would be the griot or imbongi, that is, an oral historian. He indicates this by suggesting to the audience that his name signifies the 'one who tells the truth.' The Two Rivers, then, if rather tortuously, is trying to emulate the codes of the imbongi, and function as a praise poem. The poem (the interaction of the oral, visual and performative) is trying to suggest a way forward. The confluence of the previously separate black and white cultures in the big cities can result in new stream which could show the way to the future. This is the film's message.

As the chronicler of his people's lives and stories, Ratshitanga must document what he sees. But he does not necessarily have to take any positions, or make any value judgements or critical comments. It is in this sense that the ideological position in the film seems amorphous. In order to find any ideological leanings, we must examine the subtext of the film which often emerges in the moments when he asks what appear to be rhetorical questions. A typical example is the questioning of what independence means for the Vendas; another is at the end of the film when he wonders whether the new African youth will hear their people's cry from the past.

For Ratshitanga, The Two Rivers is also about the re-writing or reconstruction of a people's history to incorporate the Venda voice into the history of South Africa. Whereas the textbooks provided by the South African apartheid government tended to erase African voices in the telling of their own stories, Ratshitanga attempts to inject that voice into the "telling" in this film. This is his story as well as that of his people.

Both Ratshitanga's and the Venda stories are linked by his personal experiences which parallel those of his kinsmen. It is therefore not surprising that in his telling of this story, some romanticism emerges. He re-writes Venda history to incorporate the view that Vendas were a politically viable society before the coming of the Europeans, and that it was actually the Europeans who destroyed Venda civilization. Part of the method used in the re-writing of this history is through the incorporation of some cultural aspects -- the initiation rites; the oral performance of the people's story by the elders; his own use of oral narrative devices as in, for example, the use of proverbs. In fact, in reconstructing the Venda story, Ratshitanga also undermines that of the Boers, indicating that for the Vendas, the Boer War was like a fight between two dogs over stolen meat.

Ratshitanga's function as the chronicler, or oral historian is often underscored by the various changes of his narrative character. When we first see him at the start of the film, he addresses the audience as the narrator. In one scene, he is without his glasses. A few minutes later, facing the audience, he puts on a pair of glasses which symbolically provide more sight (to see beyond the 'ordinary') and perhaps more insight into the life of his people. In this sense, he becomes our magnifying lens in our quest for knowledge about the Vendas. In addition, to be consistent to his role as the poet, chronicler, and perhaps visionary of this narrative, Ratshitanga must assume a personality appropriate for any given context during the course of his narration. As such, his change of outfits, for example, on the trip to Johannesburg, become an attempt to reflect the environment, a change in world view and culture.

Ethnographic Considerations
The Two Rivers has a cyclical structure. It begins with the story of the Vendas in Vendaland and returns to the Vendas in the girls' marriage dance at the end. This seems to explain the logic behind the return to the maiden python dance which concludes the film. Otherwise, it is superfluous.

The maiden dance should perhaps have been edited, especially as its full significance is not explained in the film. In addition, if a male initiate rite is not to be shown because it has been destroyed, to maintain balance, a women's dance should then also be eliminated. Moreover, screening of the maiden dance without adequate ethnographic background, further perpetuates the stereotyped images of African cultures as uncivilized and exotic. It gives the film a tourist propaganda gaze.

Closing Remarks
In conclusion, the film's promotional blurb states:

The Two Rivers is a rural Black South African's perspective on the history of his people, the colonial era, the early Apartheid era and the present day. It is also interwoven tapestry of the political, economic and cultural forces present in the South African society and as such fills in much of the background detail and texture required for a fuller understanding of our current situation.

As we have argued above, The Two Rivers is actually an uneven interaction of subjectivities (Ratshitanga's, the film's crew), and as such a rather disjointed "tapestry". However, the film does represent an experiment in providing points of confluence of the two rivers at a variety of levels:

1. the two rivers of 'black' and 'white' cultures;
2. the two rivers of expression -- orality and film;
3. the two rivers of 'white' and 'black' histories;
4. the two rivers of written and oral expressions; and
5. the two rivers of urban and rural civilizations.

References
Tomaselli, K.G. and Eke, M. "Perspectives on orality in African Cinema, Oral Tradition, 10(1), 111-128.

Maingard, J. 1986: Towards a `Pre-emergent' Documentary Film-Making Practice in South Africa. Honours dissertation, School of Dramatic Art, University of witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Steenveld, L. 1990: South African Anti-Apartheid Documentaries, 1977-1987: Some Theoretical Excursions. MA Thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.

Author: Peplinski, Carrie

Date: 1990

One of the themes in Bertucelli's film, Ramparts of Clay , is the idea that the community is threatened by exploitative labor. The main female character is dissatisfied with the drudgery of her life and longs for escape but does not because she feels obligated to them for adopting her. Her dilemma is compared metaphorically to the destruction of the physical environment, resulting from the male villagers' mining salt. Both her pumping of water and the men's pounding of rocks are shown to be equally futile. However, her rebellion is as an individual and thus is regarded as a transgression whereas the men's refusal of partial wages for their work is recognized as a collective mobilization.

This comparison between the individual and the collective is made through the film's stylistic elements -- a lack of dialogue which makes the viewer reliant on the images for comprehension and montage which assigns order and meaning to images which individually might not have the same impact. Furthermore, the theme and its metaphor are juxtaposed. The key scene in this analysis is the one that links the dust storm and the arid landscape back to the woman pumping water and the men pounding rocks for wages. In this way, Bertucelli calls attention to the similarity of their endeavors. Both the woman and the men are trying to draw something from the land. The claiming of this resource leads to further decimation of the environment and consequently, more exertion of labor; the woman will have to pump for a longer period of time to bring up the same amount of water and the men will have to pound more rocks to earn the same wages. This is the aspect of futility intrinsic to their work, evoked through their repetitive pumping and pounding.

The woman's dissatisfaction with her life is established visually and in relation to her chore of pumping water. She lingers outside the school, has a young boy tutoring her and studies the newspaper used to wrap the wine. These shots of her self-education imply that she wants more from life than the community will allow her to have. This uneasiness between her desires and those of the community are exacerbated by the fact that everyday she must go out to draw water, a job that seems to be endless. Her commitment to a necessary but tedious and physically tiring task imprisons her the same way the men's mining for wages keeps them tied to land which yields progressively less. Both are forced to perform a service for the entire community, which if it benefits them individually it does so only slightly. Therefore, these jobs are not only futile because of their repetitiveness and demanding nature, they provide only abstract rewards. In the case of the men, this is their cash salary. For the woman, the rewards are more subtle. She is working for "the common good", an intangible ideal.

The woman's confinement, however, is more severe because she is an individual whose desires threaten the cohesion of the group. The exploitative nature of her work is determined by the community rather than being representative of the developed/de-developed model proposed by theorists like Andre Gunder Frank and presented in the film as the men's acceptance of wage labor (Armes, 39). The woman's exploitation is evidenced by her inability to protest her conditions or to successfully escape her situation in favor of a life more attuned to what she wants. This is signaled by the punishment she receives for dropping the water bucket. Although it is considered a cleansing ritual, its intent is to cure her of radical ideas of putting her needs above those of the community.

Her resistance is contrasted against the protest by the male workers. They are able to sustain one another in their fight against the bosses and military because of the support system that the community provides. She has none of that because tradition and obligation tie her to a life that she has not chosen for herself.

Author: Gordon, Robert
Date: 2002

Department of Anthropology, University of Vermont

As a gesture of national reconciliation the motto for the new South Africa is "!ke", derived we are told, from the near extinct /Xam Bushman or San language and meaning "diverse people unite". What is it about those called Bushmen that attracts the imagination? To be sure, there is a large cultural cottage industry built upon and reinforcing this imagery. Most recently the Foster brothers film, "The Great Dance" dealing with Bushman hunting, has garnered many international awards while Regopstaan's Dream has been shown on the BBC and numerous other prestige venues and is also available in a 24 minute version.

Of course the Bushmen or San in South Africa are not extinct. This video portrays the struggles of one surviving group, the /auni or komani to reclaim their land which was incorporated as the Kalahari Gemsbok Park, a vast stretch of largely waterless land located between the confluence of the Aub and Nossob Rivers.

Filmed over three years, the video starts at the (in)famous Bushman dioramas of the South African Museum and then features a variety of shots including, especially, interviews with the sympathetic and Robert Bly-like lawyer, Roger Chennels, who has been their chief legal representative and whose voice is one of the main sources for continuity in the video. He has been involved with the group since 1992 when they relocated to Kagga Kamma, a private nature reserve 260 km north of Cape Town where, in their loin clothes, they were a major tourist attraction. Fortuitously for the group, with the election of the ANC government, land restitution became a major issue and because of their symbolic importance, this group was one of the first to be given back some land in a well-publicized move when six ranches totaling some 40,000 hectare on the southern border of the National Park were handed over to them by Deputy President Mbeki himself in 1999. The allocation of this land resulted in many people who had previously "passed" for Colored now claiming San ancestry and leading to an inevitable increase in community
conflict.

The video graphically portrays life on the periphery of the Park, with some eking out an existence hawking trinkets to tourists who sympathize with their plight, coupled to scenes of drunkenness, Church services, and rather romantically has some traditionally clad kids rolling down the sand-dunes. It suggests the possibility of a "cultural village" as a tourist attraction.

The main person to provide continuity in the video, however, is Dawid Kruiper who is "generally" accepted as "leader of the San". He is the son of the late Regopstaan whose vision (and struggle) it was to re-inhabit the Kalahari Gemsbok Park from which the group were evicted in the early seventies. Dawid Kruiper proudly wears a loincloth, indeed encourages traditional clothing and skills. Part of the allocated farms are going to be used for wild animals so that Bushmen can learn and show tourists tracking. The issue he is obsessed with is land rights in the Park itself. "Our hearts remain in the Park," he says and he wants to visit the graves of his ancestors who lie buried there. Born in nature, he and his fellow
Khomani claim to have an organic connection to nature and are "natural guides and trackers". Left unsaid is that it is precisely this ideology as articulated by Europeans which contributed substantially to their annihilation. San were evicted from the Park because the animals ostensibly had to be protected from these hunters and especially their dogs. "I want to live with nature" Dawid Kruiper says, and so determined is he to achieve this that the film concludes with him traveling alone to the polar opposite of his wilderness, the Big City to meet the erstwhile (white) Minister of Lands, Derek Hanekom, who was responsible for making the farms available and to confront a rather uncomfortable senior Black
official of the National Parks Board in scenes clearly set up for the video. The message is obvious: this feisty land rights campaigner is as determined as ever to get his land in the Park back. David vs. the Bureaucratic Goliath. "Regopstaan" is an Afrikaans word meaning 'Stand up straight' or 'stand tall' and this is what this video is all about. Originally the film was titled "Shame". The ideological tenor of the video is obvious and one which this reviewer is in broad sympathy with.

As someone who uses film or video extensively in teaching I can highly recommend this video. It will be a valuable teaching resource for courses on Africa as well as the several issues it raises, such as Land Claims, Tourism, Indigenous Struggles, and Environmentalism. It is also a provocative "update" for the generations of scholars and students who have been schooled on "The Hunters". To enhance its pedagogical value this review will include background material not normally included in reviews.

The problem with this film is that while it attempts to ride on the wave of nostalgia it does a disservice to history by collapsing the past and gliding over the contradictions. Its ahistoricism serves to perpetuate and reinforce stereotypes. A sense of history enables one to understand how the past has choreographed the script on which the video is based and distorted. Regopstaan's Dream is not of recent vintage and several times we hear references to "Old Makai" but nothing further. Indeed "Old Makai" (who died in 1966) and his father "Old Abraham" or (!gurice) and his daughter /Khaneko as well as several others have an important part in what should more accurately be called "Abraham's Dream" (and the Biblical association's make it even more powerful). The history of this Dream is long, complex, and intriguing. Dawid Kruiper and Roger Chennels have important forerunners. What history the video does portray is problematic.

The historical clips it shows on the "Bushmen of the Kalahari" by the Denver African Expedition was not even filmed in the Kalahari but in the Etosha National Park in northern Namibia. And this is a pity because the people of this area have long experience of performing and posing for cameras. In 1885, Farini and his photographer son, Lulu, spent time here and in 1908 the Austrian anthropologist Rudolf Poech made the first African ethnographic film "The Bushmen" here. Incidentally, Poech, striving to be a competent scientist, also made invaluable sound recordings of the language. He justified his effort by claiming that, following Fritsch, Bushmen were an Ur-race and what he photographed and measured were the oldest and most "primitive surviving south African race". Others followed suit. We know, for example, that the prospector Fred
Cornell also made Bushman movies in the area shortly before the First World War. In the fifties and sixties, numerous other film-makers followed, not only government propaganda film-makers but international travelers and voyeurs like the Danish adventure writer, Jens Bjerre who twice visited and filmed these people. Others included, more importantly, Marlin Perkins, of "Wild Kingdom" fame, who not only made a movie for his popular US TV show, but produced an illustrated book as well.

The land issue is, and was, complex. It was not simply about the keen enthusiasm of Park officials to protect the "pristine environment". Even before the Park was proclaimed in 1931, the place of the Bushmen was an issue. Minister of Lands P. Grobler announced his intention in December 1929 to create a game reserve between the Auob and Nossob Rivers where Bushmen would be allowed to live and hunt (Cape Times, December 7, 1929) and given its newsworthiness this statement rapidly percolated into the international press.

From the very beginning, local settler interests were opposed to the notion. A few days after Grobler's statement, the local Member for the Legislative Assembly argued that the land was unsuitable because over 60 farms in the area had already been proclaimed and Bushman extinction was inevitable "owing to their rapid assimilation with the Hottentots and Klipkaffirs and (their) low birth rate". Many of the farmers "offer them employment and allow them to remain near their water holes". He concluded that: " a great number of the so-called Bushmen in this area are renegade Klipkafirs, Hereros and Hottentots. These, if given the protection of a reserve, would become a source of annoyance and irritation to the neighboring farmers". (Cape Times, December 17, 1929).

Other stakeholders had different interests, and thus the Police were keen to see the area proclaimed a Game Reserve, as they were concerned about the large-scale "contract" poaching going on. There was also the issue of land pressure. One of the ways in which the "poor white problem" was being tackled was to allocate farms to them at bargain rates. The Kuruman-Gordonia Game Reserve, proclaimed in 1910 and located to the south east of the Kalahari Gemsbok Park (KGP) was reduced from approximately 8,000 square miles to some 3,600 square miles in order to provide for the land hunger of the poor whites in 1923. The idea then was to effect a land-swap. This undertone of local European resistance to the Park and to Bushmen continues to have an important influence on later events and perceptions as we see in some telling interviews in the video with a White park ranger and a local farmer.

It was not as if the hand of everyone was against these Bushmen. On the contrary, perhaps the most famous friend they had was Donald Bain who in 1936 took a contingent to the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg where they were one of the most popular exhibits. This exhibit and the resultant "Bushman exhibition tours" by both Bain and Coenraad Macdonald generated what Hayes and Rassool call a "feeding frenzy of the eye" as scientists, film-makers and photographers converged on them (Hayes and Rassool, 2001). It was then, that in the words of Ouma /una, who was a five year-old child at the Empire Exhibition, that they discovered that "We liked to be photographed because they paid us money" (Schmidt 2001).

Bain's, and later Macdonald's, avowed purpose in displaying Bushmen was to protest their eviction from the Park and to pressurize the government to create a Bushman Reserve for them. Supported by academics like Dart and Maingard, he secured interviews with relevant Ministers and was assured that they would be allowed to remain in the KGP. Despite such Ministerial assurances, Bushmen
continued to be persecuted for hunting in the Park. To protest this action, Bain took a well-photographed deputation of some 55 Bushmen to Cape Town, where he succeeded in having their plight raised in Parliament. General Smuts, as acting Prime Minister, expressed his sympathy for the Bushmen -- "those living fossils" -- and said that they would be allowed to hunt in the KGP as long as they used `traditional weaponry' (see more details on Bain in Gordon 1995 and 1999). But the National Parks Board was still not moved, arguing that the Bushmen were not pure Bushmen, and moreover many of them spoke Afrikaans or Nama. It was "useless to spend money on protecting game for these people to exterminate and sell the skins to smugglers". If these Bushmen were allowed to settle they would attract other squatters and soon the game would be "wild" again and difficult for tourists to view (Cape Times, May 11 1937).

Public support for the idea, at least as reported in the newspapers and in editorials, overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of a Bushman Reserve. This was not surprising, at least among the urban sector. Popular interest in Bushmen was a lively issue since the discovery of the Taung skull in 1924. The South African pavilion at the 1924 Wembley Exhibition had a banner draped over the entrance proclaiming "South Africa, the Cradle of Humanity", and in 1929 the popular publicist Hedley Chilvers had labeled the Bushmen one of the Seven Wonders of Southern Africa. Even the Afrikaans literature of this era, most notably that of von Wielligh and the Hertzog Prize-winning Hobson Brothers romanticized the Bushmen.

Politicians felt that the Park could not be re-proclaimed a Bushman Reserve and suggested instead, that well-known stalling tactic, a Committee to investigate the possibility of proclaiming part of neighboring Botswana a Bushman Reserve. This committee eventually decided it could serve no useful purpose and disbanded on the eve of the Second World War.

Despite being personal friends with important politicians like Grobler and Reitz who were supportive of his efforts, Bain's efforts were consistently undermined by senior bureaucrats who dismissed him as a "showman" and were concerned about the farm labor shortage that he was creating as many cattle-herders left their European employers to join the "troupe". Certainly he was a singularly unsuccessful businessman and while he undertook to support the group until they had a Reserve of their own, he was forced to declare bankruptcy and the troupe were unceremoniously deposited back in the Gordonia district in August 1937. Visiting them, the Magistrate complained that "unfortunately a number of these people, both men and women seem to have been thoroughly spoilt, and are disinclined to look for work at present. Most of them confidently expect Mr Bain to visit them again and hope to be allowed to camp in the Game Reserve. The daughter of the old "Chief" asked me to make representation to the Minister of Native Affairs so that some of the money which she says Mr Bain collected during their tour and which she alleges he collected for them, may be obtained from him and handed over to them" (August 19, 1937, cited in South Africa. National Archives, Native Affairs (NTS) files 9586 382/400).

Shortly thereafter, a British colonial official visited the area from Bechuanaland Protectorate. He reported that he "also met the Bushmen and the so called Bushmen queen 'Feikie' who asked me when we were going to move the people from the Nossop River so that they could settle at KijKij" (Botswana National Archives (BNA) Sec 108 S.108/2/2). /Khanako, file://Aneku, Aniko or Anako or "Fytjie", the daughter of the group's patriarch, "Old Abraham", appears to have been the leader of the group. The next year file://Aneku approached another well known European "character", Coenraad Frederik MacDonald and persuaded and assisted him in recruiting a group of "Bushmen" to go on tour again since they were starving. After a notorious case where he was charged under the Censorship Act, MacDonald returned the Bushmen to the Park in 1942 (NTS 9587 382/400 Bushman Reserve SAB Part 3 MacDonald Case). The press continually referred to her as "an intelligent bushwoman" who acted as an interpreter. The role played by /Khaneko raises important questions about the video in which women are largely absent or relegated to perform minor cameo roles.

Eventually the State decided to allocate the Government farm "Struis Zyn Dam" adjoining the KGP as a home for the Bushmen, and until the
graziers lease expired, Bushmen were accommodated in the KGP. Bureaucrats eventually arranged for the farm to be sold to a white settler and the Bushmen were left stranded in the hands of their unwilling hosts, the National Parks Board, which for the next two decades did its utmost to have them removed. As their 1959 Annual Report complained: "It seems as if the Bushmen, like the proverbial poor, will always be with us. After several conferences to determine who should actually accept responsibility for these people, especially since they are neither Coloured nor Bantu, the Department of Bantu Administration and Development eventually agreed to assume responsibility for the small band and to transfer them to the Bushman reserve in SWA in due course. That is as far as it went, however, and in the meantime they enjoy the privileges offered them by the Park." Officials felt that the Park's inhabitants were making increasing demands. In addition to the "ex gratia" official rations, they now requested the right to keep dogs, to hunt in the whole Park, freedom of movement in and out of the Park, and freedom to receive any visitors; they also wanted improved accommodation. The official line was that they were neither "traditional" nor "pure-bred" anymore, and as such had abdicated any rights to reside in the Park. Indeed the only time they wore traditional clothing was when they saw a tourist with a camera because then they could collect a small fee (Kloppers 1970:190-1). When I visited the Park in the late sixties, I was told by officials that their begging and drunken behavior was offensive to tourists and that all, even Whites, who behaved in such a manner would be booted out of the Park.

In contrast to the video voice-over, which has the Bushmen retreating when faced by superior force, deportation to Namibia was actively resisted. Eventually in 1976, with the ever-present threat of deportation to Tsumkwe, almost all the Bushmen left the Park after a long war of social attrition and settled in the neighboring Mier Colored reserve at Welkom. Of course, the other option which an outsider might suggest is why not simply move to the other side of the Nossob river to Botswana? But this was unworkable because of Botswana's long history of complicity with the South African Parks Board in suppressing these people.

Koos Kruiper takes up the story after the removal from the Kalahari Gemsbok Park: "At first we were told that we had to go to Namibia, but my uncle, Regop Kruiper, who is our leader, refused to go there as we didn't know the place and feared that we would not survive. We were eventually dumped outside the gates of the Park and came to settle here at Welkom. This was in 1976.

While we were at the Park, I was employed as a game warden. We were really exploited there because we were a tourist attraction. Some
film-makers recruited us to make some films. I myself was involved in the making of the Mazda advert which was shot in the Park. I was only paid R250 and worked for two weeks.

We have also been exploited by a film agent, who recruited our clan to act in films and promised to buy us a farm with the proceeds of our earnings. This has now caused a division in our clan. We haven't heard a thing about this farm. Some members live elsewhere, some have moved to Namibia, and now there are only a few of us left here at Welkom.

I make a living by making bows and arrows, and other implements and sell them to tourists on the way to the Park. Otherwise I act in films. I acted in the film "The Killer Instinct" shot in Namibia. I'm still owed R400.

I feel very unhappy, I'm alone and am no longer Koos Kruiper. If I could wear my skins and hunt, I'll be very happy.

We eke out an existence here. There is no firewood and we are not allowed to gather dung to make cooking fires. There is no water and we are not accepted by the community. Some of our children go to the local school, but are not accepted. Recently when Minister Julies was in Welkom, I approached him about a place for us to stay. He told me that there was no place for Bushmen, unless they were stock farmers" (statement by Koos Kruiper, in Surplus People's Project, 1990 Appendix.).

This statement needs to be contextualized. The Johannesburg _Sunday Times_ (March 15, 1987) carried a feature article entitled "At 95, King Reg of the Red Dunes looks for a new bride to keep his tribe alive". The article was instigated by a Kuruman tour operator, Lokkie Henning, who claimed to have found a band of 24 Bushmen all subsisting off Regopostaan's government pension in 1983. Because of his own financial problems he was going public in order to raise funds to buy some land for the Bushmen. "We want to take them back in time.to a time when there were no fences and no laws to restrict them". He had won the trust of Reg's son, Dawid who had worked as a tracker in the KNP for twenty years and would thus serve as gatekeeper. "The tribe will allow me to take parties to their territory and show the visitors how they live, but they don't want any interference".

In May, 1987 I received a circular letter from Mr Henning. He was working with the "Cradle of Mankind" and had rescued some forty Bushmen from the settlement at Mier, although he claimed only 24 were "pure-bred". "Sensing their historical value to South Africa and also a deep sadness at their hopeless plight", he had undertaken several fundraising activities largely through the media and some air time he gained on the NBC had persuaded him to take them to the United States. I continued to receive occasional cyclostyled "Progress Reports". Fund raising was a perennial disappointment. Regopstaan and his sister Anna were now running "field schools" to ensure the survival of "traditional veld-skills". To challenge the belief that they were not real Bushmen he had enlisted the aid of some ethnologists. Finally the government had given him permission to keep them under his own personal supervision on some state land. Appearing on a popular South African television program he had challenged the relevant Colored Cabinet Minister who declined to respond. The _Weekly Mail_ reported that, on the show, Bushmen had appeared wearing skins and that Henning had claimed: "You are talking here about a reasonably wild type of person. He loves nature, he's a man of the desert, he wants to feel the softness of the sand dunes underneath his feet". They had been kicked out of the KGP and resettled at Welkom where "they drew their water from troughs through which thin dogs meandered, until a neighboring farmer changed his mind. 'I told them they couldn't take that water anymore because my animals were going thirsty'". The idea was, he claimed, that Bushmen should work for the local Colored farmers and thus alleviate the labor shortage as White farmers found Bushmen to be lazy and drunk. Questioned, one of the Bushmen on the show "stutteringly revealed that he had been paid R1.70 and a tin of sugar for seven months labor" ("The Desert Folk Trek Across the Carpet", (_Weekly Mail_, January 29 1988).

The last Progress Report I received was dated September l988. The highlight was a visit by: ".. a couple of Government Ethnologists who stated that the majority of the 50 tribe members were Bushmen. They had been slated as not being Bushmen because some had worked
(they are noted as a non- working race) but then on the other hand they are loafers because they don't work! A few of them may have mixed blood but this is the fault of legal systems and boundaries prohibiting them from traveling .. to find and mix with their own kind ..." I suggested to Mr Henning that he contact an international advocacy group, _Survival International_ who then wrote to the Director of the National Parks Board protesting the eviction of San from the Gemsbok National Park and pointing out that such an action was contrary to IUCN guidelines.

Almost on script, the Director responded by denying that they were Bushmen because they were so "intermarried". Moreover, they had "completely lost their traditional life-styles of hunter-gathering and speak Afrikaans". They had "filtered into the area" but were "unable to live off the land like their true San ancestors, they squatted near Twee Rivieren (the Park Headquarters)" and lived on charity and handouts from visiting tourists in later years (Ignoring perhaps that this was indeed a form of foraging behavior). He denied that they had been resettled. They had moved on their own free will to join relatives outside the Park and "the lure of western civilized life style proved too strong". The Director concluded that: "... the only true San surviving in Southern Africa today are those in the remote regions of the deep Kalahari (in Botswana), in
Bushmanland and South Eastern Angola where they do not make regular contact with the insidious degrading effects .. of western cultural influence....Any attempt at 'civilizing them', by well-meaning 'do-gooders' will have the same tragic consequences as with the last San remnants in South Africa." The television appearances had an impact. A group of Cape entrepreneurs were so taken with the plight of the Bushmen that they offered them a haven on their private reserve Kagga Kamma in the Cedarberg and they moved there on January 15, 1991 where, advised by a couple of anthropologists, they were allowed to demonstrate their "traditional" culture to up- market tourists. Slick marketing ensued, including a Cape wine, _!Um Hap_ , in their honor ("a portion of the sale of this wine will go to Bushman preservation"), dinner in a Bushman "cave" and sleeping in slickly derived "Bushman huts" but with all the creature comforts affluent tourists would require. Hylton White has written
incisively about this episode (White 1995). By 1999, when the Kruiper group decided to leave Kagga Kamma and return to the Kalahari, the management was so dependent upon them that they had to hire "Coloureds" to pretend to be "Pure Bushmen"(Independent On Line
June 30, 1999)!

The Kagga Kamma publicity also attracted a number of White activists who took up their cause and helped slot them into the global indigenous rights network. By 1994, Dawid Kruiper was invited to address the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Rights in Geneva. Here he and other Southern African indigenes rapidly learnt the global universalizing discourse of the value of "indigeneity". Perhaps the most striking example of this is possibly the continual reference to being able "to visit the graves of the ancestors". Most ethnographers who worked with the San report that when a person dies the group moves as far away as possible from where the deceased is buried. Especially noteworthy in facilitating such discourses was the formation in 1996 of WIMSA, (the Working-group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa), and SASI (South African San Institute), organizations which worked to empower indigenous minorities in the region. They did this by helping such groups
develop networks to other indigenes in North America, Europe and Australia, assisted them with legal representation and facilitated access to development agencies, both governmental and non- governmental.

Dawid Kruiper is very much a contested leader, not only by Park officials, but by others who define themselves as Bushmen and who dispute his claim to authenticity by pointing out that he does not speak N/u, a near extinct San language. Visitors to the area, journalists, academics and tourists have found him to be well aware of his celebrity status as a Bushman and that he uses this to his own advantage. Visiting journalists are charged R500 for an interview. This, he says, is what he would earn as a traditional healer for a consultation. But realizing the importance of the Press in the making of his celebrity he usually settles for less after haggling. He charges R20 to pose in white man's clothes and R55 in
"traditional skins". One recent journalist asked him if the commercial romanticizing of the San was not simply a continuation of their historical obliteration, that tourism was the final nail in the coffin, "He shrugs it off, saying: 'That's all in the past'. But his answer is too brief, however casual. It suggests deep waters that he does not care to fish with a stranger" (Schmidt 2000).

My son once defined a raisin as a grape whose soul had been squeezed out. This video is very much a raisin.

References

Gordon, Robert J. (1995). "Saving the Last South African Bushmen".
_Critical Arts_ 9(2):28-48

Gordon, Robert J. (1999). "Scene(s) at the Exhibition: Bain's 'Bushmen' at the Empire Exhibition, 1936" in _Africans in Show business_ B. Lindfors (ed.) Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Kloppers, Hannes. (1970). _Gee My 'n Man_ Afrikaanse-Pers, Johannesburg.

Rassool, Ciraj and Patricia Hayes. (2002). "Science and the Spectacle: /Khanako's South Africa, 1936- 7" in Wendy Woodward, Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley (eds.), _Deep Histories: Gender and Colonialism in South Africa _ Rodopi, Amdsterdam (forthcoming)

Schmidt, Michael, (2000). "Reaping the desert", _Sunday Times_ August 20.

Schmidt, Michael, (2001). "A People in their own words" _Sunday Times_ October 14.

Surplus People's Project, (1990). _If one can live, all must live _. Appendix. SPP, Cape Town.

White, Hylton, (1995), _In the Tradition of the Forefathers_. University of Cape Town Press, Cape Town.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan

Date: 1986

Extracted and revised from Tomaselli, K.G., Williams, A., Steenveld, L. and Tomaselli, R.E. (1986). Myth, Race and Power: South Africans Images on Film and TV. Belville: Anthropos.    

TESTAMENT TO THE BUSHMEN

30 mins X 6. TV series. Narrated by Laurens van der Post. Directed by Paul Bellinger.

TOPICS: Anthropology, Jung, Kalahari, San

USES: H, U, D, A.

SYNOPSIS
The series is a follow-up to The Lost World of the Kalahari (1954). Extracts from this film are used to illustrate certain sequences in Testament to the Bushmen.

The first episode is an introduction where Van der Post outlines his purpose. He introduces viewers to the San and sketches historical background. The second episode, Children of the Desert, deals with problems associated with survival in this environment. Episodes Three and Four (Man the Hunter) concentrate on the roles of females and males in the San socio-economic system. The penultimate episode, Of Gods and Medicine Men, deals with ritual, dance, mythology and the role and function of the medicine man in a social context. The final episode, The Beginning of the End, outlines the contemporary plight of the San following their assimilation and forced insertion into the Western money economy. The young men have gone to work on farms, and are employed as trackers in the South African Defence Force. One is even shown driving a Mercedes Benz, the reward for being a Minister of the Turnhalle interim government in South West Africa. The women are tempted with prostitution and often eke out an existence as lowly paid farm labor. This episode shows the permanent dwellings, the portable radios, inadequate water supplies and destitution brought upon them by `civilization'.

Rock art is used throughout to sketch historical background. Alternatively, it is offered as tangible evidence on which to base complex interpretations of San mythology, ritual and world view.

CRITIQUE
Testament to the Bushmen both `tells a story' and `shows us something'. The Series is Van der Post's personal voyage and testament of a people he knew as a child. He makes reference to his grandfather who was partially instrumental in the demise of the `Bushmen' following several massacres in the eastern Transvaal before he was born. As a young boy Van der Post remembers making an entry in his diary promising he would one day return to the Bushmen and "beg their pardon for what had happened in the past". Remorse is a consistent theme. This intense emotion is indicated in what he says, voice inflection, facial expression and in his constant use of Biblical metaphors through which he tries to elevate the `Bushmen' to an almost divine and innocent status. The Series is true to some of the most important attributes of ethnographic film, including holism, whole bodies in whole acts, and contextualization. Socially contextualized events include the educative value of games, such as melon tossing, stick throwing, beadmaking, the collection and use of tubers, collecting water from tree hollows, a hunt and the sharing of meat.

Van der Post's sincerity and emotional involvement in the series is mediated through both the tone of his voice and the sometimes complex metaphorical use of language. However, this emotion is almost self-reflexive as he leaves no doubt that his presence in the film is more than simply an anthropological exercise -it is a personal crusade as well.

There is, however, a marked degree of mythologizing and romanticizing of the San in some of the earlier episodes.

Adapted from Tomaselli, K.G., Williams, A., Steenveld, L. and Tomaselli, R.E. (1986). Myth, Race and Power: South Africans Imaged on Film and TV. Bellville: Anthropos Publishers

Further Reading
Wilmsen, E. (1995). "Primitive Politics in Sanctified Landscapes: The Ethnographic Fictions of Laurens van der Post", Journal of Southern African Studies, 21, 201-223.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan

Date: 1986

Extracted and revised from Tomaselli, K.G., Williams, A., Steenveld, L. and Tomaselli, R.E. (1986). Myth, Race and Power: South Africans Images on Film and TV. Belville: Anthropos.    

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SIGN

Afrikaners who were the object of the critical gaze in British anti-apartheid films were not powerless in the propaganda war that raged during the 1970s and 1980s. They too had documentary film to argue their own cases. Thus the films, To Act a Lie, A Place Called Soweto, White Roots in Africa, The Solution to the Dilemma of a Plural Society, and so on became part of a salvo in the struggle for the appropriation of images by which South Africa could be re-presented to a skeptical world.

The intentions of To Act a Lie as a counter-argument are clear. This film aimed to counter the image of South Africa presented in films by "various anti-South African producers who are pirating the South African scene" (Narrator). To Act a Lie set out to accomplish two particular tasks: to look at film as images of reality, questioning their relation to that reality; and to create an impression of reality (the `true reality', as opposed to the `false reality' of hostile film makers) by presenting images of the `real' South Africa.

The director of To Act a Lie tried to solve the `problem' of foreign misrepresentation by using monochrome to connote the distorted imagery or visual lies of foreign film makers. Conversely, colour is used to denote `truth' or `reality'. Thus a single code has been split so that one aspect of it represents `image', and the other, `reality'. The implications of this intellectual juggling of colour is that the director is trying to draw a visual distinction between `true' and `false' images as though they were mutually exclusive categories, thus denying the single concept `image' as one which is informed by a particular ideology.

Using elaborated codes from film discourse, the narrator castigates anti-South African film makers for the:

wilful deception through the exploitation of subjects and set-up scenes [which] has made a mockery of the techniques of filming and editing which were once the stock-in-trade of documentary film making.

By acknowledging "techniques of filming and editing", the film makers are acknowledging cinematic practice, More specifically, they are acknowledging that the cinema is an intervention into `reality' which necessitates a mediating ideology, and not simply a recording of reality. However, having made this assertion vis-a-vis anti-apartheid films, they then proceed to construct a film which both denies ideology, attempting to present image as reality; and which simultaneously uses the very "techniques of filming and editing" which they have discredited.

The debate about image and reality is presented in voice-over narration and words on the screen. The text quoted in the previous paragraph is rolled up the screen with white lettering on a black background. As we see these signs appear, we hear a newscaster-type voice reading the words. The inflection of his voice connotes that what audiences will hear will be the `truth' -- impartial and informed. Then follow the titles of anti-apartheid films, for example, Apartheid: Twentieth Century Slavery, The End of Dialogue, The Defiant White Tribe, and finally, Last Grave at Dimbaza. The camera zooms into a close-up of this last title and metaphorically stamps across it in red and yellow lettering: To Act a Lie. Drums roll and a symbol clashes, indicating the beginning of our `drama'.

Music is an unobtrusive code, but it is very effectively used in To Act a Lie. Apart from informing us subliminally of the direction that a particular sequence will take, the music also provides the continuity between visually different sequences and breaks in the voice-over. However, the prime function seems to be within sequences: the kind of music indicates the kind of reaction we should have to a particular sequence indicates the `subversive', clandestine and `untrue' nature of the monochromatic film of the anti-apartheid, suggested as `anti-South Africa', film makers. The music thereby signals that viewers should reject such alien discourses. In contrast, the sophisticated night club jazz is bright and engaging, thus inviting the audience to participate in the particular sequence.

The use of music is just one of the "techniques of film making which is the stock-in-trade of documentary film making" described by the narrator of To Act a Lie. Film music is one of the most ideologically laden codes, as most audiences are not consciously aware of listening to the music. Thus, whatever music they do hear while watching a film, is deemed to be `obvious'/`natural' for the particular sequence.

Music is used in conjunction with two other codes: visual codes and voice-over narration. Each of these has an internal logic which is cleverly constructed, and they cohere to create `cinema'. Thus, there is a constant interplay between codes, so that the voice-over might end on, or emphasize a particular word, which becomes the entry point to the next visual sequence. An example of this is the sequence dealing with opportunities for `blacks'. The following voice-over presents a Gods-eye view: "if he's lucky he grows up only to collect garbage bags in the back alleys of white suburbs or to work in the kitchens of white South Africans". This statement introduces the visual sequence which shows, in colour, a typing class/business studies class/modelling (at this point the sophisticated jazz music starts)/a `black' businessman dealing with a client/showjumping/horse racing - -`black' jockey/beauty competition/a jazz group playing the music that we have been hearing /ballroom dancing/bar scene. It must be noted that the voice-over stops during the sequence, there seems to be a `silence', except for the unobtrusive music. The effect of this interweave of codes is that the visual predominates: we are left alone to see for ourselves - -and in this way ideology is denied: images parade as `reality'.

The `principle' of `see with your own eyes' is also exemplified in A Place Called Soweto, where we are taken into the township on what appears to be a `fact-finding mission'. As in To Act a Lie , the fallacy is that of the medium: that what we see is `real'. However, we should remember that what is visible on the screen are signifiers, iconic signs which resemble their referents, not the signifieds or objects themselves.

Two kinds of verbal codes are used: the `anonymous' narration of the Voice of Authority, knowledge, impartial truth (the codes of the newscasting voice), and the assigned voices of `people in the community who should know'. Their blackness makes them of the `black' community, but their class position (bourgeois and petty bourgeois) puts them in a very different relation to the mass of `blacks' and to capital. Thus, these individuals are supposed to be seen as metonyms for all `blacks'; indexically, however, the image conveys the idea of smoothly functioning capitalism. Another assigned voice is that of Dr Chris Barnard (who also appears in White Roots in Africa). As a world-renowned heart surgeon he functions indexically as the authority on medicine and health affairs. But he also functions in the kind of way that film stars do: recognition and familiarity reassure the viewer. His presence thus seems `natural'. He is seen as `reality', a signified, and not as `image', or signifier. Through this process of naturalization, the ideological reasons for his appearance on the screen are easily not questioned by audiences.

Each of the interviewees in A Place Called Soweto (Lie?) is used to convey a particular relation between the verbal and visual codes. The film is a very tightly constructed argument which is based on five premises:

1. films present images of reality . These images, however, can be manipulated to distort reality. Proof of this is presented by Mr Justice Tshungu, television and radio personality who describes a Dutch TV presentation of a debate between himself and the SWAPO president. He notes that: "this indeed surprised me very greatly, that an image which I was party to the previous day could change in such a great way that I could not recognise it the next day".
2. Anti-South African films present false images of reality (shown in the visual code by monochromatic film).
3. The `anonymous' authoritative voice deals with the false (negative) image of reality, and is treated as `image' . This relates to what South Africa's detractors say, and has a `linear' relation to the black and white visual code which portrays these `false images'. However,
4. this voice also has a `contrapuntal' relation to the `true' visual images -- in colour - of South Africa which the film presents. Thus the film proceeds in a `staggered' fashion: voice-over about `false images' said in a cynical and supercilious tone which seems to scoff at the `false images', while it smugly illustrates the `true images', so that the viewer ends up receiving a verbal-visual irony.
5. The assigned voices proceed from the `black' signifiers who represent examples of the positive image of South Africa . These verbal and visual colour codes thus work in concert to present `reality'. The film maker would, in these sequences, deny the image aspect of film, thus employing "techniques of film making and editing" which give the impression of reality, thereby denying the presence of the ideology of the film makers.

Having clarified the form of the film is made, we now examine content. To Act a Lie unfolds by dealing with the various `issues' mentioned in the anti-apartheid films. These include the land question, housing, education, `black' development, health care, and homeland independence.

Having introduced the idea that foreign films present `lies', by the camera zoom in on the title To Act Lie stamped over the title of an anti-South African film, Last Grave at Dimbaza, the film then opens with a black and white sequence showing shots from these films. We see a close up of a grave "of a black child ... whom a pirate producer ... rigged or true?" intones the voice-over. The commentary does not deal with the relation the image to `reality', it simply denies the existence of a signified and tackles the way in which "pirating producers have stripped the black man of his dignity before the audiences of the world". The director thus sets himself up as the presenter of the `dignity' of the `black' man. The film purports to speak for the `black' person in South Africa in contrast to the anti-South African film makers who have `exploited' the `black' person by appropriating images of them as "hewers of wood or poor uneducated labourers". The implication is that the film will present the `real' `black' person in South Africa, not the cliched poverty-stricken African, but ... The camera then cuts to a colour sequence in a `black' supermarket, where well-dressed people are shopping. The music is bright and jazzy and suggests energy and action. The camera is also on the move, reinforcing this sense of dynamism and contemporaneity. This is in stark contrast to the previous black and white sequence in which we saw a series of static, poor quality shots which gave the impression of having been taken from the archives, or of having been clandestinely shot -- casting doubt on the legitimacy of the footage.

The film then proceeds to 'debunk' some of the myths presented by foreign film makers. The most important issue, the land question is dealt with first. This is crucial to any analysis of South African politics, for it is the focal point regarding the legitimacy of 'white' hegemony in the country. We are introduced to this sequence, first by electronic 'space' music, and we than see an icon of the globe spinning in space as the camera then zooms into South Africa on the globe, while the voice-over informs us that "indubitably part of this world, the Republic of South Africa, is a microcosm ..." of the world, but that certain film makers have only presented the negative side. "Part of this world" is a key phrase, because South Africa is constantly being boycotted by the rest of the world for its apartheid policies. However, the portrayal of negative images is followed by a juxtaposition of shots showing a woman and a child walking down the road -- in dreadful quality black and white film -- with a shot of a 'multiracial' party in which sophisticated-looking women are elegantly dressed. The music becomes jazzy and alive and there is rapid cutting to icons of a clover leaf road system, harbor, SAA jet taking off, and so on. The voice-over describes the stature of South Africa: "Ranked among the 20 most developed nations of the world and the only truly industrialised state on the African continent, aligned with the West and avowedly inseparable from its African heritage ...", yet it is this state that is singled out and castigated for its policies. This is a classic sequence in which the voice-over provides the negatives of which South Africa has been accused, while the visual code provides the positive images. For example: "poor health service shot over medical technology and patient whose temperature is being taken; "starvation wages" over a picture of a `black' bank or building society teller and customers; "denial of human rights" over a 'black' lawyer in a courtroom; "hovel-like housing" over a shot of a businessman leaving a grand house and climbing into a posh car; "keeping the black man from advancing" over shots of a 'black' man driving a tractor.

Finally, everything "negative" is said to be "lumped under one word --apartheid," and we see a boardroom meeting of `black' and `white' men. The camera zooms in on the `black' man who is talking -- indexical of his control. Despite the fact that the camera very nonchalantly seems to be finding these scenes as if by accident, the formal act of zooming in betrays the presence of the film maker-- a sign for the observant amongst the audience that what the film maker reveals can be no more than an image. The particular images chosen are supposed to be metonyms, but they are, in fact, the exceptions which have been singled out for display.

The sequence started with an icon of the globe; the camera zoomed into South Africa. It is shown in its "plurality", as the "microcosm" of the world. These early shots thus provide a context in which the land question is raised:

Anti-South African detractors say that 87% of the country is reserved for white occupation and a mere 13% for black occupation ... This quantitative instead of qualitative summing up disregards the fact that a vast area of South Africa consists of mountains and semi-desert terrain where only a few white people have managed to eke out a living and where no black man wants to live or has lived in the past -- let alone staking a claim to the land.

This commentary coincides with a map of South Africa on which first the mountains, then a wet coastal strip, and then black marking representing industrialised areas are demarcated. The narration informs viewers that "only 100 000 square kilometers of the coastal strip climate and that half of this is owned by blacks, and that the industrialised areas cut across both `white' and `black' land, all of which makes nonsense of the critics' argument that 87% is `white' owned, and only 13% is `black' owned. This explanation tries to rationalize the existing land distribution. However, the explanation -- the mapping of description onto tautology --contains only the information present in the description. The employment of this quasi-scientific method testifies to the film maker's need to challenge alternative views regarding the distribution of land. (The land sequence was a recurring element in state propaganda films and is presented with varying degrees of accuracy/falsity. See Tomaselli, (1980b: 13) for a brief analysis of Solution to the Dilemma of a Plural Society).

Education is another issue dealt with in the film. Once more the narration which represents Authority, Objectivity and Knowledge is used to introduce the sequence, providing the negative image of South Africa presented by foreign film makers: "a popular statement is that by law, blacks unlike whites have to pay for their children's education, and that it is inferior". The director then cuts to a mid-long-shot and then a mid-close-up of the Rector of the University of the North sitting in a very spacious and opulent office. He then proceeds to introduce himself and describe his professorial qualifications (5 degrees) which "I owe entirely to the facilities that have been provided for black people within this country". This is said over descriptive panning shots of the campus, showing its magnificent modernity, interior shots showing students working, the library and so on. The voice-over and the icon are used to provide a living example of educational opportunities for `blacks' in South Africa. The way in which he is displayed and the extensive colour shots of the campus testify to the up-to-dateness of the proof. Once more, this particular example is used as a metonym for the educational opportunities of all `blacks'. However, as John Fiske (1981: 98) notes:

The arbitrariness of this selection is often disguised or at least ignored, and the metonym is made to appear a natural index and thus is given the status of `the real', and `not the unquestioned'.

It is Fiske's contention that the selection of a metonym from a given paradigm, although `arbitrary', is based on the cultural value or myth that the communicator wishes to present. This principle is seen time and again in state propaganda films. In A Place Called Soweto, for example, it is evident in the sequences which deal with technical education, hospital services, child care, sport and commerce.

To Act a Lie ends with a sequence which deals with the "plurality" of South African society. The authoritative voice-over informs us that "South Africa has a society so complex and interwoven, that by emphasizing the negative, without showing South Africa's other image, makes any producer guilty of political and intellectual dishonesty". Then follows a montage of shots showing a busy urban street scene with `black' and `white' pedestrians, a `black' graduation ceremony, and tribal dances. These are icons of the "other image" of South Africa which oppositional film makers have ignored. However, given that the premise on which these images function is metonymic, we can see that the producer is also guilty of "intellectual dishonesty".

The portrayal of South Africa as a "plural society" "composed of twelve different ethnic groups, all within a common frontier, each with a state in the country, each with its own identity and particular characteristics and political aspirations ..." is the basis of the argument regarding `black' citizenship in South Africa. Thus, by providing `blacks' with "states" within South Africa, the film is able to rationalize the denial of the franchise and citizenship to `black' South Africans. The viewer is treated to a visual display of "independence celebrations" with much pomp and military ceremony (also seen in films like Venda: 'n Nuwe Staat).The authoritative narration informs viewers that:

The world has seen devastating wars in which blood flowed for the sake of independence and freedom. Without spilling a drop of ink to sign away freedom and independence to two of its black nations so far, South Africa has set an example which is still out of reach of the United Nations. This is a rather crude way of getting at the world body, an international forum through which official international opposition to South Africa was lodged. The final image of South Africa we are left with is of BJ Vorster and President Matanzima shaking hands. This shot is frozen, and the film ends, leaving the viewer with the clasped hands: an index of the success of the `separate but equal' discourse of apartheid.

Despite the apparently discursive nature of the text, and the way in which it tries to deal with both film-as-image, and image-as-reality, it ends in a very positive way as both verbal and visual codes cohere. The concluding sequence is presented as a concluding statement in a court of law, and the voice chosen for this sequence is the Voice of Authority:

"... the exploitation of subjects to create the impression of blacks as only hewers of wood ... is ... TO ACT A LIE

"... to portray the black man as a person stripped of his rights is TO ACT A LIE

"... to portray the granting of independence to black nations as cosmetic is ... TO ACT A LIE.

The repetition of the words "to act a lie" is a reinforcement of the original icon on the screen, and one can almost hear the thud as the Voice of Authority stamps this message on the viewer's consciousness. Here, the verbal code is supported by colour images of `blacks' succeeding in various spheres. Thus, we are left with a double negative which leaves the audience in no doubt as to what the `real' situation in South Africa is. The ultimate irony is that these `blacks' are signifiers, not signifieds, and as such are NOT metonyms for all `black' South Africans. The are bourgeois and petty bourgeois exceptions which racial capitalism creates in order to reproduce itself. As the `black' people in the film are signifiers, they are images of reality, and thus if the film purports to portray 'reality' in South Africa then it is doing so "TO ACT A LIE".

In the White Tribe of Africa, "white" is synonymous with `Afrikaner', and the social and political history of South Africa is interpreted from this false premise. Thus Afrikaners become the scapegoat for all that is wrong in South Africa.

Presence/Absence of English-Speaking South Africans
The equation of `white' with `Afrikaner' is correctly challenged by producers working under the auspices of the Department of Information -- a government body -- and as such they represent the National Party point of view. In a film like To Act a Lie, the challenge is directed at the epithet, `racist', that is applied to Afrikaners. The film thus tries to show how much the South African government does for `blacks'. `Blacks' thus become the object of the gaze in the South African state -- to prove the falseness of the image of Afrikaners presented by series such as The White Tribe of Africa. In order to achieve what is logically impossible, To Act a Lie operates using the exceptional case, so that as signifiers they appear to function metonymically.

In a film such as White Roots in Africa, a different approach is used. Here, semantics and false logic are employed to present `whites' in South Africa. The film shifts between talking about the English and Afrikaners when in fact, it is presenting a history of capital on the sub-continent. Terms such as `English', `Afrikaner', `white people', `ethnic national groups', `Asians', `Indian community', `coloured', `brown', `black', `nation states', `our peoples' and `population communities' are used to present a multiplicity of differences in the people and their relation to the state and the South African economy. However, when the economy is described, then the possessive adjective "our" is used by National Party spokesmen or men who represent industrial or finance capital. It is in this context that "unity", "collaboration" and "togetherness" are used, and in this context that the narration challenges foreign misconceptions: "The white man is often described as a racist ... bible puncher ... member of the defiant white tribe of Africa". What was a structured absence in The White Tribe of Africa-- the English-speaking `white' South Africans -- becomes subsumed under "white" in White Roots in Africa. English-Afrikaner unity is presented as being achieved through `culture', which is defined in relation to `civilization' and is embodied in such practices as ballet, and classical orchestra music as opposed to the structured absence, the 'primitive', as represented by 'black' cultural practices. Thus these practices by definition become 'white': 'black' ballet is inconceivable (This argument also applies to South Africa's Performing Arts).

Conclusion
From an analysis of the above mentioned films and television series it becomes apparent that each is a monologue, an attempt to portray and `explain' the South African `reality'. They go much further than ethnographic films which attempt to reveal, describe and portray cultures in relation to written anthropology or other body of knowledge, rather than in relation to the political criticisms repetitively articulated in the world's mass media. Neither is the explanation offered in the above films `reality' or `true', whether of the South African or the British variety. As Bill Nichols (1982: 266) notes:

Explanation operates at a remove, at a different logical typing. Hence explanation, like a map, is not the territory. There is a gap between it and the observable phenomena, the pro-filmic event it sets out to explain, a gap that can act as a fissure in the indexical sign. This gap involves recognition of the sense in which there is more to understanding a situation or event than meets the eye (either in terms of the cinematic apparatus and the production of meaning or the event and its attendant explanation).

Thus it is evident that the documentary, even when infused with ethnographic discourse such as `tribe', `community', `peoples' and `roots', do not guarantee `truth', despite the fact that its signifiers are taken from objective (ideologically determined) reality. There is no unique, one-to-one relation between signifiers and signifieds. The film maker produces a discourse which identifies and positions the viewer in a particular way, so that a preferred reading of the discourse is encoded into the text. However, in the process of semiosis the viewer decodes the text in relation to a theoretical and ideological matrix which is distinct from any specific observation or views presented in the text. The way in which the text is both encoded and decoded will depend on the fit between pre-existent views and the observations presented. Nichols (1981: 267) sees the fit as being "governed by the principle of tautology when scrutinized formally, and by the principle of purpose when examined contextually". Thus, `truth' can be traced by the relation between text and purpose, rather than pre-ordained absolutes. Indeed, it is by scrutinising purpose, founded upon historical and ideological imperatives, that one may approach `truth'.

All of the films and television series discussed in this chapter display a marginal degree of ethnographic understanding about the societies which they are respectively trying to expose. Their intentions are propagandistic, their purposes are propagandistic. What separates the South African films from the British television series rests on the consciousness of technique and form. Where The White Tribe of Africa merely glides along within the conventions of the BBC television documentary, the South African films question those conventions either implicitly or explicitly, and then offer a series of counter-signs and codes to discredit the foreign interpretation, while using the conventions of structured propaganda documentary.

The struggle is not over ethnographic understanding, it was a political struggle over the appropriation of cultural images.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1997
   

THE STRUGGLE FOR SOUTH AFRICA

1990. 90 minutes. BBC (UK) ABC (Sydney) and PBS (USA)

TOPICS: Peace Studies, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Politics, Church Organizations, Apartheid, South Africa.

USES: U, G and V

This documentary contains graphic scenes of violence, dead bodies, murders being committed on camera and may not be suitable for young audiences. The film illustrates a short time-span of a few months in 1990 only and requires an introduction.

LONGER CRITIQUE
The Struggle for South Africa is an in-depth account of factional violence that emerged with a new intensity after the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. The program documents the 1990 clashes between the Zulu Inkatha movement and black non-or anti-Inkatha groupings, then examines the extreme right-wing para-military organization, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), linking the right-wing to what then State President FW De Klerk called "the Third Force". This force was thought to consist of reactionary whites who had allegedly worked with Inkatha in the Transvaal Province to kill African National Congress (ANC) supporters. This is one of the few anti-apartheid TV programs/films which permits access to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who lost US media visibility after the release of Mandela. Mandela had almost exclusively captured the national and international media headlines from Buthelezi.

Interviewer David Dimbleby is broadly sympathetic to Mandela's position within the ANC. Other positions, like Buthelezi's, were thus seen to be normatively deviant. Dimbelby's questions to Buthelezi were extremely provocative, taking the ANC line as the norm. Many of Dimbleby's questions were phrased as "but the ANC says ..." . Buthelezi nevertheless showed extraordinary intellectual agility in fending off Dimbleby and coming across in the program as a leader with a massive, militant but disciplined, popular mandate. Conversely, Dimbleby never contested Mandela or ANC spokesmen with the phrase, "This is what Inkatha says ...". Neither was Mandela interrogated as aggressively as was Buthelezi. He was not asked, for example, about the degree to which the ANC was prepared to accept the right of other organizations to contest its power base. Neither was Mandela probingly asked why he would not personally talk to Buthelezi at that time. That the ANC was losing grassroots support from radicalized youth was skirted, and a youth leader surrogated for Mandela when he was asked whether Mandela approved of the youths' belligerency.

The program also marginalizes other political groupings like the PAC, AZAPO, COSATU, the Unity Movement. None of these are mentioned. The UDF is mentioned once, but considerable time is given to De Klerk's National Party and the AWB. But within the NP, neither the Ministers of Law and Order nor the Defence Force were interviewed. Given the program's emphasis on the role of the police and military in the black townships, these omissions are curious. The Struggle for South Africa seems to rely very heavily on the cult of personality for its information, the leader of the NP, Mandela of the ANC, Koos van der Merwe of the Conservative Party and Eugene Terreblanche of the AWB, as well as Buthelezi.

Middle ground, liberal and ANC-supporting whites are similarly absent from the documentary. Whites are portrayed as the NP faithful, and of the extreme right-wing.

Dimbelby, who also made The White Tribe of Africa (1972), exonerates British colonialism as a causative factor in the present conflict by claiming in his narration that apartheid had only existed after the National Party came to power in 1948. The contemporary setting and narrow focus of this program, however, does not require that Dimbelby restate this point. He simply assumed it.

Dimbleby is trying to get to grips with a structural explanation. But using the techniques of libertarian journalism undercuts this more process-orientated approach. He focuses on individuals like Solly Madlala, who has no political affiliation, and others who do. In this way, Dimbleby perhaps effectively humanizes the conflict through the experiences of individuals in a shockingly dramatic way. But this approach removes the interview away from non-political sources of evidence. Had Dimbleby cited statistics collected by Natal University's violence monitoring groups, or the Legal Resources Centre, or even the courts, on the complicity by Inkatha members in causing violence, Buthelezi might not have found it quite so easy to explain away such systemically collated evidence by a variety of organizations.

The program does hint that not all blacks are affiliated into the ANC or Inkatha as the popular media tend to do, but it does not explain the fact that people are forced to take sides irrespective of their preferences. When talking about the hostels, ethnicity, race and tribe, we also need a sense of the internal dynamics of how groupings hostile to each other form, and how reluctant recruits are swept into an "orgy of violence" beyond their control and choice of participation. Dimbleby does ask Mandela about an actual random murder of a "Zulu speaker" witnessed by the camera perpetrated, says Dimbleby, by ANC comrades. Mandela distances himself from what must have been a vague inquiry by asking questions about who the film crew represented; how can anyone make sense of a random attack, which must be understood in terms of the structural violence of apartheid itself. One wonders whether Mandela is talking about the same incident shown so graphically on the visual track. But one must ask, just what is happening? Seeing a scene of a number of youths attacking another, with narration filling in the more gruesome details not seen by the camera or edited out, really does not explain anything.

The interviewees on the whole from the extreme right to the extreme left exhibit a here-before never seen degree of subtlety in dealing with the media. Buthelezi comes off as the most sophisticated. Neither are viewers treated to the well worn media stereotypes of Afrikaners mouthing indescribably racist cliches that litter so many other documentaries on South Africa, including Dimbleby's.

The government's position on not wanting to become a powerless minority was not connected to the causes of black violence. The narrator's mention of `tribal' conflicts could evoke the mythical white Western interpretation of `black-on-black' violence and black savages. However, what The Struggle for South Africa reveals are the many layered impulses that permeate the nature of political violence in South Africa.

In the end, the conflict appears to take the form of inter-tribal strife, but is not reduced to this by the narration. Overall The Struggle for South Africa is a significant development in TV investigatory journalism which at times breaks through to structural explanations without losing the essential drama of the situation. But is unabashedly one-sided in its support for the ANC position.

Further Reading

Tomaselli, R.E. 1991: "Media Images of Violence: South Africa's 'Hidden Hand'", Covert Action, No 36, pp. 22-26.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1997)

Author: Dye, Michael
Date: 1998
   

Afrique, Je Te Plumerai reveals the patchwork nature of the urban areas depicted in Cameroon. Boasting a quite modern skyscape, the city is nevertheless barren and harsh on closer scrutiny. Enclosed, undeveloped lots alternate with glass office buildings; the empty, windswept squares have become camps and impromptu bazaars for the homeless. Nearly everyone on the street is poorly dressed, carrying bundles which they clutch as though they own nothing else in the world. These countless people seem to be constantly on the move, restive, both anxious and tense with suppressed hostility. The mix of classes that one may expect in any modern capitalist city is conspicuously absent. The juxtaposition of technology and poverty, industrialization and want, gives the city of Yaounde the appearance of a project abandoned in mid-stride. It is evident that the contrast runs deep, that there is conflict between the two disparate realms. What is most indicative of its source is the relative calm that prevails, the overwhelming reticence of those depicted, in spite of the desolate aspects of their existence. The filmmaker, Jean-Marie Teno, sets the stage with this opening montage; his goal is the elucidation of the root of the problems besetting Cameroon.

The problem most readily identifiable in the urban situation in Cameroon, as in many other African countries, is the absence of democratic institutions. In the Western history of development, particularly after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a constant agitation over centuries by the lowest economic classes for the implementation of equality was the guiding force behind the tempering of the worst abuses of capitalism. Here, the lack of such agents has allowed development to continue unabated, with little or no respect for the lives of the inhabitants. Provision is made for those already successful; the multitude are left to fend for themselves in a place where subsistence alone is difficult.

The magnificent future promised by independence is remembered in dramatic and nostalgic archival clips, parades and ecstatic cheering all the more disconcerting when compared to the present day. The enemy is no longer France, however. The National Conference for Democracy, once guaranteed to the public, has been postponed indefinitely. The 1991 case of Celestin Monga illustrates a new power structure, one that has continued to apply tactics perfected by the colonial powers, utilizing institutions earlier installed by them for the same purpose of control of an oppressed population. In response to Monga's open criticism of the government, President Biya detained the writer and suspended the media. Subsequent protests were suppressed. The government is insidious in its maintenance of the semblance of democracy. A writer or filmmaker can communicate with the public, so long as s/he bears in mind the potential cost, measured both in cash and personal risk. A scene depicting the blatant extortion levelled upon the filmmaker by the Director of National Television reveals the preferred gambit of the regime, to avoid violence and absorb money. It is safe to assume that other tithes were paid in the process of bringing the film to television. Expense, censorship, and danger shield the government from protest without antagonizing the international community.

In many ways, Afrique may be considered a voyage of discovery; Teno is himself progressing through stages of understanding. Once he is convinced that open political dissent is futile, he turns his attention to Cameroonian history and culture, hoping therein to find the spark that will unite the underclass. Again he is rebuffed. Colonialism is deeply entrenched in the cultural institutions of Cameroon. The French language is omnipresent. We are introduced to several bookstore owners, who uneasily explain or evade questions about the heavy predominance of French novels of every description. In shop after shop, the section for African literature is literally crammed into a corner to make space for glitzy, thoroughly Eurocentric, bestsellers (their status as such determinate to an extent on overseas sales). The owners of the bookstores emphasize that the French dominate the market, that due to economies of scale and a generalized contempt among the book-buying populace for indigenous works they have no choice but to favor the West in their selections. They appear prosperous enough. At the same time, and regardless of censorship, newspapers are snatched up in ever-increasing numbers by the poor, belying their indifference.

What is starkly portrayed, then, is a strata of African elite who control the government, the economy, and the industries of culture. Teno tells the story of the hunters and the Lark, a parable that depicts the transformation of certain of the `hunters' into a strange new breed without ties to land or brotherhood. To the `new' hunter, his brethren are the Larks. He sings the same song the children sing in Paris, Lark, I'm going to fleece you. He is the Westernized petty bourgeoisie, acting as mediator between the world and the populace. He cannot be accepted into the First World, and he has no longer any kinship. He is perched upon a colonial structure, afraid to move in any direction because of the inevitability of his fall from grace. The piecemeal character of the city of Yaounde reflects the dualism of his nature, a steady and debilitating vacillation between France and Cameroon. Ousmane Sembene once stated, "For the struggle against neo-colonialism it is possible to reactualize all these scattered and little-known battles" in the history of African resistance (Goldfarb 1996:77). Teno finds his goal in this statement, to make available to the public a history of Cameroon, written by a Cameroonian rather than a colonial. An elite armed with this knowledge can bring change. Ultimately, as Marie wistfully explains, writing is a symbol of hope for change. Afrique, Je Te Plumerai is the first step in such a history.

Further Reading
Goldfarb, B. "A Pedagogical Cinema: Development Theory, Colonialism, and Post-Liberation Film", IRIS, 7-24.

Ukadike, F. "The Other Voices of the Documentary: Allah Tantau and Afrique, je te plumerai, IRIS, 18, 81-94.

SPOORNET

1991. TV and print advertisements. Lindsay Smithers, Johannesburg. 30 secs. English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Tswana.

SYNOPSIS
Spoornet is the name for what previously was called the South African Railways. A metaphorical `train' of twelve San people move in single file across the desert into the threshold of a rocky hill.

CRITIQUE
If the conscious mind is split from its origins, life, says Carl Jung, loses meaning, becomes incapable of realizing the synthesis of the new state, and relapses into a far worse situation than before. Perhaps, as part of the growing politically rehabilitated discourse of the First People, this unconscious realization on the part of Spoornet led it towards the use of San imagery in its advertising 1991/2 campaign.

Spoornet, like all para-statal corporations, responded with alacrity to the `new' South Africa heralded by President de Klerk's dramatic political reforms of February 1990, when all liberation movements were unbanned.

The Spoornet logo draws attention to the Railways company, and is metaphorical of the railway line itself. In the print version, the words `move', `goods', and `line' are indicative of railway tracks. The San themselves are indicative of `reliable', `dependable', and `hardy'. That the people below the caption are in a line or train formation is indicative of a journey, a `train' of, people. This metaphor of a `journey', of a `journeying people', is a recurring myth which works at two levels: on the one hand the San are imaged as nomads. But from the perspective of those who write and film them, the journey is really an introspective one. It is an exploration into the age-old archetypes embedded somewhere in the unconscious psyche of whites who now feel an innate need to unlock manifestations of these archetypal ideas and images by mobilizing certain sets of symbols to find a route to reconciliation.

Where the sign is knowable and less than the content it represents, the symbol in Jung's sense implies something more than its immediate or conventional meaning, lying beyond the grasp of direct apprehension. As a Spoornet advertising advisor says of the advert, "The thought was to use something away from the usual rail or closely linked concept but yet to find a subject acceptable to everyone" (Letter, 4 April 1992). Neither personal discussion with the advertising agency, nor Spoornet, elicited anything more concrete on how the advert was conceived, or why `Bushmen' were used as a metaphor for a train.

Symbols such as those used by visual artists of the San are known objects that `stand for' relatively unknown or ultimately unknowable entities. The archetype as inferred through signs, however, "expresses itself first and foremost in metaphors", as with the concept of `journey' in the Spoornet advert.

Archetypal ideas such as those South African whites are now recalling about the San are, in Jung's terms, part of the universal collective unconscious, irrepresentable, pre-existent forms which are part of an inherited structure of the human psyche. The substitution of the Van der Post kind of motif (or `complexes' of the personal unconscious) found in TV, cinema, advertising, literature and so on, for the early white and black or collective unconscious's archetypal image of the San as `vermin' (the shadow image), can manifest itself spontaneously anywhere at any time. This certainly seems to have been the case in South Africa during the decade of the 1980s, moving into the '90s.

It was during the 1980s that the negative shadow-like representations of the San as wild and thieving savages were replaced by the positive imagery of the San as unthreatening, as an instinctual sign-vehicle of our inner selves. Now that the San are on the edge of `extinction' the desire to `conserve' them as one would an endangered species arose within the dominant apartheid hegemony. As Jung would perhaps argue, the San in such `positive' representations, is both the `white man's' `shadow' and his `dark brother' who stands in the entrance to the collective inner world. Where the early European explorers and colonizers perceived of indigenous peoples in a `dark'`symbolic way, the new commentators welcomed them as the innocent, unclothed `First People' of a new Eden. The negative shadow archetype of the San was replaced by a positive one, that of the `First People'.

Archetypal imagery is symbolic says Jung because it connects the individual with a living, although relatively unknown realm - in this case the realm and tracings left by the First People on contemporary South African psyche and cultures. The archetype of a First People is a post-Darwinian one which incorporates associations of the Judeo-Christian myth of Adam before the Fall, living in a child-like innocence with God and all Creation. A group of black and white South African graduate students responded to the advert as follows:

The train of twelve San evokes the Biblical myth of the twelve lost tribes of Israel. The mere fact that the Symbols of the desert and the Mt Sinai-Law and the twelve figures combine to suggest the myth of the San as a tribe. The San people, according to Laurens van der Post,are the founding people of Southern Africa. At the archetypal level, Spoornet's imaging of the San, connects with the idea of a tested and reliable tradition. The sunset and vastness of the red sky confers a quality of eternal and spiritual truth that goes beyond the South African nation, to the San, to all humans and to Israel [to the Scriptures and to all humanity].

Biblically speaking, the advert represents the whole nomadic experience as representing the movement of the human race down through the epochs in spite of difficulties, upheavals and uphill struggles of life. It also represents the Israelites wandering in the desert to a promised land, a transition from oppression to liberation; hence subsequent transitions of many nations of different epochs and places, and lastly the transition of South Africa from apartheid to the new South Africa. The railway tracks represent tracking back [forward] into the future of a South African people, tracking trans-ego-consciousness, trans-tribal-consciousness, trans-national consciousness into collective human consciousness or archetypal universal symbols for the whole human race (N Nkosi et l, 1994).

This journey is an attempt to reach into the unknown - both past and future. But it is a journey that may be impossible- indicated by the death in the desert of the archaeologist in The Mantis Project, who died chasing a chimera, a mirage, an unknowable archetypal symbol. As Jung argues, the ultimate nature of the psyche, for which the archaeologist was searching, is unknowable. The archaeologist's body was found by the others, his mission unaccomplished, spreadeagled in the form of another symbol of a savior, Christ on the Cross. These archetypal images interact within the confluence of Judeo Christian cultures as occurred with the above interpretation.

However, the Spoornet advert also conceals its own shadow (or the shadow of the whites who made it). Like People of the Great Sandface , imaging the San in an ahistorical synchronic moment refuses the history of dispossession and extermination, and the fact that SA Railways was itself an often brutal instrument of apartheid.

Between 1990 and 1993, trains serving Soweto became death traps as gangs of thugs and psychopaths spawned by apartheid machine-gunned and hacked their way through carriages, throwing people off moving trains. By excising history, by denying the shadow of its sponsors and makers, and by playing on the romantic myth of the San, the narrative of the advert dissolves any sense of the real fear black commuters had for railway travel and for the safety of their future. Such myths work through structured silences and absences. As one side of the shadow emerges into the ideological light, so the other remains repressed deep within the collective unconscious of white South Africans. At the very moment they grasp for the cleansing archetype of the First People they simultaneously deny it, failing yet again to confront the 'Other' within.

Further Reading
Adapted from Tomaselli, K.G. (1995). "Introduction: media recuperations of the San", Critical Arts, 9(2), 1-xxi.

Author: Dye, Michael
Date: 1998
   
Songololo: Voices of Change

It is nearly impossible to divorce the concept of Third Cinema from that of political struggle. Culture as an African possession constructs itself in opposition to dominant Western values, implanted over decades and centuries. Too often it acquires a fetishistic purpose in the lives of those it is meant to uplift. It loses authenticity in its recreation as a weapon against neo-colonialism. Yet culture can also be a humanizing agent, one that provides escape to people "learning again how to smile."-Filmmakers in Africa are often given the title of modern-day griot, willing or not, but for the most part they shun the idea of praise-singing. Culture may be viewed as a tool of imperialism, or a tool to be used against imperialism, but it is seldom seen as an empowering agent in its own right. Its identity is murky after so many years of conflict.

Songololo: Voices of Change does not attempt to define a notion like culture; instead, it presents a multitude of disparate lives linked by a happiness that is noticeably absent in other African films. The film employs a stance that looks forward to the time beyond apartheid, and it is self-conscious in its determination to survey the diversity of the elements that have joined in struggle. It celebrates poetry, music, and dance as "trumpets to bring down the walls of Jericho."- Yet it always suggests or implies uncertainty. The filmmaker watches native dancers in a jostled, almost bemused manner, fully aware of other onlookers dressed in modern garments who are both curious and ill at ease. The dance does not seem authentic. It is, instead, a recreation done without any purpose but exploration. It does not threaten, for the time of cultural appropriation is over. The meaning of the form needs to be rediscovered outside of the context of warfare. Teshome Gabriel describes this process as one engaged "to redefine and to redeem what the official versions of history have overlooked."- Gabriel gives a great deal of weight to the idea of filmmaker as griot. He sees the foundation of a Third aesthetics in the concept of film as folklore. "Folklore is an all-embracing phenomenon which comes from people's primary relation to the land and community."- Folklore, he argues, is a deliberate mythification that bolsters the self-identity of a community by creating a shared past upon a shared place. To the poet/griot of Songololo, land is the key to emancipation. "The land is still mine-the land is immovable." Undoubtedly her song is revolutionary, but it is also a point of agreement in strife and even a warning to factions. Unity has created a situation in which the documentary can show a land bursting at the seams with excitement and celebration, divergent in dozens of ways but oblivious to it, without any direct reference to struggle or loss of realism thereby. In fact, the only commentary on political events comes in the form of black-and-white photographs, violence portrayed in the past tense. Songololo is hardly without a message, in spite of its separation from fighting. It bewilders the viewer with a tumult of images, inexplicable as often to the participants as to the observer. It dares one to place oneself within any segment of the population, to identify with some aspect of emergent, post-independence society. The poet's connection with children, with the 'early theatre' of storytelling for the young, seems to be an implicit acknowledgment of the difficulty involved in challenging those who are firmly set in the culture of resistance. She decries those who stand by and do nothing, who remain isolated, for in them old ways will not gently fade. The history of Apartheid, as that of European involvement across the continent, is replete with the use of division to segregate different groups. The griot dreams of reuniting the various fragments of the community, but warns of the chaotic possibilities of the lack of clear foe, made evident by the crushed ebullience of too many other African nations.

Songololo: Voices of Change 1990

- ibid.

- Teshome Gabriel. "Third Cinema as Guardian of Popular Memory: Towards a Third Aesthetics" in Questions of Third Cinema, eds. Jim Pines and Paul Willem, p. 184.

_ ibid., p. 183.

' hunter, his brethren are the Larks.

(Writen by Mike Dye, MSU, 1998)

Author: Savage, Jay
Date: 1989
   

On completion of Shot Down in July 1987, Andrew Worsdale, the film's director, on being asked his opinion of the film, offered only that he thought that it was "an important film". He was right, too: having won the Best Foreign Film Award at the Mannheim Film Festival. The film had also been exhibited at festivals in Turin, Brussels and the 1988 CASA Festival in Amsterdam. Shot Down has emerged as a film of importance and assumes a position of prominence in the embryonic history of the South African feature film

A profoundly negative film, Shot Down makes few concessions to the escapism-seeking audience. It is too soon to decide what role Shot Down will play in the evolution of South African Cinema. This is not the aim of this article. The film, however, demands attention because it at least addresses that very question and, in penetrating a specific white alienation as it does, it presents an insider's view of a late 1980s South African milieu. At the time of its release, the film was accused by elements within the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) of being '`negative', and therefore, counter-revolutionary. However, as Keyan Tomaselli and Jeanne Prinsloo (1992) have argued, certain forms of `accountability' demanded by some within mass organisations often repressed the function of critical dialogue, thus suppressing the critical and self-reflexive role that cinema can, and should, play in society.

The film has no coherent `message' - this in itself is significant - and on a first viewing it seems to have little coherence. The first time I saw the film I found it compelling for the first hour but felt that I was being dragged the rest of the way (its running time is approximately 100 minutes). I decided afterwards that, aside from a few sequences, it had little merit. I was confident that I had respected one of this film's premises- the rejection of the conventional - yet thought that the film failed most miserably when it was the purely conventional that was required. Admittedly, Shot Down's plot is a little more than func tional (deliberately so), and concepts such as dramatic tension, narrative resolution and so on would be anathemas to (and are thus undermined by) the makers of the film. But the need for simple exposition periodically arises and is never successfully pro vided.

On a second viewing I did not think that these faults receded. But I was far less perturbed by them. It was on a second viewing that the film accumulated a power and a cogency regarding the issues it tackles (primarily those concerning represen tation). Genre-hopping, aimless and unpleasant as Shot Down was, I thought when first seeing it, this was a statement against professionalism, if nothing else. When I next saw it, its fragmentary, no less unpleasant design, gave me cause to regard Shot Down as the first film statement (rather than articulation) of a South African post-modernist condition. In the so-called post- modernist world, says Stuart Hall, "You have to operate your analysis of meaning without the solace of closure" because the "one true meaning" has been split into fragments.

In the 1980s, cinema as a vehicle for the portrayal of reality found itself in a position of crisis. Since the French New Wave of the 1960s it has become apparent that reality is less reliably depicted by the motion picture than was commonly thought. It was Jean-Luc Godard who displayed most effectively that the movie camera was an ideological weapon ("You can run a country with movies," says Paul, the "hero" of Shot Down); and accompanying this was the obliteration of (the possibility of) narrative linearity. If South Africa is to develop a cinema of resistance it must be a post- New Wave form of cinema. In a country fraught with Third World tensions, where a site of (the) struggle is against cultural oppression , problems of representation assume a special importance, while narrative coherence seems at best simplistic and at worst fraudulently reactionary.

Shot Down is the first South African movie to indicate some awareness of these issues (as well as an implicit awareness of film itself as a film). This awareness filters through the film's delineation of white ideological confusion, disgust and guilt. On one level the film is a warning to the stream of ostensibly well- intentioned filmmakers into South Afri ca who go into the townships to show what life under apartheid is "really like", oblivious to the mystification and deceit inherent in their rigid, inappropriately imported concepts and codes. (The rejection of these generally liberal and reputation- building efforts (eg. Witness to Apartheid) found its most direct articulation in a single line outburst that, interestingly, is omitted from the finished version of Shot Down: at a critical point in the film, when its central character - having cut his ties with the South African Government -decides that the film that he was to make for the State, he will, instead make for himself, utters the line, "Fuck Richard Attenborough!")

Before subjecting Shot Down to a fuller textual scrutiny it is worth sketching the context from which it emerges. This, I would suggest, has a direct bearing on one's understanding of the film. A timely and trenchant document of discontent, the film has an added claim to significance by its harnessing to some of the creative energie s of what was commonly called the 'alternative' community. Already, part of Shot Down's `meaning' is to be the winner of a foreign film festival award. This, of course, has implications for the South African film industry but, realistically it is suggested, these are bound to be limited (chiefly because the film is bound for limited appeal). Despite this, the film exists as something of a triumph of the 'alternative' culture. In the late 1980s, Johannesburg (predominantly, but also other urban centres) was a site of substantial oppositional activity.¹ The development of the progressive - often called alternative -press played a fundamental role in mobilizing against apartheid in the 1980s (see Tomaselli and Louw 1991) and as the State moved against press freedoms, music, performance, poetry, etc., it offered new avenues of cultural resistance. Perhaps the most noteworthy example is the still independent Shifty Record Company. Operating outside the traditional, monopolistic state and corporate structures, Shifty took the fostering of an indigenous (or alternative) musical identity as their basic project. More pointedly, Shifty helped to propagate a counter-hegemony. (Shifty's releases varied from the collection of FOSATU worker choirs to records by local punk bands, to what is perhaps their most renowned release, the compilation of anti-conscription songs, Forces Favourites, produced in conjunction with the ECC). Today Shifty Records has an envied reputation internationally and receives heavy financial backing from European sponsors. The music soundtrack, credited to "Anti-Establishment Sounds," is a vital component of Shot Down" and it is significant that this comes by way of collaboration with Shifty Records. (Indeed the film's title is derived from one of the best known songs of one of Shifty's best known bands, The Cherry Faced Lurchers.)

The non-existence of alternative musical structures is largely self-perpetuating: unable to sustain themselves an the alternative circuit, most musicians and actors a re forced into the mainstream (which generally means the turgid major record companies, SABC or the provincial Performing Arts Councils). In spite of this, the late 1980s saw the growth of independently produced cabaret in Johannesburg. Certainly decisive in this was The Weekend Theatre: a group of drama students and generally ou-of-work actors/directors who managed - with no money or resources of any kind - to stage 20 productions in the home of one of its members. According to the credits of the film, Shot Down is a "Weekend Theatre Production" (Director Andrew Worsdale was one of Weekend Theatre's founder members) -certainly a key to the film's genealogy, probably the reminder of the importance of Weekend Theatre and perhaps also an allusion to the scarcity of resources (money) for the film's production.

Relatively inexpensive to stage and necessitating small venues only, cabaret - with its rich connotations of decadence -represents a response to the conditions that have hitherto permitted the flourishing of unprovocative and commercially certain forms of performance only. This dynamic seems to have culminated in Famous Dead Man, the controversial cabaret which was banned in 1986 following pressure from the family of Hendrik Verwoerd. About as far from the powerful melodramas of Athol Fugard as could be imagined, Famous Dead Man was also more than a little distanced from the liberal catharsis achieved by the likes of Pieter Dirk-Uys. The cabaret offered a grotesque, scatological version of the life and death/assassination of Verwoerd, mixed in with subversion of Afrikaner myths and histories.

One might argue that Famous Dead Man was a specific moment in the rewriting of South African dramatic history. Too confrontational to have anything more than cult appeal (albeit a distinctly rising cult appeal), Famous Dead Man " permitted none of the responses one might have ascribed to Pieter Dirk-Uys. Flirting with the documentary form -and thus also with the sensationalism attendant upon a banned item - Shot Down includes lengthy excerpts from Famous Dead Man (as well as a re-enactment of the Johannesburg End Conscription Campaign's cultural evening that was broken up by a police raid ). More pertinently, the film does manage to document authentically the consciousness that could produce such work (although it must be said that the Famous Dead Man sequences are unimaginatively shot, leaving the show's ferocity uncaptured).

Splintered and stylized in form, cabaret jettisons pretensions of reality, forging instead an alliance with the unpredictable -in effect, with chaos. The full significance of the quantity of recent cabaret as an artistic expression of dissidence is still to be gauged but it is appropriate that it should figure so prominently in Shot Down. It was mentioned above that Shot Down issues a warning to the sources of filmmakers attempting to represent black South Africa. This is enforced by the film's (reconstructed) documentary aspects which strives to portray a particular era in the history of white South African performance. Significantly, the film that Shot Down's central character is commissioned to make is about a black performance group. It is then quite consistent with Shot Down's engagement with problems of representation that this fictional film is never to be made. This provides Shot Down with an impressive conceptual layering: claiming for itself the prerogative to document actual white cultural phenomena, it doesn't allow itself the room to portray even fictional cultural phenomena from black South Africa.

Simply put, Shot Down is - both in content and form - an expression of ANOMIE. In narrative, writes Stephen Heath, "every element introduced must be taken up again and "finished off" as an evident function in its progress, its resolution" (1981:134). Developing Heath's thought, Paul Coates (1985:27) argues that "narrative in the sense of the "classic realist text" is barely possible nowadays." The resolution of which Heath speaks is, according to Coates (1985:26), opposed because "it lacks truth to life, because it is ideological in nature (the conformist mirage of reconciliation in the happy ending) and because of the authoritarian implications of tightness of narrative control" is extremely helpful in a reading of Shot Down and I would like to quote once more and at some length from it:

The alienations, disruptions and enforced mobility of this century have cut the threads of our ide ntification with the image of our fellow man: the lack of stable communities persuades us that we are alone, our experience eccentric and unique. Thus continuous narrative has collapsed ... nowadays, whether the novel- reader be Roland Barthes or a man educated by advertisements to expect instant impact, he tends not to finish the work but to regard as a symptom of an area from which he is excluded. Film, which violently compacts diverse elements, does so in order to raise one's chances of getting to an end of a work. In so doing, it keeps alive the belief in one's ability to outlast the world -of which the work with the beginning, middle and end is the model -and achieve an afterlife. Nowadays, whenever the standard realist film seeks to foster this belief in resurrection and survival (perhaps the collapse of narrative reflects our knowledge that the next conflict may have no survivors, no-one remaining to chronicle events in the past tense), the viewer's unconscious recognizes the incoherence of the elements that are stitched together in a makeshift teleology" (pp.27-28).

In South Africa the collapse, or dismantling, of narrative already to be found in the novels of JM Coetzee - seems to ensue from an acknowledgement of white cultural disintegration. If, as Coates says, "the collapse of narrative reflects our knowledge that the next conflict may have no survivors", then it is conceivable that the collapse of the narrative in South Africa - as evidenced in Shot Down- may reflect white fears that the then present conflict may have no white survivors. In a certain sense, the white South African who has nowhere to go, has no future either. For Paul in the film, the future proceeds by a sort of a self-negation: having nullified his mirror image (the state functionary he murders is, as the synopsis states, "A man in his own shoes") his future lies in America (as a smug, greased haired and sunglasses sporting croupier in a casino in Reno).

Shot Down is anchored around Paul's assurance to AK, Rasechaba's representative, that, "I'm just an observer" (which he hopes is suggestive of his distance from ideology - ie. of his "innocence") , and the film offers the viewer a privileged share in his observations. A taut, inexpressive personality, Paul's observations represent a series of encounters with white South Africa. Presented as a collage of vulgar vignettes- which, for the most part, Paul endures passively and self-absorbedly- the sum of what he sees finally rouses him out of his passivity, but the only action he is capable of is negative (murder). Paul's experiences may seem to have an accumulative "shock" (in the sense used by Walte r Benjamin) but, taken individually, they are random, barely consequential yet hellish incidents.

Paul's visit to his, supposedly senile, father is revealing. His father is the only character whose passivity exceeds his own and, obliged to take the in itiative (in conversation) Paul instead takes the easy option. "I'll come back and see you when you're a little more clearheaded," he says to the blankly- staring remnant of his past. He then makes his departure too rapidly to languidly impart the one insight it takes him the whole film to attain: "No-one is clear-headed these days, Paul."

Paul's experiences with others - whether with cabaret manager Caesar (whose curls have the Barthesian signification of crumbling Roman decadence, Celia, Rasechaba's c olleagues, the Security Police or the roadhouse thug who inexplicably opens fire on Paul's car- rarely rises above the confrontational. Significantly the only individual he appears at ease with is Dave, his doppelganger /victim.

Two of the scenarios ( set pieces, really) to which Paul is spectator demand special attention. Fleeing the claustrophobic social surrounds of Johannesburg, Paul drives to Durban from where his break with the state department which hired him is easier to make. Moving away from the milieu the rest of the film clings to, the Durban sequences are generated dialectically: strolling the city's streets and on the beach (the indelibly sexist surf-culture being recounted on the soundtrack by Surfer, a song by the Kalahari Surfers) -packed with New Year holidaymakers- the, generally white, masses appear to Paul in snapshot type flashes of hallucinatory ugliness. Microcosmically -as if one of the flashes was sustained for his better inspection - he encounters a dishevelled, overweight dr unk in a hotel elevator. Momentarily `trapped' with this bloated embodiment of intoxicated bigotry and aggression, Paul exhibits his first `real' emotion of the entire film: a burst of ashamed intellectual anger.

The reclaiming/rewriting of history that finds satiristic expression in Famous Dead Man is extended in Shot Down in the short black and white "Voortrekkers" film that Paul watches on his return from Durban. In this film-within- a-film a `modern' Voortrekker family are seen burying their child-ie. their `future' - next to their farm truck. As prayers begin the scene dissolves to an `original' Voortrekker couple seated by their wagon and campfire reading the Bible. Suddenly the man throws his `wife' to the ground and brutally sodomises her (pausing only to comment, "Wag, die Bybel het geval." [Wait, the Bible has fallen]). The film is in the form of a "SILENT" and the dialogue titles appears in heavy teutonic-style script). Some moments later the Voortrekker father comes across two (of his?) `kaffirs' similarly engaged in a sexual act and the "ungodly" force of this image is apparently sufficient to cause the Voortrekker Monument to crumble to the ground. Hand-held, voyeurism- evoking camerawork and crude, highly effective (and clearly Eisensteini an) editing gives this defiant, iconoclastic sequence a profane power unlike anything else in the film. But then because the film depicts and bespeaks the confusion of white bourgeois society it is to be expected that the negation/explosion of a dominant myth of Afrikanerdom would be more visually compelling than Paul's squalid (non-)story.

Alongside the need to attack the dominant myths of apartheid ideology, a prime focus for those attempting to stimulate a progressive cultural/artistic sensibility has been the demolition of imported values. The entrenchment of capitalism as the indefatigable norm - an important component of the apartheid State's reform' programme - is achieved at least in part by of way of the colossal American culture industry. South Africa is still one of Hollywood's more profitable export markets and the movie- going South African is attuned to the visual codes of the United States. Having just arrived back in South Africa, at the start of Shot Down, Paul tells Dave as they drive in to the city, "They (The Americans) think I'm funny ... Well, I think they're funny."

Like Paul, Andrew Worsdale returned to South Africa after a period in America (two years study at the University of California, Los Angeles) to make a film (this film ). Worsdale seems to have an affinity for American codes but not the kind that typify- and celebrate- the new conservatism, but rather those (more `underground' kind) that express loathing and disgust.

Semiotics instructs us that we are all authors of texts, whether actually writing or making a film, choosing clothes to wear or having the simplest of conversations, we are always creating texts. To paraphrase Umberto Eco, a created text is anything that can be used to lie. Being an author of a text means having a perennial counter-part: the reader. Author and reader are linked by the text and -explicitly or implicitly - each makes projections about the other. My reading of Shot Down is, of course, guided by my projections of its `author' (the makers of the film); similarly, the makers of Shot Down have constructed a projected audience for an audience for their film. And their projection is generated by ambivalence and antagonism. In the words of Shot Down's producer, Jeremy Nathan,

Traditionally, one makes a film for an audience and the potential of the film is to reach as big an audience as possible. But in South Africa this is problematic: as a white filmmaker, how do you go about making a film for an audience you hate. Shot Down is a South African film and is meant to be seen by South Africans but the film pours contempt on that audience. Shot Down shows the decline of Western civilization in this country but also fails to offer a ray of hope in its place, and the confusion of and in the film is the manifestation of a particular liberal CONSCIOUSNESS. It is an entirely misanthropic film.

Having, myself, grown up with American movies, it could be that my apprehensions are governed by an ingestion of American codes (as could well be the case with the makers of Shot Down" generally and Worsdale particularly). And for one such as myself Shot Down might rewardingly be read as a distention of one of the `1970s America's most penetrating auto-critiques, Taxi Driver. In that (1976) film the central figure -an obviously psychotic Vietnam Veteran and obsessive witness to corruption and urban decay- fulfills a diseased vision of gallantry by gunning down a group of lowlife gangsters in a bid to `rescue' a child prostitute. This twisted manifestation of his `concern' - his desire to help -is interpreted not as the act of a disturbed vigilante. Rather, he is `officially' (ie. in the media) rewarded by being acknowledged as the hero he imagines himself to be: this has the uncertain result of restoring a semblance of balance in his psyche.² "I did it to help," says Paul in the opening moments of Shot Down, when asked of his thoughts on the incident that occured a year earlier but which the viewer will only witness at the film's end.

Unlike the religousl y tormented Taxi Driver whose violence is committed to the genuine desire to help, Paul has cunningly adopted a new disguise (but it should be noted that he does revealingly concede that the "one thing I did learn was not to give a shit"). More than anything, his was an act of cowardice, but a year later he is trading on his sordid act, spinning the tale to the apartheid- abhorring Americans. Rewarded with the job he apparently appears to relish (Casino croupier), he ruthlessly exploits liberal gullibility: only he knows that the only one benefitting from his `help' is himself. Quite without integrity, Paul is revealed early on in the film as one who knows how to profit by opportunity and deceit. In a conversation about exactly this, Celia says to Paul, "It all depends on who you pretend to be." "Yes," he replies "but also on what you might have done." And as we see, Paul is to get by on both of these.

The degree of Paul's deceit is inscribed in the film's title. Shot Down is the title of the song performed by the Cherry Faced Lurchers. Paul drives out to the Marikana district (signifying the first part of his journey back to America as well as adding to the joke embodied in the `Spagetti Western' pastiche that the film tu r ns into in its final minutes). This is where his crime will take place. The the song is heard on the soundtrack and a portion of its lyrics flash across the screen: "I'm a white boy who looked at his life in his gathered hands, and saw it was all due to t he sweat some other man- that one that was shot down in the street." Describing the moment of recognition (conscientisation) of the injustice of apartheid, the song is also, ironically, accurate in describing Paul's experience. His (American) prosperity is also due to a man "shot down in the street".

Notes

1. By "oppositional" I mean not in any organized or explicitly aligned sense; rather the work is oppositional in that it reflects disaffection with the }{\b status quo}{ and unambiguous hostility to the dominant culture.
2. An obvious source of confusion for the first-time viewer of - Shot Down is the range of narrating voices on the soundtrack. This device, of course, undermines the notion of single narrator/story utilizing instead a composite narrator of a fragmentary story. In this regard , it was interesting to hear the producer, Jeremy Nathan, describe it as an "anti-film".

References
Coates, P. (1985). The Story of the Lost Reflection. London: Verso.

Hall, S. (1988). "On Postmodernism an Articulation - An Interview with Stuart Hall", by Lawrence Grossberg, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol 10 No 2.

Heath, S. (1981). Questions of Cinema. London.

Tomaselli, K.G. and Prinsloo, J. (1992): "Third Cinema in South Africa. In Blignaut, J. and Botha, M (eds.): Movies - Moguls - Mavericks: South African Cinema 1979-1991. Showdata, Johannesburg.

See also

Hees, E. (1996). "The Voortrekkers on Film: From Preller to Pornography", Critical Arts, 10(1), 1-22.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1992
   

Shaka's life was originally recorded by white historians who imposed upon their accounts bigoted and sensationalist values -- often labeling the Zulus as savage and barbaric. It is our intention with this series to change that view"

William C Faure¹

Shaka Zulu, made in Natal, South Africa, in the mid-1980s, has been the most repeatedly screened mini-series ever shown on syndicated television in the United States (Morris 1988:1; Christie 1987:6). Seen by over 250 million viewers, the series dislodged John Marshall's The Hunters (1958) as the prime shaper of American perceptions of `tribal' history in Southern Africa. The series even achieved cult status. On one station in Corpus Christi, Texas, for example, a weekly late night talk show DURING 1990, was plagued with callers phoning in and demanding to know: "Where's Shaka Zulu?" after the screening of the series in that area.

Shaka Zulu was aimed at an international audience which knew very little about the man (Mersham 1987:98). The only image the American public had of the Zulu, after Shaka, was to be found in films like Zulu (1964) and Zulu Dawn (1979) about the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. In Southern Africa, however, the Shaka myth had been appropriated as the premier symbol of African achievement and aspiration, and Africa's major challenge to colonialism (Badian 1961; Burness 1976). The American distributors held that the fascination by Western audiences with the "dark continent" would ensure the series' success (Mahler 1986:1), especially following the box office and critical achievements of Out of Africa (1985). This marketing opportunity was thus exploited within the prevailing negative white Western colonial myths about Africa which had developed from the 17th Century on.

Film makers rarely possess the methodological skills to marry historiography with cinematography. Furthermore, because film/video takes place in the perceptual present, historical reconstructions are always at a disadvantage. Moreover, they are held hostage to financial and marketing decisions which themselves are subject to contemporary ideological currents and unquestioned attitudes. The American distributors, Harmony Gold, contrary to Faure's original script, for example, demanded that the well known white `stars' appeared in the first episode to satisfy US advertisers, to ensure its marketability.

In securing international distribution, the role of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had to be disguised to obviate the cultural boycott (Mersham 1987:229-30) and to overcome objections by anti-apartheid movements. The tactic of disguise had been successfully used by the producers of The Gods Must be Crazy (1980) who identified that film as a Botswana production. They thus largely ensured themselves unquestioned access to international cinema markets in spite of the boycott against South Africa.

As far as world perceptions of South Africa were concerned, the SABC's executive producer of the Shaka Zulu series explained:

I felt that the series could put things into perspective as far as the political situation is concerned in this country ... Shaka Zulu will convince anybody ... that the situation here, with the whites, numbering 5 million, as opposed to the majority 25 million blacks of different backgrounds, presents a difficult task to solve in the context of the political development. I believe that Shaka Zulu was much more successful than any other attempt to bring the realities of Southern Africa across to the rest of the world. But ... this was never the intention behind the series to back up the government, or the SABC, or whoever might be involved in the political game (Quoted in Mersham 1987:239-40).

By the time of release, the international news cameras were projecting an image of civil war in South Africa. Faure, who directed the series, complained that the international cameras always found the violence, neglecting positive images of South Africa. He hoped that Shaka Zulu would balance international perceptions about the conflict.

Reception of Shaka Zulu
The international popular press reviews of Shaka Zulu were not all positive. Neither did they accept the rationale provided by the SABC. Anti-apartheid critics charged that the series was "a racist propaganda film promoted by the South African government" (Griffin 1986:1). The series was similarly rejected by anti-apartheid groups such as the NAACP (1986:2), Unity in Action, African Activists Association, African Women's Collective, All African People's Revolutionary Party, American Friends Service Committee, Art Against Apartheid, Black Students Alliance, New African Peoples Association, South African Students Committee, Wages for Women Organization, and the ANC (ANC Memo November 12, 1986).

In this review, I will argue that the series undoubtedly worked to the political benefit of Inkatha, the Zulu Cultural Liberation Movement, and the militarized state under PW Botha. The explanation for this consonance of interests is to be found in the nature of media state relations and ideology rather than in any Goebbels-type machinations on the part of the apartheid government.

The anti-apartheid lobby rejected the series out of hand. Others, oever, responded positively to the series. The cable TV success of the series attests to a wide-ranging acceptance of the way the Zulus were portrayed.

This article does not offer a critique of the content of Shaka Zulu per se, but rather a behind-the-scenes analysis of the series in terms of how films, and TV series work ideologically in terms of specific, but different, historical contexts.

Promotional Hype
Harmony Gold's claim that the series cost $24 million is nothing more than PR hype, an exaggeration intended to attract mass audiences. The actual cost was R12.8 million ($6 million). Despite its massive US and European exposure, the SABC never recovered its production costs (Mersham 1987:231-5). This kind of debt in the face of financial success often occurs because of the creative accounting used by First World distributors in exploiting naive and less experienced Third World producers. The SABC was legally outmaneuvered by Harmony Gold which contributed less than $250 000 of the negotiated R4 million ($2.4 million) to production costs.

The advertising copy of American TV stations spared no exaggeration in promoting Shaka Zulu . Shaka was compared to other great generals of history: Julius Caesar and Napoleon. These adverts were headed: "Before King Shaka, the British had no respect for the Zulus". A tempting catch-phrase, but the fact is that the British were largely unaware of the Zulu nation before, and perhaps during Shaka's time. It was only through the diaries of a couple of missionaries, trader Francis Fynn in particular, and oral reconstructions that anything is known about this era (see EA Ritter's Shaka Zulu; and Mazisi Kunene's praise poem, Emperor Shaka the Great ). Harmony Gold also issued a 15 page schools study guide based on the series, distributed throughout the United States (Mersham 1987:307-8). It is thus not surprising that the series has become so well known. Other forms of promotion included a tour of the US by Faure and Henry Cele, the Zulu actor who played Shaka. They talked about the need for blacks and whites "to come together" and spoke out against sanctions (see Hamilton 1987:22). This was another reason why opponents accused Faure of propaganda.

Shaka Zulu plays on white myths about Africans and Africa and takes on even more bizarre connotations in places like Corpus Christi. I will examine the televisual representation of this 18th Century era and show how the series distorts history to serve contemporary political ideologies contending for legitimacy in South Africa during the 1980s. This was class/race war that had been unfolding with increasing violence between October 1984 and 1990.

Ideological Questions
At the time of Shaka Zulu's release in South Africa in 1987, the series legitimated the apartheid regime's idea that `tribe' equalled `nationhood'. This policy had forcibly imposed geographical entities, which after 1948 separated black `tribes' from `white' South Africa. These separate `states' were first called bantustans and later, homelands. The Kwa Zulu `homeland' or `self-governing territory', the land of Shaka's original rule, was to become one of these. The series was broadcast in English on the `white' channel and in Zulu on the two `black' channels. These channels were aimed at the urban black population living within `white' South Africa. (Zulu is something of a lingua franca , spoken and/or understood, by most black South Africans.)

Shaka Zulu's connotations of a savage and ruthless war-like tribe coming into first contact with British colonialism during the early 1800s, was equally acceptable to the Kwa Zulu government, headed by Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, and the state-controlled television service (SABC-TV). In the early 1980s, Buthelezi had entered into an uneasy, if mutually beneficial, alliance with the ruling white National Party, the liberal English-language Press and liberal English-dominated South African Natal capital, to ensure the protection of capitalism in South Africa. This uneasy alliance also preserved the ethnically defined Zulu nationalist power base within an anticipated federal South Africa. The series reinforced the Zulu nationalist idea of a new birth in the contemporary context (see also Mersham 1987:379).

The so-called `black-on-black' killings that occurred in Natal after 1986, and betwen August 1990 and 1994 in the Transvaal, resulted from this Inkatha/National Party alliance's attempts to forestall the African National Congress' (ANC) political organization of these regions. The protagonists were Inkatha and the government's security forces which protected Zulu `warlords' and their ` impis ' (Zulu regiments) during sweeps on non-Inkatha members in the Natal midlands

Misrepresenting History
No attempt is made by the director of the series to historically contextualize the rise of Shaka. His ascendance to power was presented in terms of the `great-man' theory. As Faure himself states: "License has been taken, but always with one aim in mind -- to tell the story of a man, who in his own time, became a living legend! We had to do justice to that story while at the same time bringing to life the traditions and mythology of that period" (3). I will argue that Faure's `license' was couched, perhaps unintentionally, within apartheid discourse, and does no justice to either Shaka or history (see also Hamilton 1989). Viewers, are kept in the dark about the conditions in South East Africa, such as drought and the disruption of the Zanzibar trading routes by the Portuguese, that could have led to the phenomenon of Zulu ascendancy in the region. The result is a Zulu nationalist `myth' centered upon the personality of one man. It is a myth which complemented apartheid-ordered South Africa and which ignores the conditions resulting in the consolidation of a number of other large kingdoms which emerged in South East Africa after 1750, but pre-dating Shaka's accession to power. These conditions included territorial expansion, military innovations and harsh conditions of existence (Hamilton 1989:7). Faure argues:

when I went to Barry Leitch, one of our cultural advisors, and sat and talked to some of the old indunas, we asked them to tell us how they saw Shaka. How had their grandfathers seen Shaka ... but they all say the same thing "he was a great man!" It therefore became clear to me that I had one major aim and that was to tell this story of a man that had become a living legend (Quoted in Mersham 1987:117).

The common sense perception of Shaka as a self-made great man connected with two contemporary political processes -- Zulu nationalism and apartheid -- two sides of the same coin in the struggle for power and racial dominance in South Africa during the 1980s.

The Shaka myth is exploited by Buthelezi who wears the same kind of royal regalia that Shaka did when he addresses the faithful at Inkatha mass rallies, and on television. Indeed, during the 1980s, comparisons between Shaka and Buthelezi were often made by Buthelezi himself, the media, and ordinary South Africans (Mar'e and Hamilton (1987:1). At one level, Inkatha could then be viewed as a para-military organization reliving the Shaka impi (military) mythology in an attempt to mobilize politically through ethnicity to secure a slice of national power when apartheid finally fell. This is the same strategy that was used by Afrikaners to regain ascendancy after their defeat and dispossession by the British in 1901. In regaining political and economic power, Afrikaners in turn dispossessed blacks through legal means, but with as much brutality as the British applied to Afrikaners in what became known as the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1903).

Ceremonies and Savagery
An ill-placed, almost morbid fascination occurs in the Zululand scenes in Shaka Zulu on ceremonies and rituals of Zulu life. Since such occasions are associated with `extraordinary' or exotic behavior in any society, the result is the representation of Zulus as a bizarre and violent people. `Normal', mundane life is seldom to be seen in the TV series. If white rituals such as marriages, public hangings, funerals, pomp and ceremony were filmed in the same way, the camera deliberately seeking out the ritualistic order and latent violence of such scenes, it would be just as possible to image white societies as incomprehensible, threatening and overly ordered as the director has done with the black society depicted.

British institutional violence and racism is decentered, signaled through verbalization -- the British talk about it, but they don't DO it. `British' politicking (at Somerset's court in Cape Town) is presented as rational, though King George is characterized as a racist buffoon who calls blacks "jungle bunnies". This regal character stands in contrast to "Shaka who is a real man among men" (Faure quoted by Mersham 1987:355).

Despite Mersham's attempt to argue that it is the British and their arrogant racism who are criticized by Faure, Shaka's court is never imbued with a culturally appropriate rationality by the director. Rather, Shaka's utterances are opportunistic distortions of simplistic white, mainly religious, logic. The series might be "anti-British/anti-imperialist" which sets up the "indigenous people" as "good' and the "agents of British administration as effeminate, incompetent, hypocritical, arrogant, patronizing" (Mersham 1987). But this characterization fails to evacuate the inherent racism through which the Zulus have been depicted by the camera, dialogue and discourse.

Epics and History

Shaka Zulu, as epic, is an historical drama which evokes cultural memory through oral repetition, amplification and re-creation (Sienaert 1987:1), where historical facts "have the importance fiction gives them" (Sienaert 1987:18). Following Northrop Frye (1957), common to cinematic and television epics are:

• a close attention to realistic detail:

  Epics involve large casts and spectacular costumes. They boast impressive decor and highly detailed mise-en-scene, usually enhanced by the use of complicated special effects and pyrotechnics (special effects). Witness the elaborate sets, emphasis on authentic costume, huts built by time-honored means, ritual and `real' Zulu actors. The series was filmed on the actual historical sites in Zululand.

• The epic most commonly deals with history:

  Shaka Zulu expediently endorses the revisionist history which served contemporary political maneuvering of both the white National Party and black Kwa Zulu governments.

• The epic tends to examine a society's social contract with God:

  In Shaka Zulu the various religious systems are shown to be in opposition to each other: Christianity vs traditional African belief systems, and their accompanying social systems. One of the reasons `witchdoctors' (sangomas, indigenous healers) in the series are depicted as grotesque and larger-than-life characters is because narratives of 18th Century black life were primarily written by missionaries who considered sangomas as heathens representative of darker spiritual forces.

• The epic deals with the origin of social structure:

  The TV series offers an interpretation of how Shaka forged the Zulu empire. Contemporary utterances by Chief Buthelezi endorsed the series' perspective in a way which reinforced the then current nationalistic political strategies of Inkatha.

• The epic validates social norms and values that are of central importance to a community's faith in, and concept of, its identity:

  The norms that Shaka Zulu historically validates in the 1980s context of states of emergencies and militarization of societies are those of Inkatha's political struggle. The series legitimates Zulu national identity (in accordance with apartheid ideology), and naturalizes the concept of ethnicity which is correlated with `nation', territory, independence and cultural integrity.

In Shaka Zulu the heroine, Shaka's mother, Princess Nandi, seduced by the villain, King Senzangakhona, gave illegitimate birth to Shaka. She and her son, Shaka, are cast out by Senzangakhona. Shaka spends most of his life wreaking revenge on everyone about him, apparently because of his unhappy childhood (also see Ritter, pp. 1-60). The series collapses decades of history into ten (reduced from 15) fifty-two minute episodes. This flow of history in terms of the `commercial hour' is further punctuated by seemingly `natural' visual/narrative breaks which facilitate the flighting of advertising spots. That Faure ignored current scholarship on the subject (Hamilton 1987) also meant that social processes and complex historical contradictions were inevitably reduced to the actions of individuals and simplistic oppositions. The point I am building up to is that epic films like Shaka are not history, but reinterpretations clouded by the conventions of narrative in terms of prevailing world views. These conventions are specific to the particular medium in which history is recreated, and in terms of the current hegemonic representations of social forces, ideology and history. Shaka Zulu has to be examined not only in terms of `history', but in terms of its relationship to contemporary social, political and economic processes unfolding within South Africa, both at the time of its original broadcast in South Africa, and further transmission in different countries and contexts at the same and other times.

In other words, readings of films and TV series are not identical across audiences. Each strata of viewers from different classes, cultural experiences, histories and so on will impose their own interpretations on texts at different times and in different contexts. The screening of Shaka Zulu in Michigan in August 1990, seven months after the African National Congress was unbanned by the South African government -- seven months of vicious killings between black political groups in Natal and the Transvaal -- may well have served to frighten conservative white Americans on black rule in South Africa. This might have occurred to a greater extent than would have been the case had it been screened prior to 1990. Audiences may also have tended to see this conflict as inter-tribal, rather than between opposing political positions, consuming also those who have no political allegiances. This view was reinforced by Dan Rather's 48 Hours (1990) in which he predicted chaos if the comrades seize power.

The following section examines the photographic form of the series, relating this to issues of ideology and racism.

History and Color
Shaka Zulu seems to have been shot through a sepia (dark grayish yellow-brown) filter, at least where the `tribal' scenes were concerned<sup>2</sup>. The photographic over-emphasis on yellow/brown/red in the Zululand scenes was probably intended to create an impression of `old' times. While much of this color could be argued to be the reflection of fire light (though it doesn't flicker), its emotional effect alternates between warm, engaging colors to chilling blue, particularly in the thunder and lightning shots which are associated with sorcery, magic and the supernatural.

Sepia, which filters the light in most of the afternoon shots of the kraals and interior shots in the huts, together with buckets of shiny sweat (oil, actually) on black skins and clouds of smoke made by fog machines, tends to obscure ethnographic detail. The resulting picture is a smudge of objects and people, depicted as an incomprehensible writhing, pulsating and faceless dark mass as they dart about the landscape in a storm of dust.

In contrast, shots of the `white' areas under British rule in the Cape were filmed in stark `true', bright colors. There is no clash of hot and chilling colors within the scenes about whites. Against the warm/chilling colors that dominate the shots of Zululand are the `true' and seemingly `natural' colors which fill the frames when scenes of Cape Town (or early Port Natal) are depicted. It never seems to rain in Cape Town, the light is neither an emotional dark gray yellow brown, nor a chilled blue. While the narrative might be criticizing the racist and pompous attitudes of the British governors, this criticism is not underlined by the tactical use of hue. This color contrast-- in conjunction with the camerawork and mise-en-scene³.-- sets up a series of oppositions which manifest themselves in the narrative, and are developed below.

Color, Racism and Cameras
The use of color filters to set up the ideological oppositions -- sepia for the Zulu scenes and a much `whiter' or `truer' hue for the white scenes pervades the series. The oppositions created are multiple:

truth vs paganism

civilization vs barbarity

white vs black

light vs darkness

rationality vs magic

science vs superstition

education vs ignorance

`normal' behavior vs ritualistic order

defense vs offense

peace vs war

nation vs tribe

king vs king (on both earthly and spiritual levels)

and, most important, a clash over territory, north vs south.

In Zululand, emotionally warm colors are starkly contrasted with the white, chilling blue of thunder, rain and lightning, which always occur with the representation of the `witchdoctors'. These healers ( izangomas) are depicted as superhuman, as grotesque individuals separated from ordinary people, as scary and monsterish-- a typical white (mis)interpretation so often seen in films made by whites `for blacks' and legitimized under the anthropological category of `mythology'. This:

depiction of ideas in antithetic personifications, divine and diabolic interventions, verbal and physical confrontations larger than life and in surroundings made to cosmic and cosmological scale and most important: simplification for the sake of impact (Sienaert 1987:19),

are argued by Mersham (1987:121) as "an essential component to most myths ... a storytelling convention since time immemorial". As such, argues Mersham, the images of the witchdoctors are not necessarily racist in their narrative function as "magical creatures who aid or threaten the hero's quest" (Parks 1982:15). They are commonplace in TV because they are essential to the mythical formula. What Mersham, however, misses is that mythical formulas themselves often constitute racist encodings of social beliefs arising from historical transmission. And, since television is a Western form of expression, reinforced by Faure's use of the epic, a form of storytelling sourced to the ancient Greeks, Shaka Zulu remains a white, Western interpretation. Izangomas are an integral part of the community and were "unlikely to command packs of hyenas and maintain dens of dwarfs" (Hamilton 1989:18). Mersham (1987:290) himself admits this ethnocentric bias as an "enduring Western construct with a long pedigree" (see Propp 1968:87-91), and refers to scholars who have identified the `liminal' components of cultural ritual.

Liminality occurs where roles are reversed, rules bent and categories are overturned. "Uncommon sense", including inexplicable behavioral practices beyond the rational also fall into this concept (Turner 1987a:68; 1977:69, 88). Mersham quotes Miller's traveller sources (1979) for assurance on the outlandish appearance of the witches, witchdoctors, mediums, diviners, mystics and ghosts found in black societies of the 17th Century.

In the light of liminality, Mersham claims that my argument about Faure's depiction of the witchdoctors is "extremely unbalanced". Mersham argues that such conventions of the mythic form are "elements which are known to both the creator and his audience beforehand" (Cawelti 1970:27). Mersham (1987:292) agrees with Faure that "When we show the marking of the spear, to hell with it, lightning, thunder and out of the forests come these demon-like figures with huge red eyes. Because that's the way some of these people described the event for me".

Whatever credence Mersham invests his popular and academic sources, the fact remains that the bizarre appearance of the witchdoctors in Shaka Zulu intercepts the stereotypical discourses by which these characters have been imaged in the majority of films and books made or written by whites about blacks. This liminal image is endemic to Western social discourses about Africans and Africa. These weird depictions of `witchdoctors' seem to be largely derived from the H. Rider Haggard literary stereotypes, made into scores of films and TV series since the early 1920s - eg. King Solomon's Mines and Alan Quartermain. Liminality within a specific text which draws on this discourse can hardly escape this broader international racist imagery and discourses of `the Other', though I concede the point that Zulu interpretations would cut through the bizarre to the essence of the depictions as they understand them outside of media representations.

Like all epics since the earliest Western cinema, the camera shows large expanses of land. It sweeps the landscape with tracking shots, long pans, zooms and crane tilts -- up and down. Viewers are positioned by the camera to feel that they are witnesses to significant historical events which must follow an inevitable pre-ordained course, which cannot be interfered with and which must continue on their way. Privy to a God's-eye-view, high angle and sweeping shots place the viewer in a dominant position, de-emphasizing the Zulu impis into tiny figures as they dash this way and that across the landscape in their hour of glory. Again, this dynamic style of camerawork is absent in the shots of Cape Town and the British colonial areas. The camera here is at eye-level which creates a sense of ordinariness and equality.

TV and Politics
Various historians have argued that Shaka Zulu bears little resemblance to history, and that his impis never threatened the Cape. That might have been so, but the Zulu `nation' of the 1980s was seen as a threat until a rapprochement between Buthelezi and English-dominated capital and the state became clear in the early part of the 1980s. Despite this, Chief Buthelezi's impis were still regarded with fear by the average Afrikaans-speaking South African. Shaka's successor, Dingane, massacred a Voortrekker party in 1839, resulting in the Battle of Blood River at which the Zulus were defeated. This deliverance, now known by Afrikaners as the Day of the Covenant, continues to be solemnly celebrated as one of the great holy events of Afrikaner history.

Fear, mixed with respect, is reinforced by the tribal regalia so often worn by Buthelezi at mass rallies broadcast by SABC-TV News, by his references to the past and by Inkatha mobilizing politically, often with extreme violence and, through calls to ethnicity and culture. Since these-- ethnicity and culture -- were taken by white Afrikaner intellectuals and politicians as being synonymous with the idea of `nation' and national territory, Shaka the television series becomes an affirmation of apartheid, of blacks being a threat, not only to themselves (eg. the vicious way in which Shaka governs through force), but to whites as well. Capable of unspeakable brutality as in the scenes where people are impaled on thin logs, such images intercept the dominant Western stereotype and international media messages of savage blacks who are unable to govern in any other way. This conclusion is reinforced in the Shaka Zulu "option kit". This kit offers different sets of inserts through which different broadcasters could drop in alternatives to the impaling scene, for example. The other options included a less graphic wide shot, or Fynn grimacing in response to the (in this option) off-screen violence (Faure quoted in Mersham 1987:366).

It is notable that we are not shown the savagery of executions in the British Cape Colony during the Shaka era. During the decade of the 1980s, these messages endorsed apartheid discourse which held that blacks were `different' and should develop in their `own' way in their `own areas', safely out of the way of white civilization. Inter-state co-operation from the racially pure bantustans was suggested as basis of interaction, a point on which the series as a whole ends.

Under the changed context brought about by the unbannings of liberation movements in February 1990, Shaka Zulu now emphasized `order' vs `disorder', Inkatha as capitalist supporter vs ANC as socialist disorder.

Militarization and Total Strategy
The punch lines of the series occurred in the 7th episode. As the moderate King Dingiswayo appeals to his victorious general, Shaka, for "subjugation" rather than "destruction", he launches into what can be described as liberal humanist discourse as he pleads for the sanctity of human life and individual freedom. Dingiswayo was assassinated by neighboring King Zwide in 1816, who was in turn routed by Shaka in 1818. In the TV series, Shaka responds to Dingiswayo's humanism by mouthing the militarist discourse popularized by the hawkish PW Botha's regime of the decade of the 1980s. This was the `total war' doctrine adopted by the SA Defence Force.

Shaka's comments on Zwide are similar to that used by Botha's securocrats to discredit anyone who opposed his policies. Shaka demands total control over the armed forces and the state. He gets it, just as PW Botha got it when he became State President in 1984 and shifted decision-making away from Parliament and the National Party caucuses to the supreme State Security Council. The TV character, Shaka, then, was `spoken' by a discourse relating to the 1980s rather than the early 18th Century. Mersham (1987:310-1) argues the opposite, that the series is an embodiment of the myth of a "founding community - an origin" (Sitas 1988:16) which "warns against violence in the pursuit of power", though it tells the parable of a man obsessed with violence.

Shaka Zulu develops the idea of social control through extreme violence, but the last episode ultimately shows it to be misplaced when interaction with whites is rejected to by Shaka. The resulting chaos is "a strong warning to independent black politicians like Buthelezi not to try to go it alone". But more than just a caution to Buthelezi, the series'

neatly twists the veiled threats that Buthelezi directs at the South African state when it seems intransigent. It suggests by way of analogy that the modern Mfecane, which Buthelezi threatens may erupt if whites continue to ignore him, will be as threatening to the Zulu leadership as to the whites. In the series, Shaka's decision to launch an attack on the Cape Colony is the beginning of his undoing. The lesson is there for Buthelezi, and any other black leaders, that a successful outcome for either party is predicated on close cooperation with the other. The alternative portrayed in everything will go up in flames and chaos will prevail (Hamilton 1989:26).

Buthelezi at the time was mythified as a reconciliator, "the man who showed the way to black and white rule by consensus" (Shephard-Smith 1988:124), whose `nation', one of the few in Africa not to be totally historically disorganized, would again rise up against its colonial oppressors. In fact, the opposite occurred as Buthelezi, both hostile towards, and ally of, the apartheid state, found himself increasingly isolated after the release of Mandela in February 1990. This isolation was enhanced as more and more evidence accumulated on the role of Buthelezi's dependence on the apartheid state and their joint use of violence to sustain the idea of Zulu nationalism after February 1990 in opposition to the ANC (Tomaselli 1991).

Conclusion: Depictions of Zulus and Ideological Allegiances
Faure persuaded the contemporary Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini to endorse the project. Faure himself stated: "It's a mutual history, Europeans live in Europe, Americans live in America. I live in Africa and therefore I am an African, a white African" (emphasis added). What Faure has presented is a view of Shaka which endorsed the dominant, sometimes racist, stereotypes held by whites in South Africa, and the West at large. How those stereotypes will be interpreted by individual viewers depends on a variety of factors including their attitudes towards apartheid, their image of Africa, their class positions and cultural preferences. The anxious refrain from very young white South African schoolchildren on seeing the series, for example, was `the Zulus are coming, the Zulus are coming ...)

What I have tried to show is that in certain viewing contexts, Shaka Zulu offered a legitimacy for both ruling government and anti-apartheid elements (eg. the Kwa Zulu legislature and Inkatha). What connected Inkatha to the state's security apparatuses was its support of capitalism and Zulu nationalism. The latter value, which should not be confused with ethnicity or `Zuluness' as Mersham (1987:321ff) has done, is particularly strong in the series. This aided the apartheid state's insistence that apartheid was a humane and historically sensible policy which permitted, indeed, encouraged black `tribal' independence.

Buthelezi, however, was using the series to legitimize his role as a fundamental player in the negotiations that were to ensue after February 1990 towards a national solution. While the series was ideologically useful for the often troubled National Party/Inkatha alliance, however, theories which implicate the SABC mechanistically with diplomatic "aims" of the government misunderstand the nature of the relationship between national broadcasters, the state and the preferences of TV audiences anywhere (see Wright and Mar'e 1986:4; ANC 1987:1)

The series offered sites of struggle in the US as well. The anti-apartheid movement tried to prevent US cable stations from screening the series. The cable companies responded with advertising campaigns calling on viewers to judge the series for themselves. The fact that this conflict arose will have contributed to American awareness of the deeper issues relating to apartheid. But in judging for one's self, it is necessary to have a deeper knowledge of both television conventions and political issues. It is these that I hope this article have provided.

Perroration: The Myth Lives On (1998)
Travelogues mae by US companies such as South Africa 2 and Going Places in the post-apartheid era revisit the Shaka myth as `authentic' Zulu culture. Zulu actors recorded at Shakaland, the theme park where the Seris was made, tell viewers that Shakaland helps them preserve their culture, traditions and heritage. Thus does the media become the myth and the myth becomes the reality.

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Ritter, E.A. 1955: Shaka Zulu. Mentor, New York.

Shepherd-Smith, J. 1988: "The Buthelezi Factor", Style, (October), pp. 124-9.\

Sienaert, E. 1987: "Facts Have the Importance Fiction Gives Them", History News, Vol 30, pp. 18-19.

Sitas, A. 1988: Class, Nation, Ethnicity in Natal's Black Working Class". Paper presented at Workshop on Regionalism and Restructuring in Natal, University of Natal, durban, 28-31 January.

Tomaselli, R.E., Tomaselli, K.G. and Muller, J. (eds) 1989: Broadcasting in South Africa. Lake View Press, Chicago.

Turner, V. 1977: "Process, System and Symbol: A New Anthropological Synthesis", Daedalu , Vol 106 No 2, pp. 61-80.

Turner, V. 1974: "Liminal to Limanoid, in Play, Flow and Ritual: an Essay in Comparative Symbology", Rice University Studies, Vol 60 No 3, pp. 53-92.

---

¹SHAKA ZULU: the official souvenir brochure. B M S Publications in association with William C Faure, Howard Place, 1986, p. 3

²The yellow may have been encoded by any one of a number of means. The film stock used, Eastman High Speed Negative 5294 ECN process has a tendency towards yellow in low light situations, while able to expose correctly where wide contrasts of light are found within the frame. Alternatively the sepia may have been added in during the post-production stages.

³ mis-en-scene refers to the content of the frame, including props, lighting, color, perspective etc.

Author: Garritano, Carmela
Date: 1998
   

Alexander Korda's Sanders of the River (1935) details the adventures of Commissioner Sanders, the wise and patient colonial administrator who watches over his child-like Africans and guides them with a firm, but loving hand. Jeffrey Richards (19**:123) argues that the Korda's film series' is "Imperial propaganda". He concludes that the films' audiences identify with the leading characters and, significantly, "identify with factors that motivate them" (126). The film justifies British Imperialism in Africa by presenting Sanders as the benevolent administrator who saves the savage Africans from self-destruction. British colonialism is an altruistic enterprise designed to shed light on the dark continent, and Sanders embodies all that is good and just with the Empire. He is the ideal administrator, and noticeably unfettered by female companionship.

The absence of women in Sanders'S life, and the pronounced presence of women in the life of Sanders' African protege, Bosambo, is another component of the `propaganda' perpetuated by the film. Korda suggests that British colonialism is a male project, and that sexual desire, represented in the film by women, detracts from the Imperialist agenda. The ability to control desire is a mark of civilization. The inability to control one's desire signifies savagery. Hence, Sanders's character demonstrates that only British patriarchal order can control the sexually licentious African.

In an early scene, Bosambo rescues a group of women from the evil King Mofolaba. Mofolaba intended to sell the women into slavery, an enterprise which Commissioner Sanders, in the name of his good King, prohibits. The women giggle about and flirt with Bosambo and explain to Sanders that they would rather be members of his household than return to their families. `Lord Sandy' convinces the women to return to their homes, but he allows one woman, Lilango, to remain as long as she and Bosambo pledge to marry and maintain a Christian (one-wife) union. In this scene, Sanders rules over, and brings order to, the uncontrolled desire of the African women, and of Bosambo. Sanders is called from his office to attend to the raucous group of women. Bosambo, who is obviously pleased with the attention the women bestow upon him, keeps Lilango only with the permission of Lord Sandy.

Throughout the film, we see Lilango as a figure of central importance to Bosambo. When she interrupts Bosambo in the act of training his son to be a great warrior, he is visibly shaken by her unexpected entrance and ends his son's lesson abruptly so he can soothe Lilango. In this scene, she interferes with Bosambo's attempts to instruct his son in the art of war, with a patriarchal rite of passage. Furthermore, Lilango lures Bosambo into the trap of Mofolaba. Bosambo's weakness is that he loves Lilango , and so Mofolaba kidnaps Lilango and exploits Bosambo's fault. Bosambo's inability to control his fear for his wife jeopardizes his life, and consequently, calls into question his capacity to be in a position of power without the guidance of Sanders.

In contrast to Bosambo's weakness for beautiful women, Sanders surrounds himself with men and easily places duty before love. Although we are told that Sanders goes on leave to be married, we never see his fiance`e. Her visual absence from the film enables Sanders to function as the foil to Bosambo's exaggerated sexual prowess. Unlike Bosambo who places desire before duty, when duty calls Sanders, he answers, postponing his wedding in order to manage the chaos which descends on the river during his short departure. The marriage in itself plays into the male landscape of the British administrators. Sanders's fiance`e is Ferguson's sister; the marriage might be viewed as an exchange of a woman between men of the same class.

Winthrop Jordan (1974:13) notes that "the condition of savagery" differentiated Africans from Englishman. The "clothing, huts, farming, warfare, language, government, morals, and ... table manners" reflected their essential difference from the Englishman. In Sanders this essential difference is reflected in the different stances the African and the Englishman adopt toward women. Sanders is a man in full control of his passions. No women interfere with his duty. Bosambo, on the other hand, proves to English audiences that even the good savage cannot control his uncivilized behavior. His weakness for women, his unchecked desire, needs to be regulated; hence, the white man assumes his burden. What is equally problematic in this scenario is that women function as little more than tropes in the film. African women signify desire and need to be controlled.

Further Reading
Cameron, K.M. (1994). Africa on film: beyond Black and White. New York: Continuum.

Maynard, R.A. (1974). Africa on Film: Myth and Reality. Rochell Park, NJ: Hayden Book Company.

Richards, J. (1978). "Korda's Empire: `Politics and Films in Sanders of the River, The Drum and The Four Feathers, The Australian Journal of Screen Theory, 5/6, 122-137.

Author: Garritano, Carmela
Date: 1998
   

Alexander Korda's Sanders of the River (1935) details the adventures of Commissioner Sanders, the wise and patient colonial administrator who watches over his child-like Africans and guides them with a firm, but loving hand. Jeffrey Richards (19**:123) argues that the Korda's film series' is "Imperial propaganda". He concludes that the films' audiences identify with the leading characters and, significantly, "identify with factors that motivate them" (126). The film justifies British Imperialism in Africa by presenting Sanders as the benevolent administrator who saves the savage Africans from self-destruction. British colonialism is an altruistic enterprise designed to shed light on the dark continent, and Sanders embodies all that is good and just with the Empire. He is the ideal administrator, and noticeably unfettered by female companionship.

The absence of women in Sanders'S life, and the pronounced presence of women in the life of Sanders' African protege, Bosambo, is another component of the `propaganda' perpetuated by the film. Korda suggests that British colonialism is a male project, and that sexual desire, represented in the film by women, detracts from the Imperialist agenda. The ability to control desire is a mark of civilization. The inability to control one's desire signifies savagery. Hence, Sanders's character demonstrates that only British patriarchal order can control the sexually licentious African.

In an early scene, Bosambo rescues a group of women from the evil King Mofolaba. Mofolaba intended to sell the women into slavery, an enterprise which Commissioner Sanders, in the name of his good King, prohibits. The women giggle about and flirt with Bosambo and explain to Sanders that they would rather be members of his household than return to their families. `Lord Sandy' convinces the women to return to their homes, but he allows one woman, Lilango, to remain as long as she and Bosambo pledge to marry and maintain a Christian (one-wife) union. In this scene, Sanders rules over, and brings order to, the uncontrolled desire of the African women, and of Bosambo. Sanders is called from his office to attend to the raucous group of women. Bosambo, who is obviously pleased with the attention the women bestow upon him, keeps Lilango only with the permission of Lord Sandy.

Throughout the film, we see Lilango as a figure of central importance to Bosambo. When she interrupts Bosambo in the act of training his son to be a great warrior, he is visibly shaken by her unexpected entrance and ends his son's lesson abruptly so he can soothe Lilango. In this scene, she interferes with Bosambo's attempts to instruct his son in the art of war, with a patriarchal rite of passage. Furthermore, Lilango lures Bosambo into the trap of Mofolaba. Bosambo's weakness is that he loves Lilango , and so Mofolaba kidnaps Lilango and exploits Bosambo's fault. Bosambo's inability to control his fear for his wife jeopardizes his life, and consequently, calls into question his capacity to be in a position of power without the guidance of Sanders.

In contrast to Bosambo's weakness for beautiful women, Sanders surrounds himself with men and easily places duty before love. Although we are told that Sanders goes on leave to be married, we never see his fiance`e. Her visual absence from the film enables Sanders to function as the foil to Bosambo's exaggerated sexual prowess. Unlike Bosambo who places desire before duty, when duty calls Sanders, he answers, postponing his wedding in order to manage the chaos which descends on the river during his short departure. The marriage in itself plays into the male landscape of the British administrators. Sanders's fiance`e is Ferguson's sister; the marriage might be viewed as an exchange of a woman between men of the same class.

Winthrop Jordan (1974:13) notes that "the condition of savagery" differentiated Africans from Englishman. The "clothing, huts, farming, warfare, language, government, morals, and ... table manners" reflected their essential difference from the Englishman. In Sanders this essential difference is reflected in the different stances the African and the Englishman adopt toward women. Sanders is a man in full control of his passions. No women interfere with his duty. Bosambo, on the other hand, proves to English audiences that even the good savage cannot control his uncivilized behavior. His weakness for women, his unchecked desire, needs to be regulated; hence, the white man assumes his burden. What is equally problematic in this scenario is that women function as little more than tropes in the film. African women signify desire and need to be controlled.

Further Reading
Cameron, K.M. (1994). Africa on film: beyond Black and White. New York: Continuum.

Maynard, R.A. (1974). Africa on Film: Myth and Reality. Rochell Park, NJ: Hayden Book Company.

Richards, J. (1978). "Korda's Empire: `Politics and Films in Sanders of the River, The Drum and The Four Feathers, The Australian Journal of Screen Theory, 5/6, 122-137.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1997
   

SA 2. JOHANNESBURG, PRETORIA, SHAKALAND AND DURBAN

Produced by Micke and Jake deBoer. 1994. 25 mins. Exploring the World Series. Chip Taylor Communication. Chiptaylor@delphi.com

TOPICS: Propaganda, tourism, marketing.

USES: none.

SYNOPSIS
A travelogue to game parks, themeparks, cities and regulr tourist places.

CRITIQUE
Gold Reef City, a theme park in Johannesburg, offers the location through which tourism, theme parks and history are meshed via a tourist travelogue. This promotion totally ignores the material struggle out of which modern South Africa emerged. We get the usual touristy things: war dancing, gold pouring, and `local history' as encoded in the theme park. Publicity for South African Airlines precedes a hot air balloon ride; and then we go on an exclusive steam engine rail journey.

In Pretoria a sedate ambience is found because civil service and diplomats live here, we are told.

Interviewees who speak for their cities, but who are not identified, are probably the cities' marketing officials.

Then to Durban: surf, mosques, city, funfairs, etc. A Durban city official uses the apartheid categories of `whites', the `proud Zulu nation', and the `Indian culture'. Scenes of haggling in the Indian Market in Durban. A promotion for the five star Royal Hotel follows. Hotels we are told are in Durban are actually in Umhlanga Rocks, an adjacent municipality.

At Shakaland cultural tourism allows the presenter to "step back into History and learn about King Shaka." We are told by the induna (chief) wearing all his finery that 85% of Zulus still live traditionally: People who come to Shakaland will learn about Zulu culture and "see the real thing". Ritual dances of celebration occur at night. These magical sights and sounds draw one into the world of rhythm and mystique (Narrator).

SA2 seems to have been sponsored by the cities and hotels depicted. Parliament is in Cape Town not Pretoria. And, a theme park built for a TV series cannot be promoted as authentic culture. A PBS production, Going Places: South Africa (1998), is very simar to SA2. The triteness of these completely unstructured programs may be helpful to the tourist industry, but they are really appalling television.

This video is promoted with the same cover, but a different Series title, as South Africa Part 1 . Though listed as South Africa 2 , it has no resemblance whatsoever with the former title.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1997)

Author: Dye, Michael
Date: 1998
   
While Finzan may justly be remembered for its vivid portrayal of the practice of female circumcision, the workings of the power structure lie at the root of the story. It is upon the relationship between the Administrator of the region and the Elder of the village, and more particularly in the role each plays in society, that the subsequent events of the film are predicated. The arrest of the Elder places the weight of his authority into question; he uses Fili and Nanyuma to reassert his legitimacy. The film may be seen, then, to describe the collision of two cultures from the outside in. The events are presented to an audience which must supply meaning on its own. The fact that a fate such as Nanyuma's is hardly realistic, or that Fili bears an uncanny resemblance to an idealized Western feminist, supports the idea that these are elements designed to play to an international audience rather than the African focus of the filmmakers. The crisis of the village Elder is the pivotal point upon which the film turns.

Finzan opens with social unrest which sweeps through the village with the realization that the Elder has been arrested for his failure to make proper payment in taxes. The entire community slowly gathers at the District Administrator's office. They display a reluctance, a kind of weary resignation, for meager though the building is, it is a token of authority no less foreign for its African representatives. The Elder will not be held long; his punishment serves to remind him of the superficial nature of his power. This, too, the villagers know. They wait in mute protest. The Elder, once returned to the pavilion that is the seat of traditional rule, is harried by the elderly women who sit as informal council. He berates them for questioning him, and is clearly taken aback at the brash way they respond. The women challenge him to enforce tradition. His ability to deal effectively with the outside world has been cast into doubt. "He reveals that the women possess the subversive potential to actively redefine culture and the `natural'" (DeLuca et al. 1996: 207). He is left with little choice but to follow the dictates of the old women in the cases of Fili and Nanyuma.

The frivolity of the character of Fili masks a more profound uncertainty about the choice between two worlds. Newly arrived from the city, she seems eager to embrace the rural lifestyle. She is almost childishly naive in the way she draws attention to the differences between her own upbringing and that of those around her. She doesn't realize until it is too late that her boyfriend, for all his modern clothes, does not share her urban beliefs. When it becomes apparent that the issue of circumcision has become explosive in the village, she shows a curious ambivalence between flight and submission. Ultimately, her resistance is token. Fili's motivations are ambiguous; she seems to have rejected her urban background in favor of acceptance within a traditional setting. Her inaction is counterpart to the constraints placed upon the Chief. Each character's decisions are based upon the pressures brought to bear upon them by the legacy of foreign involvement. The result is a costly assertion of tradition. It may be argued that the circumcision itself was not truly traditional, being as a rite of adulthood somewhat superfluous for Fili. The most graphic impact of the act is the warping of tradition that occurs when the strictures of the past are treated as a monolithic icon, unyielding to circumstance. Tradition becomes a reactionary response to external pressure and its meaning is distorted. The erosion of values becomes internalized within the village; with Fili's trauma comes the likely end of the practice of female circumcision. By making the tragic decision to cut Fili, the Chief opens the possibility of a `redefinition of culture' that leaves his function in society behind.

Nanyuma here is the antithesis of retreat or submission. She grudgingly accepts the village's decision that she must honor a long-held duty to go over to her husband's brother upon the former's death. She refuses, however, to share his bed, and goes so far as to threaten him with a knife. Nanyuma draws close to Fili in an almost maternal way. She recognizes the forces that are being unleashed in the village, and she warns Fili to adopt a more restrained manner. When the crisis comes she tries, almost against the younger girl's will, to impel her to flee. At the same time she is unable or unwilling to forcibly defy the villagers. For Nanyuma the circumcision of Fili marks a turning point. Her allegiances have been torn since the death of her husband and her subsequently decreed marriage, but it is the final violent scene that allows her to sever her unthinking obedience to the arbitrary decree of tradition. "Nanyuma shows us that tradition can be mediated by individuals.

Through the tension between tradition and change, the idea of the hero is redefined" (Ibid. 207). This idea is reinforced by the closing scenes of the film. As Nanyuma speaks about the plight of the women of Africa, the vastness of the land spreads out behind her. She becomes an idealized version of herself, a modern griot or truth-teller. Her message is universal; the spatial position of the audience shifts to take in the realm of the symbolic rather than the particular. The argument has been made that the primary events of Finzan are wildly removed from reality, and on the surface one may be led to wonder for what audience the film was intended. Yet the extremity of these events gives credence to the idea that the filmmakers sought to present an allegorical account of the intersection of divergent structures of authority, and the resultant upheaval of traditional society.

Further Reading
DeLuca, L. and Kamenya, S. "Representation of Female Circumcision in Finzan, a Dance for the Heroes, Research in African Literatures, 1995, 83-87.

Ukadike, F. "The Other Voices of the Documentary: Allah Tantau and Afrique, je te plumerai, IRIS, 18, 81-94,

Ukadike, F. "African Films: A Retrospective and Vision for the Future", Critical Arts, 7(1), 1993, 43-60.

Robben Island - Our University

1988 55 minutes.

Produced and Directed by Lindy Wilson, VHS Video only.

Paul Gaston, 810 Rugby Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903. Tel: (804) 293-2956.

CRITIQUE
Robben Island consists of three talking heads punctuated by transitional shots of the seashore which frame segments of the discussion. The three participants, Neville Alexander, Fikile Bam and Kwedi Mkalipi did `time' together in the isolation section.

The interviewees told us that they did not want to make a demoralizing film about prison brutality and hardship, though these dimensions could not be entirely excluded from their discussions. They wanted to contribute to a historical document which would help viewers transcend the brutalities of the past. Life on the Island had indeed been brutal at times, as is described by by numerous autobiographies.

They chose to emphasize certain positive aspects of their collective experiences. They wanted to stress the `other' side of prison life-where adversity could be turned to advantage. Despite the often petty punishments meted out by the warders, and loneliness which often overcame a desire to think, these former prisoners argued in hindsight that `time' on the Island did give them an opportunity to think, to discuss, to strengthen each other, to read and, above all, to galvanize their political resources and strength. Most of the prisoners emerged from Robben Island strengthened despite their suffering. According to them, the prison community built solidarity and meaning for itself.

The three former prisoners explain how the South African government inadvertently helped to build a closeness between diverse political groupings and individuals by holding them within a single section on Robben Island. Bam, Mkalipi, and Alexander discuss how they survived emotional deprivation and social isolation and built solidarity and discipline in the early brutal years of their incarceration after 1964. This was done through establishing a prisoners' committee, and devising formal, informal and clandestine educational methods, which benefitted themselves and fellow prisoners. Eventually, even the warders, who initially thought of their wards as little more than troublesome animals, asked the prisoners to tutor them.

The three panelists clarify why their non-violence changed to armed struggle after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when 69 people were shot dead by police during a peaceful demonstration against the hated pass laws. They talk about their relationships with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu and describe these men as people of great dignity and strength. Bam, Mkalipi and Alexander also discuss how they came to realize that political differences should be tolerated and debated against the recognition that history would decide who was right.

Alexander refers to the barbarity and destructiveness of the System of apartheid in the film. Rather than blaming the Prison warders for his predicament, he sees their actions as resulting from the System, itself a larger version of Robben Island. Alexander consistently drew a parallel between the racial segregation of the prisoners, as well as the social organisation within the prison, and the structure of apartheid as a whole, outside the prison. All three talk about the psychological aspects of apartheid, not always visible in films, and how they transcended social and political prejudices and bitterness, even as regards the warders.

CRITIQUE
While the discussion by the three former Islanders exposes the vulgarity of the System (of apartheid), it also reveals the incredible humanity, courage and power of people fighting against it even while they are imprisoned by it. By establishing their own social and educational system within the Prison, they transformed it, even if only in their own minds, into a place of learning for both themselves and their oppressors. The three, for example, talk about how they transformed their warders through education, through standing up for their rights, and through social interactions.

The film reveals the enhanced humanity of people who have suffered under an inhuman system, but who have emerged without bitterness, strengthened in their commitment to democracy. One of the comments made is that the system failed to create its anticipated discord among politically divergent prisoners who were placed together in the isolation section. Rather, the prisoners developed tolerance towards each other and exploited their isolation and shared experience to develop unity among themselves. This was never the more evident than in October 1991 when the ANC and PAC joined forced in the guide of the Patriotic Front to try to force the government into talks for a constituent assembly.

Most of all, the dialogue's affirmative dimension indicates that political repression can never succeed, and that the prisoners on Robben Island, paradoxically, while physically isolated in personal and social terms, nevertheless wrote a history on the South African saga that may prove to be one of the most significant contributions in the reconstruction of South African society as it edges towards the post-apartheid era.

References
Alexander, N. Robben island Dossier 1964-1974. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press.

Mzamane, M.V. 1989: "Robben Island. Our University", Ufahamu, 17 No 3, pp. 92-99.

Tomaselli, K.G., Eke, M. and Davison, P. (1997). Transcending prison as a metaphor of apartheid.Visual Anthropology, 9, 285-300.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
THE RIBBON

1987. 50 minutes. Produced by Harriet Gavshon. Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films.

TOPICS: Womens Studies, Social Movements, Peace Studies, Communication, South Africa, Apartheid, Race Relations.

USES: U

The organizations reported on, like the Black Sash and End Conscription Campaign, need explanation, as do questions of South African feminism.

SYNOPSIS
The making of a 500 meter long peace ribbon, over a period of 8 months, by the white liberal womens' Black Sash, is the focus of this film. Made under the curbs imposed by a state of emergency, The Ribbon shows how black and white women joined forces in opposing the SA Defence Force's (SADF) occupation of Soweto. The ribbon was later used by the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) in some of its demonstrations against the military draft and `troops in the townships'. The film reveals how the women of the Black Sash and those from Soweto and various black womens organizations unified themselves through their dual identities as `women' and as `mothers', rather than as `blacks' or `whites' or `enemies' to oppose a common cause: the victimization of their sons by apartheid. They unified themselves across the structurally imposed contradictions that separated their sons into opposing camps --white sons conscripted and armed by the SADF to suppress black resistance in the townships; and black sons sworn to oppose them with their lives.

The Ribbon mobilizes the discourse of life-giving, nurturing, and protection of children, one which is irrevocably connected to the idea of `motherhood'. Women's struggle in South Africa has primarily focused on two fundamental sites of conflict: apartheid, and workers struggles against this racism. Overlaid on these struggles is a concern with family -- black families having been wrenched apart by apartheid; and nationhood -- divided by territory, race, ethnicity, language, and the subordination of women.

In South Africa, men of all classes and races have imposed their decisions on society, resulting in a considerable marginalization of women in general. The women in The Ribbon have come together through organizational linkages to forcefully stamp their agenda on national debates about conscription, policing, repression and military aggression, which violently pits South Africans against each other. The Ribbon is therefore not solely concerned with gender power relations, but with the way apartheid has constituted `blacks' and `whites' as irrevocably `different'. The film mobilizes communalities and joint concerns which cohere in the idea of motherhood. As Albertina Sisulu calls: "Let us mobilize all women - black and white - to march against racism". Women are shown planning, meeting, and participating in actions which lead to their arrest.

The film, however, is somewhat disjointed and introduces events and shifts in focus which are not resolved or explained. Where the first part of The Ribbon mobilizes `motherhood' as a site of anti-apartheid struggle, through organizations like the Black Sash, the SA Council of Women and other womens organizations, the second part loses this discursive thrust.

The second focus is on the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) in which the majority of the members are young white male and female adults. As many have yet to become `parents', the site of `motherhood' as the common link between black and white women developed in the first part of the film, is lost in the second half --resulting in some confusion as to whether there are one or two ribbons, and what the relationship between the ECC and Black Sash and black women's organizations is. Locations are rarely identified, compounded by a camera that never provides wide shots of the demonstrations themselves, or locating these within their specific urban environments. At the end of the film when a number of women are arrested, the ECC protest took place outside the SADF's Johannesburg Drill Hall, somewhat misleadingly identified as `Central Johannesburg'. This choice of location which is off-center to the actual central business district was a deliberate act of civil disobedience as protests on or near military property is illegal. But the film may give the false impression that the women were arrested because the images they had painted on the ribbon contravened the emergency regulations.

The reasons for the womens' invasion of the British Embassy is not adequately explained, though ironical connections are drawn at the Soweto rally to Margaret Thatcher as a `mother' who condones the SADF's military aggression in attacking targets in the Frontline States. The role of, and remarks made by, the white non-South African woman of a seemingly Eastern religious persuasion is not explained, though she stands out because of her exotic garb and distinctive ritualistic behavior.

The confrontations between those holding the Black Sash ribbon at an unidentified location in Johannesburg and white passers-by could have been developed. One white man asks why only whites are involved. His assumption seems to have been that if blacks are not involved, then these white women are acting idiosyncratically -that they do not represent black opinion. This is a crucial question relating to the racial composition of anti-apartheid organizations within the country. It's not that the Black Sash or ECC are white because of some inherent racism in their respective constitutions or membership, but because of the differing conditions into which the different `races' have been legislated.

ECC is mainly white (men and women) because only white men were conscripted. Historically, the Black Sash was a white organization of liberal women who drew on their class privileges, resources and skills to provide services and assistance to black people forced into subordinate class positions. In The Ribbon, black womens organizations no longer need the `help' of the Black Sash, but wish to work with it as equal partners in a joint alliance on common issues.

The class contradictions under which the different groups of women work also resulted in differing tactics. The white Sash women in The Ribbon are more concerned about `dignified' protest, no doubt with an eye to not alienating their liberal white constituency, than are the black women, or the ECC, who both had traditions of civil disobedience, and whose respective constituencies were much more radical.

The film uses similar codes as the PBS Frontline Specials on South Africa which play up objectivity and immediacy at the expense of explanation and historical contextualization. Unlike the Specials, however, The Ribbon does not give `both sides of the story'. Rather, it marginalizes whites who are uncomfortable with protest behavior in the scenes of the white man, mentioned above, and a flustered white woman, pacing restlessly alongside the ribbon.

The final shot where the (unidentified) director provides an eye-witness account to the camera about protesters being arrested heightens the sense of immediacy and danger characteristic of television news-casts in war-torn situations. This style is emotionally compelling and reveals events in an undigested way, positioning viewers as spectators of events-in-the-making. A compelling example is of a while male eye-witness who comments on the reason for the womens' arrest. Despite `being there', viewers develop only a partial understanding of what is happening, adding to the suspense and their desire for a resolution -which is not provided. Perhaps this ending, like the incomplete references to other events, signifies the multi-faceted nature of struggle in South Africa which never ceases: it mutates and moves between targets, and is unlikely to have a neat and solely happy ending.

This disjointed style is also effectively used in the sequence in the Sash offices, when the national state of emergency was declared in June 1986. The significance and implications of this State action is built up through fast intercutting of remarks made by Sash workers in their office as they begin to learn about the extent and effects of the emergency regulations through telephone calls from people in distress and black activists already directly affected by the regulations. The effect is one of suspense, initial incomprehension, and then the piecing together from the incomplete information coming into the office, of the nature and extent of the curbs and its effect on its targets and the Sash workers.

The Ribbon is one of the few films made by, and about, women engaged in anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. As such, it is a useful document of a particular period in the late 1980s.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990 )

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan

Date: 1992

    REVOLUTION AND BETRAYAL-THE ACCELERATING ONSLAUGHT AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA - AN INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING BY DONALD S McALVANY

1986. 60 minutes. Video. VHS.Produced by Donald McAlvany and the John Birch Society. Distributed by American Opinion Bookstore, 100 N Cherokee Lane, Sweet Three Lody, CA 95240. $19.95 VHS.

TOPICS: Politics, Propaganda, Soviet Union, Foreign Policy, Communism, South Africa, Apartheid, Angola, Mozambique, United States.

USES:U,G.

Gruesome footage not recommended for sensitive audiences or children is included to support the John Birch Society's disinformation campaign against both the US and South African governments. Accurate information must be used to correct the lies perpetrated in this video.

SYNOPSIS
An examination of American policy and attitudes towards communism and apartheid. The video is presented in a lecture format with illustrative graphics and short excerpts of gruesome news footage of political violence in South Africa. The presenter is Donald McAlvany, a self-styled `Intelligence Advisor'. The video box jacket states that amongst other positions and editorships held by McAlvany that he is one of America's "outstanding authorities on geopolitics and an advisor to senators and congressmen on Southern Africa".

CRITIQUE
The dust jacket's promotional genuflection to McAlvany is a typical ploy used by propagandists to construct an aura of credibility for suspect ideas and statements. This technique draws attention to the credentials of the speaker, and distracts audiences from noticing the lack of evidence or references supporting spurious arguments.

McAlvany presents his case in an extremely conspiratorial fashion in which the alleged long-term global Soviet conspiracy to conquer the world features prominently. Part of this conspiracy, McAlvany argues, is the United States's complicity in aiding the Soviets in taking over South Africa's strategic minerals, without which US jet fighters could not be made. According to McAlvany the main elements of the Soviet's strategy are:

1. a disarmament campaign directed against the Western powers in general and the US in particular;
2. the sponsoring of national liberation movements - like the Viet Cong, the Sandinistas, the PLO, IRA, SWAPO and ANC;
3. propaganda wars, against, for example, Chiang Kai-Shek in the 1940s, Batista in the '50s, and the South African government in the 1980s. McAlvany repeatedly implicates both in Time and Newsweek this Soviet propaganda networ

He claims that:

d. the Soviets are capturing one pro-Western country at a time - 40 countries having fallen into the communist orbit since the end of World War II; and

e. that the Soviets are isolating the West from its strategic mineral resources in the Middle East and in Southern Africa- the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine. This Doctrine supposedly holds that the Soviet's would dictate the terms of surrender to the US and the West after they had secured Africa and the Middle East.

According to McAlvany, the Soviet `Operation Pincer' would first gain control of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, and then neutralize Israel. It would also neutralize NATO, and orchestrate the one hundred or so international terrorist groups. Then the Soviets would surround the US with Latin American Soviet-installed puppets.

When discussing the role of African countries in the grand Soviet plan, McAlvany plays up the discourse of `tribal' rivalries and divisions ("five million blacks killed by other blacks in tribal warfare since 1970"). Black African socialism is targeted as the single cause of starvation in Africa. The Soviet African strategy, viewers are told, is three-fold, targeting North, Central and Southern Africa.

The key countries targeted by the Soviet Union in Southern Africa are argued to be Mozambique, Angola and South Africa. The FRELIMO government in Mozambique is described as "eight thousand Soviet-backed terrorists who now rule eight million people", and that RENAMO is a pro-Western group. McAlvany criticizes the Reagan administration which invested $60 million in aid to that country. He is very critical of the State Department's relationship to the Angolan government, but neglects to say that the ruling MPLA was itself not recognized by the US, one of only two countries not to accord recognition -the other being South Africa. The video draws attention to the contradiction of US oil interests in the Cabinda region of Angola. On the importance of South African minerals to the United States, McAlvany's ludicrous conclusion is that Soviet control of these resources would return America and the Western world to "the horse and buggy days".

Where the Soviets are argued to be chillingly conspiratorial, American support of `communist' governments is seen to be contradictory and self-destructive. That US foreign policy is designed to work for US economic interests does not seem to have occurred to McAlvany. The sympathy of the US news media to democratic movements in other countries is easily explained by McAlvany in terms of the Soviet grand strategy: "America helps its enemies but kicks its friends in Southern Africa". Reagan's `constructive engagement' policies are thus claimed to be doing the dirty work of the Soviet Union. A Western-supporting South Africa, McAlvany argues, is vital to the survival of the US military-industrial complex. He falsely alleges that Western governments, including the US, were only satisfied when Robert Mugabe's Marxist government was installed by the Soviets in Zimbabwe. In terms of this ridiculous logic, McAlvany argues that the US also wants a black Marxist government in South Africa.

Remarkably, each and every assertion made by McAlvany regarding Soviet policy was contradicted by events that occurred between the time his video was released and the United Nations attack on Iraq in January 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc during 1991 makes absolute nonsense of McAlvany's observations of the strength, strategies and objectives of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, nearly everything he has to say about South Africa is factually incorrect. McAlvany's argument is characterized by gross simplifications, lies, opportunistic distortions, and unbelievably reductive generalizations pertaining to technological development, political processes, both US and Soviet foreign relations, political economy and American policies pertaining to communism.

McAlvany's rhetoric supersedes even the crudest of South African state propaganda, seen, for example, in its propaganda film, Solution to the Dilemma of a Plural Society (1977). He claims that "these blacks, when they migrated south several hundred years ago, they settled in what are called homelands". The implication is that these `homelands' and their borders were already demarcated physical entities even before Europeans arrived! When blacks are shown by means of still photographs they are wearing their `authentic' tribal regalia and we are told that those in the `homelands' live in exactly the same way that they did 500 years ago - over-dressed Zulu warriors are seen in front of grass huts. McAlvany condescendingly concedes that "some" blacks live in and around the major cities. If his selective photographs are to be believed, all these blacks play golf and live in opulent housing.

McAlvany claims that twenty thousand Soviet troops are stationed in Mozambique, eight thousand in Zimbabwe and sixty-five thousand in Angola. If this was the case, neither the South African, American, Zimbabwean, Mozambican or Angolan governments knew of their presence, or used this startling `information' for their own propaganda purposes. Even more ridiculous, is the video's categorization of the US liberal Eastern Establishment as being part of the Socialist International aligned against a pro-Western South Africa.

The glossy video presentation may, however, may have struck a sympathetic chord with audiences not knowledgeable about Southern Africa. The propagandistic devices mobilized by McAlvany work at three basic levels:

1. rhetorical proofs in the form of elaborated lies, articulated through an authoritative setting, with regard to both the US and the Soviet Union are provided in his verbal presentation;
2. demonstrative proofs in the guise of graphics, still photographs, news footage and captions visually anchor and legitimate the verbal commentary; and
3. ethical proofs manipulate American common sense perspectives of communism, connecting this political-economic system to the devil, and playing up its virus-like properties which makes the grand Soviet conspiracy theoretically (if utterly deterministically) feasible if only at the rhetorical level.

The video is little more than extreme right-wing propaganda supportive of the South African apartheid state in terms of its value to American capitalism. The opportunism of this video is evident from the picture sketched on the video's jacket: the main title of the video is reproduced on a tilted horizontal rubber tire. Arching red flames issue upwards from the center of the tire into a white space. The smug face of Winnie Mandela is enclosed by the fire. The quotation at the top right of the box is Winnie's (Soweto Speech, 13 April 1986): "With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country".

Newsfootage of Winnie making this statement links the jacket design to her actual words. The horrible execution by necklacing of an alleged black collaborator by a black mob is used to devastating effect as McAlvany relentlessly shows all the available footage (about 2 minutes) taken by a Dutch TV crew of this unfortunate woman being attacked, beaten, set alight, kicked and hammered with sticks and large rocks dumped on her by now long prostate form. The screaming bloodthirsty mob chants of "Viva Mandela" are connected to an extract from a public speech by the Reverend Alan Boesak, allegedly made on the same day. Shots of the execution and Boesak are intercut in such a way as to make Boesak implicate himself in this crime. The editing strategy and selective quotations used by McAlvany condemns Boesak through creating the false impression that he condones and encourages this form of execution. Connecting the video jacket sketch to this horrifying incident, McAlvany further implies that this kind of behavior is being wilfully orchestrated by Winnie Mandela and other puppets of Moscow. Even the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation censored its use of this footage, forgoing the propaganda opportunity so enthusiastically and misleadingly seized upon by McAlvany.

For an `expert' who claims to know so much about South Africa, McAlvany's ignorance is highlighted by his inability to attribute, spell or pronounce South African names properly. Leader of the KwaZulu legislative Assembly, Chief Buthelezi's first name is incorrectly captioned as "Manas", and pronounced by McAlvany as `Mangathope', a Freudian slip meshing perhaps the Bophuthatswanan President, `Mangope' with Buthelezi's proper first name, `Mangosuthu'. English-speaking whites are labeled `Anglicaners', a noun not known to South Africans. Nelson Mandela is wrongly labeled as the `leader' of the SA Communist Party. Figures and statistics are heavily inflated, and comments attributed to Mandela are fabricated by McAlvany. Mobilizing the white Western myths of tribalism, blacks-as-savages, and `black-on-black' violence, McAlvany argues that in South Africa whites and blacks can be peacefully integrated, but not "blacks-and-blacks".

As someone who partially makes his living by taking groups of American investors to South Africa (25 trips at the time the video was made), it is obviously in McAlvany's interest to foster an image of a stable economy, safe for international investment. The hidden message in this video is thus McAlvany's preference for a US, rather than Soviet, controlled South Africa. He cannot see that this is itself a form of imperialism. Revolution and Betrayal is really a hysterical response to communism in which South Africa offers a convenient and opportunistic vehicle for McAlvany to articulate his extreme views. His concern for South Africa extends only as far as his concern for himself and the marginal, extreme right-wing, though nevertheless influential, economic interests he represents in the US.

The only educational use that Revolution and Betrayal offers is to learn about the lies, propaganda and disinformation perpetrated by the American enemies of democracy represented by the John Birch Society. A related use would be to learn about this Society's incredibly facile understanding of communism and international relations. As such, the film offers an excellent straw man through which to learn about these issues from the perspective of extreme right wing reactionaries with considerable influence on US policy-making with regard to South Africa. It is this kind of propaganda which is countered in films like Mozambique: The Struggle for Survival which also target US government representatives, but with sober and accurate descriptions of the devastating human results of the polices propagated by McAlvany and the John Birch Society.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan

Date: 1990

    REMEMBER MANDELA

1988 ** minutes

Directed and produced by Peter Davis, Villon Films

A brief historical biography of Nelson Mandela

TOPICS: history, politics, apartheid, liberation, human rights

LONGER CRITIQUE
Remember Mandela is a well structured, accessible and simply told story. The film is easily understandable to audiences not well educated about South Africa. But those bringing a greater knowledge of anti-apartheid politics to the viewing, will fill in the understated historical background which led to Mandela's arrest and imprisonment in 1956. Most significant for audiences prior to his release must have been the photographs of Mandela as a young man before he went to prison. His image was henceforth banned and his impression removed from all media in South Africa until 1990. The film starts with the narrator's premise that "It is said that you can kill a man but not an idea. Nelson Mandela is a man who has become an idea". Mandela embodying the idea of freedom recurs when the narrator states matter-of-factly: "The man has become the idea". Winnie specifies the levels of this idea: "he is the symbol of resistance. He is the symbol of the ANC. He is the symbol of the hope of this country". The narrator concludes that Mandela is the "supreme symbol of freedom in South Africa". This commentary was written two years before Mandela's release on 13 February 1990, and indicates the extent to which political symbols play a part in popular struggles against repression. Events after that date tested the extent to which Mandela would remain the "supreme symbol" and move from the abstract "idea" to concrete political praxis.

Remember Mandela reveals the persona from the time he was a young man. It suggests something of the extraordinary power of his empathetic personality which left its aura on everyone with whom he interacted. The film confirms the strength of Mandela's commitment to democracy in South Africa through interviews with some of his relatives: his sister, Mabel Notamcu; his wife, Winnie; fellow prisoner Fikile Bam; activist Helen Joseph; and trade unionist and co-treason trialist, Paul Joseph. Others who speak about Mandela include Oliver and Adelaide Tambo and a number of black men, the nature of whose relationships to Mandela is unclear. These interviewees relate how Mandela's stature elicited respect, even deference, from his prison warders and the treason trial prosecutor. Joel Joffe, Mandela's defense council, recalls how Mandela deliberately "convicted himself" by challenging the authority of the white court and the legitimacy of the police state, how he used the court to make political statements that would be banned elsewhere. Winnie talks about how Nelson continued the struggle in prison itself, working for prisoners' rights and turning "Robben Island into Mandela University". This point is developed in another video, Robben Island, Our University. Remember Mandela would make an excellent introduction to Robben Island which lacks historical contextualization.

The film revitalizes early scholarship on Mandela, by drawing on biographers like Fatima Meer and Mary Benson's history of the ANC, who are also interviewed. Going back in history, scenes of the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March, 1960, of black protesters by Police mark the change in ANC strategy, and the establishment of an armed wing in December 1961. Rare historical footage takes viewers back to Mandela's birthplace in the Transkei, where he was taught the duties of a chief. The political implications that developed from this heritage are not developed, however. Neither are his familial ties to the Mantanzima Chiefs who were the first to accept bantustan `independence' from the apartheid government. We do learn that Mandela was schooled in the English way but retained his link with the traditional ways. Narrator: "What he would learn of Western culture he would put to the services of South Africa".

There are a number of crucial omissions. No explanation was provided on why Mandela went into "politics". Neither is information provided on his role in the youth movement within the ANC which led to a break with its earlier pacifist policies. Viewers are not told why he was charged for

The film could have stressed how, as head of the African National Congress's armed wing, Mandela chose not to attack human targets, but rather powerlines and similar strategic installations, in other words, symbols of oppression.

The more recognizable archival news footage of mass resistance, prisons and oppressive conditions in South Africa is taken from newsreels. Remember Mandela interrelates well with the IDAF stable of films. The harsh conditions experienced by Mandela and Bam on Robben Island are described. Though the film concentrates on Mandela, it reveals his political practice as accountable to the people, the African National Congress, and the organizational base of popular black anti-apartheid politics since 1912.

Following his release, Mandela refused to talk about his prison experiences. When he did talk about prison, he did so in a self-depreciating way, referring to "we", the others interred with him. Their experiences are just as valid as Mandela's. There is a consistency between the "idea" mythologized in Remember Mandela and his actions once the "idea" again became a public personality. (Does the film contribute to the making of the "idea" that is Mandela? If Mandela had not been released, this film would have become an important building block to the continuation of the myth created by his enforced silence.)

Now that he is known as a myth, Mandela can no longer merely be a man. He was rearticulated from political activist prior to his jailing, to `the idea' while in jail, and then and back to activist after 1990. Mandela sustained the myth as he continued to serve the Congress, by making himself subservient and accountable to it. Most people who have become myths in their own time tend to live the myths which so often separate them from concrete and popular realities. Following his release, Mandela seems to glide along within the myth created for him by the media and the anti-apartheid movements, but in a more tangible way which suggests that the myth and the reality are not that dissimilar.

"The struggle is my life" is not the myth, but the goal. Mandela resisted deification. By refusing the elaborate trappings and hero worship demanded by other African leaders, and by working for the people, he resisted the symbol. Now we see his frustrations and inability to deliver, we now see Mandela the man, the activist, rather than an abstract figurehead. As such he disempowered himself because he deflected the `authority' conferred upon him by the South African and Western governments, and the international media as the man who was going to negotiate the future of South Africa with President FW De Klerk. He did not automatically assume that he was the right person for the job. He read the discourses: white politics sees individuals embodying political processes whereas the MDM sees political processes embodying individuals. He could see how he could have been manipulated by the first discourse so he protected himself by not taking on the individual responsibility of negotiating the future of the country on behalf of the ANC or anyone else. He has a good sense of how quickly things cab go wrong.

The symbol of Mandela when in jail was of `freedom and the struggle'. He continues to live the struggle in a different way now that he is free. He is now a face and a body, with a voice, speaking to people. The myth is still there, but less powerful in its sense as an `idea'. Now he is powerful in that he is bringing income to the ANC, and conveys ideas now to the contemporary situation. The myth now embodies a real human face. He has lost power as an idea, as a symbol, but has taken on different roles and other sorts of powers.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990)

Author: Dye, Michael

Date:

    Ramparts of Clay is a departure in several ways from the nominal notion of Third Cinema. Where other films timidly experiment with the broad perspective or the long take, Ramparts looks from above at the vast land and its antlike inhabitants. It is a depiction of Islamic life far away from the Holy Lands and society at large, and yet it is knowing with regard to the modern, outside world. The military is atypically bored with the village's passive resistance, and disturbed by the keening of its women. The outside world is intimidated by this pocket of difference, even as it threatens. It is central to the plot in its obliqueness, and distance. Space is geographic here, but it is also measured in the tiny occupations of daily life so far removed from electricity. The viewpoint is directed outward; we see the belligerent nonchalance of the soldiers, but we do not understand their purpose. Within this context the conflict experienced by the young woman at the center of the plot illustrates the traditional dichotomy between tradition and modernity, but it goes further by placing her at the center of insurmountable space, distance, so that she is doomed even in her first tentative efforts toward salvation.

Remarkable in 1962 for foreshadowing developments in Third Cinema of the late 1980s and 1990s, Bertucelli's film explodes the effect orientation of Hollywood cinema. The horizon as brief mediator of thought is gone. Theories in which Third film engages in a dialectic between Eurocentrism and meaninglessness become moot. The structures described by Teshome Gabriel that isolate the individual through the use of camera angles are inspired by a different goal. The outsider is watched, in closeup and from afar. She is made different by the camera's treatment of her. She works, and the camera spirals around the pail in her hand. She is angered, and the lense focuses on motion, her own and that of her adopted family. There is little dialogue. The sounds are vivid, and sight encompasses what there is to be seen quickly. A point is made about the paucity of sense. Her rebellion is in large part caused by deprivation and the overwhelming sense that elsewhere others are fulfilled. There is a latent sexuality in the film that symbolizes the aimless hunger of desire for change rather than flesh. There is no motion in the setting; the movement of the camera is the representation of choked emotion. There is no escape, though the passions seem to present other choices that are nullified by distance. The departure of the soldiers demonstrates that the village is beyond salvation or relief. To the elders the struggle had been successfully won, and they are bewildered by the resentment of their children. They cannot know that the soldiers seemed an acknowledgement of change to the young, living symbols of struggle. What they fight for is already lost, but nothing remains in its place. The camera, omniscient, observes the chronicle of one person's devastation within the idea of thousands withering. The lense dangles from a plane, and is thereby carried away from the unended tale. It does not care, but watches. As opposed to Western cinema the heroine will not survive. The society presented is crumbling from within; the camera is obtrusive but detached from the inevitability of the outcome, which it will not in any case see. The separation between young and old is too vast for words, and the situation does not allow for resolution. The old rituals are invoked, but they are meaningless. The surroundings cry with age, but the people are removed from all but the mechanical aspects of that life. They seem already dead, long forgotten, still breaking rocks without pay. They defend an identity that appears to be made of stone, but they strike clay that bends beneath their unseen blows. Liberty means "traversing the psychic wilderness" to a place of exile. The standoff is the problem. Escape is nothing more than the futility of running into the desert. The film exists within the place of internal exile, bound from the outside, near and far. There is no fault, only fear and rigidity.

Popular Communication: Mapantsula and the History of Struggle in South Africa

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
Mapantsula (1988) appeared as part of the new wave of anti- apartheid cinema which began with the making of Darrell Roodt's Place of Weeping in 1986. That year marked a shift in the South African film industry in that the new owners of the South African Theatre Investments (Satbel) Company began to cinematically examine less savory aspects of South African history. Previously dominated by conservative Afrikaner capital which rarely produced innovative or socially challenging films, Satbel had monopolized the production, distribution and exhibition of cinema in South Africa since 1969. Through a system of state financing and tax incentives, the industry had been channeled into producing uncontroversial movies (Tomaselli 1988). Roodt and the makers of Mapantsula found gaps in this system and turned them to aesthetic and political advantage.

Oliver Schmitz and co-scriptwriter, Thomas Mogatlane, manipulated the state's conservative line to get Mapantsula registered with the Directorate of Publications (the censor board) for subsidy purposes. They registered the film as an apolitical black township `gangster' movie. The central theme of this low budget genre, set in the sprawling black townships, is `crime does not pay' (Tomaselli 1988: 53-82). Despite these initial administrative and thematic constraints, and working under a state of emergency, they nevertheless produced an allegory on the psychological struggles that all South Africans, not just Afrikaners, or squatters, or blacks, have to work through. Schmitz and Mogatlane fused their different class and race experiences into a narrative which signaled the continuing maturity of a critical South African cinema that had struggled to develop following the neo-realist Athol Fugard/Ross Devenish movies since the early 1970s. The Directorate of Publications, however, demanded 17 cuts (about 40 seconds) before it permitted public screening of the film.

Before proceeding with my analysis of Mapantsula, it is necessary to explain the recent historical context within which the film is situated. The main actor and co-scriptwriter, Thomas Mogatlane, drew his inspiration from his personal experiences as an activist, and detainee. These three roles are meshed cheek-by-jowl in the crowded conditions of black urban areas. Class, social, and language differences do not easily find separate spaces within these areas where wealthy families can isolate themselves from the poor, the criminals or gangs, or militant political groupings, as occurs in normal free-market driven economic spaces.

FOUR PHASES OF RESISTANCE
Resistance to apartheid developed through four phases between the mid-1950s and the release of Mapantsula in 1989. The discussion will include the film's strategic value as a means of exposing contradictions within apartheid. I will also clarify the maze of organizations and their acronyms that so often confuse and bewilder non-South African viewers of films about this country.

Congress of the People-1950s
The first phase of black resistance to apartheid rule occurred in the 1950s, known as the Congress of the People movement. This was a "series of campaigns held in huge rallies, small houses, flats, streets and factory meetings, gatherings in kraals and on farms" (Suttner and Cronin 1986:12).

During 1954 and 1955, activists known as `volunteers' traveled South Africa visiting households and places of work to collect mainly black 'demands' for a democratic 'constitution'. The Congress catalyzed a popular social dialogue which would conscientize people across the country. This resulted in the Kliptown meeting in 1955 where the 'demands' were collated into the Freedom Charter. This Charter provided the means to a national unifying consciousness transcending class, ethnicity, tribalism, language and most political positions (Tomaselli and Ramgobin 1988). Brief shots of the Kliptown meeting are seen in the documentaries Makhalipile - The Dauntless One (1989) and The Freedom Charter (1986).

Anti-apartheid communication mainly occurred through word-of-mouth, small groups and mass rallies. Black resistance at this time was assisted by massive urbanization in response to industry's need for a permanent, stable black work force in the cities. Soweto and other huge black dormitory towns adjacent to the white cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town were constructed to house the new working class. Urbanization brought a shift in emphasis from an oral culture to a mass-media dominated way of life. The gangsters in Sophiatown of the '50s, a period reconstructed in Freedom Square and Back of the Moon (1988), for example, adopted their dress, gestures and way of life from American film noir of the 1940s.

Following the massacre of black protesters by police in Sharpeville in April 1960, the internment for life of Nelson Mandela and other ANC activists in 1964, internal opposition was totally crushed in the decade that followed. The Freedom Charter, labeled `communist' by the state, was banned and fell from sight. A World Apart (1988), written by Shawn Slovo, daughter of the then exiled SA Communist Party leader, is an autobiographical script set during this time when the ANC went underground and into exile. This film reveals the trauma experienced by Shawn over the `disappearance' of her father, Joe, who became commander-in-chief of the ANC's armed wing, and her estrangement from her mother, whose political activities took precedence over family.

Black Consciousness and Populism- 1970s
The second phase of resistance appeared in the form of Black Consciousness (BC) and Populism, during the 1970s, filling the political and cultural vacuum caused by the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960. The now urbanized black petty bourgeois intellectuals led by Steve Biko established the Black People's Convention in 1972. This period witnessed the emergence of an indigenous theory of black resistance. It drew on the experience and codes of the American Black Power movement, meshed with the theories of Algerian Franz Fannon. Its focus in South Africa was a psychological liberation from racism, a critique of capitalism, and an attempt by those directly experiencing repression to respond directly and intellectually to the source of this ideology.

BC was characterized by a populist top-down intellectual leadership with regard to the development of cadres and theory. This stage also produced the first significant use of mass media in the form of newspapers, pamphlets, books and magazines. However, it was only many years later that BC was popularized in cinema by Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom (1977), based on Donald Woods' books¹ , and the documentary, Biko: Breaking the Silence (1988). The latter film, though dealing with Biko, the making of Cry Freedom, and BC, reconstitutes political developments after Biko's death within a UDF perspective.

The 1970s saw a "renaissance" of resistance following the "long night" of the 1960s (Patel 1985). This emerged initially in the form of the illegal Durban dockyard strikes of 1973 in the context of an economic downturn related to the international crisis of capitalism triggered by dramatic increases in oil prices. Encouraged by the fall of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola, this period set the scene for the mobilization of BC's theoretical and cadre resources. The Soweto uprising which exploded on 16 June 1976, was the turning point in internal anti-apartheid resistance. An earlier film, Generations of Resistance (1980), deals with the various phases of black opposition to apartheid up to 1976.

Paradoxically, however, the success of BC in reawakening the spirit of revolution and black dignity, contained the seeds of its own decline. Following the death in detention of Steve Biko in 1977, the resistance broke into two main strands. The Azanian Peoples Organization (AZAPO) continued with a narrower exclusively black philosophy that had been articulated by Biko. BC organizations affiliated to the National Forum during the '80s. The parallel development of a non-racial movement, arising out of the same moment of struggle, and broadly based on the racially inclusive humanist principles of the Freedom Charter (known as Charterism), cohered in the formation of the UDF in August 1983. The UDF was catalyzed by the reactivation of mass participation in resistance following June 16, 1976, notwithstanding the state's vicious response during which more than 700 Sowetan school children were killed. Biko: Breaking the Silence shows how the newly emerging dominant fraction of resistance in the form of the UDF sought incorporation of all South Africans (including whites) into a broadly based anti-apartheid coalition.

From Populism to the Popular - 1976-1983
Phase three thus saw a shift from populism to popular (bottom-up) organization between the late '70s and 1983. While acknowledging the formative influence of BC on their ideas and self-image, black activists now questioned the top-down intellectual BC style. The emergence of an embryonic organic intellectual popular resistance reactivated proletarian organizations and leadership, particularly through the now legal and growing black trade union movement.

This was a period when the apartheid state responded to the needs of capital which after Soweto '76 demanded the termination of influx control to permit the development of free labor and retail markets, the facilitation of `responsible' trade unionism and the extension of political rights to urban Africans. Thus capital negotiated with the state to bring about changes rather than of the existing order (Stadler 1987: 3 and 6), to revitalize a maturing economy no longer adequately served by illiterate migrant labor. The limited nature of these changes, however, evoked a mass-democratic response, an unprecedented extended crisis for both capital and the state, and in February 1990, the unbanning of the ANC and scores of other anti-apartheid organizations.

Mass Democratic Resistance -1983-February 1990
The period 1983 to January 1990 was characterized by a see-sawing control over the black urban environment as the state and the resistance struggled over space, resources, media and the popular will.

The UDF became the central nexus for co-ordinating local level anti- apartheid resistance and channeling it into a national multi- class non-racial force. It was a popular response to the National Party's new Tri-cameral Parliament which in 1984 co-opted fractions of the Indian and colored middle classes into an unequal political alliance with whites but which excluded blacks. The mass opposition which occurred during this period, and imaged in The Struggle From Within (1984), scoured legal spaces and political contradictions previously closed with the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1961.

The UDF succeeded in developing political practices which activated local grievances such as bus fare hikes into national political issues. In Mapantsula, the meeting with the black councilors called by the trade union, demands to know why the area is lacking in basic social services and urban infrastructures. The rent boycott by tenants living in hundreds of thousands of state-owned houses which bankrupted Soweto in the late 1980s, was one of the counter-strategies used by ordinary people to protest their oppression. The result of this politicizing of civic issues was a linking of small community-based groups into a multi-dimensional national Mass Democratic Movement (MDM). The twin motors of this moment were the UDF and the giant Congress of South African Trade Unions (UDF), established in the early '80s. These kinds of issues are also the subject of Dark City (1990). This film candidly reveals both the police methods of working with collaborators, in this case, the very wealthy black Mayor of Dark City, and the techniques of popular resistance against a background of personal allegiances in which leaders sometimes have to sacrifice their comrades and family for the good of the struggle.

The term, MDM, seems to have arisen from a newspaper poster's attempt to encapsulate the UDF/COSATU alliance within an eye- catching headline. `Mass' was the term used by resistance organizations to describe their popular mandate. 'Mass-based' meant a popular democratically structured organization. So the acronym, MDM, derives from three terms extensively used within what emerged after 1983 as the 'progressive movement for democratic change'. Local community-level communication was structured to enable it to become the basis of mass national mobilization against apartheid. Between 1980 and 1983, print media in particular helped to politically mobilize local issues and groups, linking the various community bodies and their civic organizations into regional political structures, themselves connected to a developing national network.

The UDF established, in some black areas at least, an alternative state within the hegemonic apartheid political structures imposed by the government. For a while in the mid-'80s it was even able to claim jurisdiction over `liberated zones' in some black urban areas. The government's reforms which had attempted to limit black politics to local matters were interpreted as an attempt to force blacks to finance their own oppression by making local authorities self-financing (Boraine 1989). The two sources of income available to the now black-controlled urban councils were rents and service charges. Many councils raised these charges which, together with already high costs in transport, rampant inflation, rising hire purchase interest rates and growing unemployment, contributed an explosive catalyst (Swilling 1987: 29).

In 1984, a township in Sharpeville countered with a rent strike. A peaceful march on September 4 turned into a massacre as these residents attacked and `necklaced'². collaborators, councilors, and black policemen. Mapantsula plays out its narrative in the context of one such rent boycott to which the state responds with Riot Police violence. As in the film, the black Urban Council's and their administrations consisting of mayors, councilors, and compliant bureaucrats were kept in power and protected by the Security and Riot Police and Defence Force. In the opening sequences, the central character, Panic, is hauled out of a police van by a black policeman, herded along by a white member of the Riot Squad, and booked by a black sergeant. Thus, right at the outset, like Dark City, the film signals that the conflict is not purely a race war, but one in which different classes of blacks and whites joined forces to sustain a racial-capitalist social formation. This formation only benefitted those co-opted into the government's Tri-cameral Parliament and bantustan alliance.

The conditions operating in phase four materially changed with the declaration of the states of emergency after 1985. By the end of 1986, over 30 000 activists had been detained under emergency regulations (CIRR 1988:12). These emergencies, especially after 1986, severely cramped the activities of television journalists and some film makers. Indeed, one TV cameraman on the Cape Flats was killed in June 1986 in full view of the police who made no attempt to rescue him from the reactionary black vigilantes whom they had armed. These vigilantes were attempting to wipe out squatters who were opposing their community's forced removal.

Paradoxically, however, exploitation of contradictions designed to sustain apartheid, actually aided anti-apartheid producers. The so-called black channels, TV2/3, introduced in 1982 to broadcast to the urban black petty bourgeoisie and working class in the two main African vernacular languages, provided one route (Tomaselli et al 1989). Mapantsula could not have been made in any black residential area under the states of emergency after 1986. The protest and riot scenes were filmed in a studio backlot in Rivonia, near Johannesburg. Ironically, these mini-Soweto sets were built for the production of TV2/3 serials and series.

The Freedom Charter re-emerged as a rallying document of the mass-democratic phase, calling on all South Africans no matter what their officially designated racial categories, to work towards a democratic future. Mapantsula has its production roots in this moment: its director, editor and lighting cameraman were 'white', its co-scriptwriter and actors mainly black. The film arose out of the new conditions which had led to the establishment of a radical film making culture marked out by the Film and Allied Workers Organization (FAWO) after 1987. Progressive directors, unlike those of earlier times, now found easier access to capital willing to invest in anti-apartheid themes. This new liquidity was no doubt related to a perception that international markets would respond favorably to films about apartheid, as indeed it had with regard to the American release of Place of Weeping, Cry Freedom and A Dry White Season (1989).

By the late 1980s the black working class had acquired the skills and organizational forms to run media through which it could voice its interests. This was given further impetus because of the inability -- due to structural constraints imposed by market forces and media legislation --and unwillingness of the white-owned media, cinema, broadcasting and press monopolies to provide a systematic voice to either the growing counter-hegemony and/or working class. The film industry in particular was notorious for its complicity with the state, a co-operation designed to ensure the continuation of the state subsidy scheme which paid the producer a guaranteed income once the film has earned a threshold figure at the box office (Tomaselli 1988). Previous attempts to make a commercially viable cinema critical of apartheid had floundered, though by the mid-1980s less politically cautious financiers had been found.

Subjectivities and Roles in Mapantsula
Mapantsula has been translated by American press film critics as 'thief', 'thug', 'streetwise', or 'small-time crook'. Another interpretation is that amapantsula is slang for "the wide pants of contemporary fashion" (Beitel 1990). Another interpretation holds that mapantsulas are similar to tsotsis, notorious street gangs of black youths who fell prey to the evil effects of Western and thriller films (Commission 1950). The mapantsula sub-culture encodes elements of each of these descriptions, but is really a response to alienated ghetto life, one neither fully urban, but neither rural nor traditional. It is an exaggerated way of talking, dressing and swaggering. "What you wear is what you are, mama", says Panic to two bemused women bus passengers as he brazenly puts on clothes in the moving vehicle. He had moments before shop-lifted these from a Johannesburg store. Mapantsulas glide as if on ice, a super-confidence masking insecurity and social and political ignorance. This form of ostentatious expression is culled from American gangster (film noi ) movies of the '40s, and more recently, disco dancing popularized by Saturday Night Fever. Fashions are copied from Esquire, and other kinds of music, and, drugs and inebriation are other influences. It provides a way of winning self-respect and control over one's life, otherwise dangled within invisible social, economic and political structures beyond the comprehension of most individuals. Mapantsula behavior is a form of self-assertion through which ambivalent individuals - -usually ex-convicts - - -negotiate symbolic spaces for themselves.

Performance organizations affiliated to the UDF and COSATU cultural desks engage in pantsula dancing, in an attempt to 'politicize' this form of expression. So, the film's title, a noun, is a verb as well - -encoding contradictions caused by apartheid to the black body politic, and to the individuals making up that politic.

Mapantsula the film is about class identity and contradiction. Mapantsulas aspire to affluent lifestyles. But the discursive identities they create for themselves within criminal gangster practices often blocks achievement of class consciousness. The film, then, is about resolving the contradiction between an individual's anti-social behavior and the better life the politicized `comrades' offer, but could not deliver at the time of the film's making.

The film's ambivalent personalities relate to apartheid in contradictory ways. Central is the mapantsula, Panic. Panic plays out multiple identities, reflective of the social and personal schizophrenia caused by apartheid. The identity assumed depends on the form of survival Panic resorts to in different contexts. His given name is Themba, but is nicknamed Panic when he behaves like a thief. As a police informer, he has a 'white' Afrikaner name, Johannes. He is comfortable in none of these identities.

Panic's landlady, Ma Modise, stands for African women generally. It is black women who have taken on the full burden of apartheid. She keeps her broken family together, ensures that clothes are washed, the house is cleaned and that food is on the table. As mother of the nation, Ma Modise lives between the forces of lawlessness, resistance and legality, trying to sustain a degree of stability within the fractured community. She does not understand the political significance of the 'rent boycott' as explained to her by her son, Sam, but is wise to Panic's opportunistic reference to the boycott as an excuse for not having to pay his rent. Apolitical and uninvolved at the start of the film, she is politicized through the trauma experienced by hundreds of thousands of mothers when she hysterically confronts the police during the protest march about Sam's disappearance.

Pat, Panic's girlfriend, is symbolic of women structurally entrapped in domestic work. Panic abuses her for allowing her dislikeable white 'madam' to exploit her, and then steals her wages. Pat too, is apolitical. The catalysts for Pat are a political meeting opposing rent increases; and her visit to a trade union office after being fired because of Panic's threatening demeanor towards her employer. Like Ma Modise, Pat is an inherently responsible individual and she throws Panic out of her mother's house, much to his bewilderment. In African terms, this is a very strong feminist statement, and generally lacking in South African film and video culture.

Duma, the trade unionist whom Pat befriends, encodes the simmering strength of the democratic movement spearheaded the by UDF/COSATU alliance. The jail is full, laughs the group of UDF comrades when herded into a single cell. They contest attempts by the police and warders to intimidate them. Similarly, they are not cowed by Panic's street talk and threats as he tries to dominate the cell's social structure. He is bewildered when the comrades ignore his attempts to identify and impose himself at the apex of what he imagines must be cell's social hierarchy. The comrades know that people like Panic are part of the problem.

As the story progresses, Panic's confidence is peeled away by the comrades who don't respect him, the cinema-goers who make fun of his name ("Whose panicking in here?" as he runs in search of an accomplice), and the police who assault him. The defiance he exudes when hurling a brick through Pat's employer's window is moderated by his fear when the police shove him half-way out of the prison window many floors up. The comrades suspect him as an informer. Panic, however, is struggling with himself on the matter, his image of himself, like the broken window, shattered and threatening. He is happy to snitch on thieves for personal gain, but an ambivalence sparked by the solidarity that binds these comrades focuses his thoughts on how to respond to Police interrogation.

The sangoma (indigenous healer) provides cultural continuity for Panic who consults him after Sam goes missing. She throws the bones and reminds Panic that he is not the center of the universe. She tells him that the collective past inhabited by the ancestors is connected to the present of which he is an inhabitant. Just as Pani-the- mapantsula negotiated a symbolic space for himself, so the sangoma's advice attempts to re-orient him in terms of responsible communality rather than selfish individuality. She is the wise one so often shown as a buffoon by white directors making films `for' unsophisticated black audiences (see Critique of Shaka Zulu in this volume).

During his search for Sam, Panic encounters a bewildered old man who asks where are the parents of the children "running wild". The old man represents the 'old ways' when life followed predictable patterns, and elders were respected; the passing gang of schoolchildren are symbolic of the anarchic life of blacks areas under apartheid. The old and the young are totally separated by their different generational responses to the oppression caused by apartheid. Parents lost control of their children who spearheaded the revolt, many of whom degenerated into gangsters like Panic.

In contrast to Sam, the detained comrades, the unionist and the protesters on the political left, and the landlady and Pat in the middle, are the black Urban City Councilors on the political right. The film reveals the web of opportunistic cross-racial alliances and allegiances that bind fractions of otherwise antagonistic classes through mutual interests. The Councilors, though they may dislike apartheid, nevertheless benefit from it. Well dressed, educated and wealthy, their allegiance, like Dark City's mayor, was bought by the white government which confers upon them their status and power. Few were actually elected, and as the film shows, they are themselves caught in a double bind, unable to address popular needs while they hold illegitimate power. Mapantsula , however, lets them off lightly, and plays down the real fate that met so many of these functionaries: assassination, murder, assault and arson (as seen in Dark Cityetc.

Allied to the Councilors are the black Security and Riot Squad Police who work alongside their white colleagues. All these black characters are indicative of black complicity with apartheid: the bantustan governments, informers and soldiers, and the various administrative mechanisms that enforced apartheid on behalf of the white government.

The love/hate relationship that governs Pat's relationship with her white `madam' is indicative of white ambivalence about blacks in general, and their irrational fear of being swamped. The madam's friendly conversation shifts abruptly to aggressive defensiveness when Panic turns up. Similar attitudes are found in the white Security Police interrogator. His behavior represents more than the nice/nasty cop routine. He is also close to cracking, unable as he is to control the resistance, and even Panic himself. Indeed, this Afrikaans-speaking actor himself had, in reality, to confront who he was and what his culture had done to blacks, in interpreting his role.

The film's central theme is ambivalence. No-one is spared this insecurity in South African society. `Panic's' nickname encodes this. Everyone takes on split personalities, lurching from friendliness to aggression, from subservience to arrogance, from passivity to anger.

Individual Vs Collective Identities
The central protagonist in Mapantsula is not an individual; it is the community-in-struggle. Individuals only punctuate the film's context, apartheid and the democratic movement opposing it. Panic rubs shoulders with, but never really understands, the real protagonist. As an individual, he is thrust between the two arms of apartheid: state agencies and oppressive social practices. (The gangster in Dark City does not suffer from such ambivalence - he shoots the mayor's bodyguard, robs his state financed mansion, and dies at the end of the film in a hail of bullets fired at protestors by the security forces). In both films, alternative courses of action occur only within the relative spaces opened by the institutions that govern apartheid.

The contradiction in Mapantsula is constructed for Panic by the web of illusions woven by his Security Police interrogator. Panic gradually discovers that far from being his own man, his identity is, in fact, determined by political, social and economic structures which pre-existed him and of which he is not entirely aware. Panic is the site of two interlaced struggles unfolding simultaneously. First is the tug of wills between Panic and his Security Police interrogators. Second, is the struggle of subjectivities between Panic-the-thief and Panic-the-subversive.

The identity of the subversive is constructed for Panic by the Security Police through their misinterpretation of their own surveillance of Panic's behavior when he is looking for the unionist who 'stole' his girlfriend. Panic is puzzled by Police attempts to label him a 'terrorist'. He is confused by his UDF cell mates who treat him as an informer and who ignore his threatening gangster street talk and gestures. These two conflicts are visually manifested in the concrete confrontation at the funeral where Panic ends up after finding the unionist; and the symbolic struggle between `reality' and the signs of reality where the police use a video recording of Panic to `prove' that he is a terrorist (which he is not) because he was part of the funeral procession (which he was by default).

This scene, in which audiences see Panic's presence at the funeral framed through a video player in the Police cells before a later flashback in the narrative locates him in the funeral crowd, is a comment on film, ideology and media constructions of reality. Panic's interrogators, it seems, believe the video -it is their last resort in trying to turn Panic into a political informer. For the policeman, the video images symbolically stand for 'reality'. The VCR is the mechanism by which reality can be `captured' and `replayed'. The policeman believes in the opaqueness of his own (video) illusions about Panic. This deterministic logic which assumes that images equal reality, and that the media cause behavior, was found at every level of the state's theory of communication and hence, policies on censorship during the 1980s. The Directorate of Publications, for example, initially restricted the film's release to three film festivals only on the assumption that the film "has the power to incite probable viewers" and that the " large screen amplifies the dangerous political effects". This conclusion by the Directorate has no scientific credibility, but graphically illustrates Schmitz's point about reality and representation.

The interrogation of Panic accomplishes little of use for the Police as through it, he comes to question everything he had previously taken for granted. His experiential reality has no coincidence with this policeman's media constructed reality of his actions and motivations. A relative space is thus opened within which Panic begins to understand his own subjectivity. Panic, who knows that he was not politically motivated, realizes that the Police's reading of the video reality is incorrect. The policeman realizes that his bluff has been called. The window to reality has shattered and he loses his hold over Panic.

Metaphorically structured like shattered glass, recurring fragments of Panic's life in flashback punctuate an uneasy introspection induced by the harsh, psychologically disturbing prison conditions. South African society is criss-crossed with psychological cracks, cultural clashes and political and personal rifts. All the characters are close to cracking -- not least the interrogator who is unable to control the resistance and, towards the end of the film, Panic himself. The flashbacks take viewers through the way Panic constructs truth. Looking for Sam as he travels through his memories, Panic begins to see political reality for the first time. In the process he discovers himself - the school, symbolic of his childhood, now in state of disrepair, an indication of revolt, and rejection of Afrikaans. Afrikaans is the preferred language of the white policeman who wants to ensure its future through brutal repression of those who refuse to speak it.

Unlike foreign-made films about the struggle (Cry Freedom, A Dry White Season, A World Apart, Mandela) Schmitz uses South African actors with real Afrikaans accents and voices. The black township tsotsitaal (gangster-talk) is a rich combination of English, Zulu, Afrikaans and slang from all three. Panic, the man of multiple identities, is reflected in Panic-the-speaker: his fractured language-use reflects the coalescence of an ill-formed intercultural prism which equips him to move and live through different social spaces, to leech on, and rob people in each, but to exist in none of these environments comfortably or permanently.

Social fissures are held together in the black community by the kind of grassroots political organization depicted in Dark City. These give strength to Panic's cell-mates on whom he is cajoled to inform by his interrogators. In foreign films, this organization is in images of the black toyi-toying (dancing) `crowd' compared to the white individual. Images of blacks helping themselves through the intervention of white liberals is not part of this film. There are no easily identifiable heroes; and in the audiences's eyes, if not their own, the bad guys are bad for understandable reasons.

Mapantsula exposes the contradictions and paradoxes which so often strangle anti-apartheid organization, where thugs, informers and vigilantes co-opted by the state rampage through the communities in which they live. Mapantsula is an attempt to confront these issues through a biographical narrative of Panic-the- tsotsi who is eventually forced to face up to who is he is and what has made him that way. As Teshome Gabriel (1982) might say, Mapantsula is a trans-individual biography, a symbolic autobiography where the collective subject is the focus. The film is an expression of shared experience, a mark of solidarity. Mapantsula is a film which reflects the power of collective action in defeating oppression and ignorance from whatever its source.

The film accomplishes the state's worst fears: it suggests that the very "discipline and organizational control" offered by the comrades and unionists can guide mapantsulas to self-realization. The Directorate of Publication's reading falls between the above two interpretations, its view shaped by a fear of revolution:

The effective closing scene communicates a clear message to the viewer: refuse co-operation with the authorities and side with the rebellious elements in black society. Thereby the state becomes powerless to act against subversive organizations.

Conclusion
Mapantsula reflects the technical and symbolic immaturity of a dynamic film movement contesting not only apartheid, but Hollywood aesthetics as well. Rod Stewart's camera work has elements of the restrained style of Third Cinema, and aspects of Italian neo-realism, though neither style nor theory had yet had much impact on South African film making. Mark Baard's sophisticated flashback editing sometimes muddles its tenses and confuses relationships, but it suggests a theory of media-society relations and ways of making sense of reality which is usually associated with avant-garde European cinema.

Further Reading
Beitel, M. 1990: " Mapantsula: Cinema, Crime and Politics on the Witwatersrand", Journal of Southern African Studies, 16(4).

Boraine, A. 1989: "The Militarisation of Urban Conditions: the Security Managements System in Mamelodi." In Cock, J and Nathan, L (eds.): War and Society: the Militarization of South Africa. Cape Town: David Philip.

CIRR. Catholic Institute for International Relations. 1988: Now Everyone is Afraid: the Changing Face of Policing in South Africa. London.

Commission Appointed to Enquire into Acts of Violence Committed by Natives at Krugersdorp, Newlands, Randfontein and Newclare Pretoria: Government Printer, UG 47/1950.

Gabriel, T. 1982: Third Cinema in the Third World: the Aesthetics of Liberation. UMI Research Press.

Hirson, D. 1988/9: Mapantsula, Southern African Review of Books (Dec/Jan), p. 22

Louw, P.E. 1989: "The Emergence of the Progressive-Alternative Press in South Africa with Specific Reference to Grassroots," Communicatio, 15(2).

Patel, L. 1985: "How Small Media Can Organise", Media Development , (32)3.

Stadler, A. 1987: The Political Economy of Modern South Africa . David Philip, Cape Town. Suttner and Cronin, J. 1986: 30 Years of the Freedom Charter. Johannesburg: Ravan

Swilling, M. 1987: "The United Democratic Front and Township Revolt," Work in Progres , No 49.

Tomaselli, K.G. 1988: The Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in South African Film. Lake View Press, Chicago.

Tomaselli, K.G. and Ramgobin, M. 1988: "South Africa and the Freedom Charter: Culture and Violence", Enclitic, Vol 11 No 1, pp. 86-94.

Tomaselli, R.E., Tomaselli, K.G. and Muller, J. 1989: Broadcasting in South Africa. Lake View Press, Chicago.

Tomaselli, R.E. 1991: "South Africa's `Hidden Hand'", Covert Action Quarterly , No 36, pp. 22-26.

(Adapted with permission from Tomaselli, K.G., "Popular Communication in South Africa: Mapantsula and its Context of Struggle", South African Theatre Journal, 5(1) 1991, 46-60)

---

¹See, eg, Biko (1978) and Asking for Trouble (1981).

²Necklacing is a gruesome form of execution in which 'comrades' execute suspected collaborators by placing a tyre round their victim's neck. The tyre is then filled with gasoline and lit. The victim burns to death.

Author: Gage, Jennifer
Date: 1998
   

PLANET IN MY POCKET

1996. Directed by Beverly Seckinger, Arizona State University.18 mins. VHS only. Distributed by B Seckinger, 4218 E Ware Road, Tucson, AZ 85711, USA.

TOPICS: Anthropology, Media, History, Colonialism

USES: U, G, A

CRITIQUE
In recent years anthropology has received criticism as a social science and perhaps this criticism is well deserved. Anthropology grew from the philosophies and ideologies of Social Darwinism and colonialism. Anthropology largely remains the study of other cultures and their differences. This focus established a scientific validity even while stereotyping others as strange, backward and barbarian. These stereotypes, especially expressed through modern pop culture, television and movies, mobilize attitudes about other cultures. Planet explores images and stereotypes Americans have come to hold as relative truth about `the other' by parodying tourism as pop anthropology.

After seeing a group of gaudily dressed tourists in a bubbling hot tub with painted natives dancing around them, we are introduced to Leonora Livingston Peabody, who is to be our travel guide and educator. The opening scene plays on stereotypes. Imagery of captured Europeans being boiled for hungry cannibals is a continuation of stereotypes commonly portrayed in movies and advertisements. The name of our tour guide also feeds on images of exploring missionary and archeological museums. After presenting Africa as a dark and difficult continent, we are taken to Mexico, whose ancient architecture was built by extraterrestrials and those darn Indians on `our land?'.

Many of the clips are from old movies and TV cartoons, such as savages dancing around the captured Europeans, sleeping Mexican mice, and stupefied Indians. These ethnocentric images, accompanied by Peabody's commentary, are laced with one stereotype after another. They shock the viewer into recognizing that these attitudes are prevalent within American society.

An interruption happens as we are watching our tour guide. There is a news flash in which the viewers are told to beware of Dr Carla Akeley, also known as Stitches, who is an anthropologist \ taxidermist and has escaped from an insane asylum. She may be continuing her collection for her Museum of Culture, comprised of six stuffed and costumed bodies found in her basement. The news cast then shows an interview with the "crazed anthropologist" who is suggesting that anthropologists study the women selling plastic jewelry at a rest stop near Phoenix (aspects of our own culture rather than another). The reporter then warns us of danger and a curfew has been suggested.

One of the tourists is taking pictures of other tourists, perhaps cataloging the strange behavior known as "purchasing frenzy". However, the camera is often pointed at the video camera indicating that you, as a viewer, are also worthy of study. As we continue on Peabody's tour, there is a scene where the group of tourists are shopping; actually almost every time we see them in the film they are shopping. However, the scene where they are purchasing world globes is especially significant. This scene explains the title of the film, Planet In My Pocket. It is analogous to attitudes of ownership American tourists often reveal. Peabody's commentary exemplifies this aspect when she says "I don't know why they don't speak English, after all, they're so close to America? This recurs when speaking of Native Americans living on "our land". The idea that everything is purchasable or obtainable is a major theme in Planet. Towards the end of the video our tour guide is bombarded by the globes and, in the next scene, a woman is driving down a highway in a big Cadillac. Do you recognize her? She is the anthropologist escaped from the asylum, disguised as a tourist taking pictures of tourists, and through very suggestive filming, the viewer realizes that Peabody has been stuffed into the trunk of the Cadillac and has been taken to a motel to be stuffed and costumed as another specimen in Dr Carla Akeley's Museum of World Culture. Although the body is never shown (other than as a pile of exhumed guts), the viewer recognizes Peabody as the apparent victim because of the type of hat she wore. However, we are getting the perspective as if the audience is looking out of Peabody's eyes, and the anthropologist is placing the hat on us. Seckinger uses this image to point directly at the viewers. The hat symbolizes the idea that we, the viewers, have created images of `Others' and, in the eyes of another, the images of our culture can also be constructed.

(Reviewed by Jennifer Gage, Michigan state University, 1998)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1991
   

THE PEOPLE'S POET, MZWAKE MBULI

1987. 32 minutes. Video. Produced by Afravision, London

SYNOPSIS
Mbuli speaks about his work, his politics and the role of art in the struggle to free South Africa

TOPICS: Music, Orality, Anthropology, Performance, South Africa, Apartheid, Resistance

USES: S, U, G, A and V.

CRITIQUE
The Peoples Poet initially appears to be a politicized form of music television (MTV). Through use of music, images, documentary realism, post-modernist editing techniques and interviews, Afravision offers a form that draws on MTV, documentary and the codes of international television address, but which go way beyond any of these genres. The producers take legitimate artistic and documentary license, recreating, juxtaposing, and matching news footage of specific events to illustrate the poetic generalizations made by Mbuli in his performances.

Mbuli develops an anti-colonial form which breaks with pure poetry: 'How can I write about daffodils when the ground is so full of blood,' he asks. He talks of how his 'aloneness' in solitary confinement while in detention can be mobilized in an affirmative direction, and empower resistance culture to a future beyond incarceration. The upbeat township music and Mbuli's performance confer a positive dimension to the communication of this experience after his release in the development of cultural forms to move towards, and ultimately attain, liberation.

Mbuli wears a blue cap that looks the same as those worn by the riot police. Mbuli is appropriating this clothing signifying oppression and re-articulating it into a subversive context. In so doing, he disempowers the sign of `riot policeman.' He uses the image to undercut, to lampoon; Mbuli mobilizes signs of police violence and what they represent politically to undermine them, a familiar image is defamiliarised to make a defiant statement.

The film falters at a couple of points: the poet talks about the Triple Ms, Presidents Mangope (Bophuthatswana), Mphepu (Venda) and Matanzima (Transkei), to which Sebe of the Ciskei is added. These are the black Bantustan leaders who collaborated with the National Party in the creation of the 'homeland' system. The shot in which Mangope is shown is not identified in this sequence, which distracts from the video's impact, as unknowledgeable viewers will not decode the intended connotations of the shots illustrating this criticism of Bantustan leaders. Titles are used elsewhere as an integral part of the text, in a modernist style, to illustrate Mbuli's oral presentation, so why not here?

The music and news shots of demonstrators dancing did not match easily, disrupting the rhythms of the visual narrative. The music was always synchronized with Mbuli's speech, but often lost when the news footage was introduced. Despite this, the video's impact is not unduly affected. Poignant moments occur when, for example, the black schoolgirls are standing over a coffin. They show no sense of defiance, but are highly self-consciousness.

There is a lot of Brecht in Mbuli and the way the video is edited. For example, Mbuli makes a statement in the foreground while are disjointed footage of television news and photographs are overlaid on his image. This almost post-modern use of editing retains attention and suggests a fracturing of the veneer of apartheid. The repressive arms of apartheid, manifested in the Riot Police, contrast with the confident oratory of Mbuli. The video's images and Mbuli's poetry describe overwhelming violence that ends, however, in hope. The context within which Mbuli composes and which his poetry reflects throws up its own textual and dramatic strategies. This technique was discovered by Brecht in another era.

Mbuli is only poetry at one level. He says, `I will go on reciting,' indicating that the political performance is foregrounded in his agenda. This arises out of the African tradition of praise poetry, modified in terms of the modern political context and the currents of labor theater and poetry. At the other level is writing, and the prophetic nature of Mbuli's work. Poetry is not a solidification of the past, but a way to the future. Mbuli uses poetry and performance to negotiate apartheid, as well as implicating Britain, the USA and the multinationals which cynically define imperialism and colonization in `law and order' terms.

(Written by Keyan Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1991)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1997
   

PEOPLE OF THE GREAT SANDFACE

Anglia Survival Series. 58 mins. Broadcast on Discovery 1992.

Director: Paul John Myburgh.

TOPICS: Anthropology, Kalahari

SYNOPSIS
This is the shorter version of the 1985 two-hour Anglia TV movie. The introduction to the Discovery version differs markedly with the longer version. An American voice, not Myburgh, narratives the Discovery version. The `Bushmen' are imaged as "ancient people". A map of Botswana illustrates the supposed location of this `last' remaining clan in the wild. Time, history and drought have taken their toll on their numbers, says the narrator. Now most Bushmen we are told live in the remote areas of the Kalahari desert. "This film is the story of a year in the lives of the last band of the Gwi Bushmen still living the old way of life in the Central Kalahari ... they are perhaps the last substantial band of wild Bushmen left in the world today. It is the story of a vanishing phase of human culture" (Narrator).

Twenty-four people, men and women, ages one to ninety share everything. Personal obligation ensures survival, intones the narrator. They live only by hunting and gathering. They are shown dressed in traditional garb. Nothing is ever wasted. Drought has made life difficult for them. Thirst is a constant companion. Moisture comes from mellons and roots. People talk of the government settlement, water and free food. There is contact with people from the settlement, and they talk about an alternative way of life. This way of life may be coming to an end reveals the film.

Members of the band are introduced; we learn of drought and the sources of moisture; fire, the center of social life; making of arrows; hunting (no dogs, no donkeys, though spears are used). One retired hunter is described as the perfect example of the old ways, the ancestors of today's Bushmen (as he beats buck to death with a knobkerrie - fighting stick); gathering and foraging; plant fibers rolled and twisted into string; children playing, hunting - the young boy's only reality is to be a hunter, like his father. "The bushmen are at one with the basic natural elements fire, air and earth" (Narrator).

The problem of thirst is similar to the longer version and the attraction of the government settlement begins to look attractive. The people eat an eight month old Wildebeest skin so desperate are they. But the rains eventually come. First rains result in pans becoming filled with water. Water is put into ostrich shells with containers (tortoise shells?). Water is also put into containers made from an animal's stomach. The water evaporates fast. The question asked: Why must the Bushmen be hungry and thirsty when they know that the settlement provides food and water? They leave for the settlement, 5 days walk away.

CRITIQUE
The Discovery script - masquerading as `ethnography' - has been completely revised into didactic version of Myburgh's personal odyssey in the original. The narrator early on tells us of the government settlement, as opposed to the longer version where we learn of it only at the end of the film. Like the longer version, it is only "time and drought" which have affected the `Bushmen' - nothing is said of white and black extermination of the San, of the oppressions experienced by the Botswana Basarwa from the Botswana government; from intermarriage, migrant labor, alcohol abuse, illness or malnutrition.

The band depicted does not exist, but was constituted from some remnants, and then appropriately dressed by Myburgh to act in the film. Ed Wilmsen and John Marshall inVisual Anthropology provide the background to "People of the Great White Lie" as Robert Gordon snidely retitles the film.

While it is true that some San people still undertake the activities depicted, the notion that they are the last wild band known is nonsense. Even the most remote bands have historically been interconnected into broader trade and other relations; and only old people wear traditional garb. The cultural isolate is the dominant frame of reference, one that has been long discredited in anthropology itself.

Further Reading
Gordon, R. (1990). People of the Great Sandface: People of the great white lie, Commission on Visual Anthropology Review, Spring, 30-34.

Guenther, M. (1991). Myburgh-Gordon exchange, Commission on Visual Anthropology Review , (Spring).

Marshall, J. (1992). At the Other End of the Camera, Visual Anthropology, 5(2), 167-174.

Myburgh, P. (1989). Paul Myburgh talks on People of the Great Sandface. An interview with Keyan Tomaselli, Commission on Visual Anthropology Review, 26-31.

Tomaselli, K.G., Gabriel, T., Masilela, N. and Williams, A. (1992). People of the Great Sandface , Visual Anthropology, 5(2), 143-166.

Wilmsen, E.N. (1992). Comment on People of the Great Sandface, Visual Anthropology , 5(2), 175-80.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1997)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   

NKULELEKO MEANS FREEDOM

1982 - 28 minutes. 16mm. Video. Produced by Ron and Opera Hallis. Distributed by Icaris/First Run.

TOPICS: Education, Development, Zimbabwe, Socialism.

USES: G.

Considerable background information required on the philosophy of Education With Production is required, as well as a some knowledge of the Zimbabwean educational system.

SYNOPSIS
This film details aspects of education and production in Zimbabwe. The three fundamentals of Education with Production (EWP) are considered to be: 1) the struggle for production; 2) the struggle for achievement; and 3) the correct ideological perspective. Headmasters and President Mugabe are interviewed in the film. Mugabe talks about the need for socialism and claims that even the Pope described the Zimbabwean project as a humanitarian one which supports human solidarity.

CRITIQUE
The rhetorical introduction by a headmaster addressing his 950 pupils conceals the philosophical sophistication of EWP. He discusses EWP as mainly technical training for rural development. The lack of discussion of EWP philosophy could create the erroneous impression that this form of education is inferior to conventional education, or that it is dogmatically Marxist. In fact, EWP had been operating successfully throughout the non-Marxist states of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland and in the Transkei Bantustan.

It is possible that the film had a promotional intent and that the content needs to be seen in this light, rather than viewed as having an instructional objective.

Though the film presents EWP as the main form of post-independence schooling, this is misleading as only four or five schools in Zimbabwe were established to pursue this pedagogic philosophy. They arose out of the need to educate the children of refugees in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. These schools, however, received only limited state support, the popular demands being rather for conventional academic education. When parents were given an option between conventional and EWP schools, they mostly opted for the former. Surprisingly, the video does not acknowledge the Foundation for Education With Production (FEP), which established these schools, though one of the interviewers, Janice McLaughlan, was connected with FEP.

EWP reflects the humanitarian elements of socialism and integrates with the new government's own ideas on development. In Nkukeleko, however, a certain mismatching occurs with Mugabe talking about the need to break down the head/hand dichotomy at a general level, while the specific visual descriptions and narration tend to lose this generality in rhetorical technicism and dancing/singing school children.

The film does not explain the education system, nor the debates which have taken place in Zimbabwe over educational philosophies or systems. The film would be most useful in certain graduate courses examining different philosophies of education and attempts to develop them in developing countries.

In 1982, when the film was made, it was not clear whether the conventional, academically-based education system would be the preferred one. The debates over the kinds of education that should be introduced were at their height during this time, but these dynamics are not reflected in the film.

(Critique by Keyan Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1991
   

THE NAMIBIAN INDEPENDENCE PROCESS

1990. 15 minutes. Video only. Produced by the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law in conjunction with South Africa Now (Globalvision). Distributed by California Newsreel and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, 1400 "Eye" Street NW, suite 400, Washington DC 20005.

TOPICS: Politics, constitutional development; neocolonialism, Namibia, South Africa, South West African Peoples Organization, United Nations, American influence.

USES: U, and V.

An introduction should provide a thorough grounding in Southern African geography and politics, the history of South West Africa/Namibia and its struggle for independence. Viewers should be alerted to the fact that the video is an extract from South Africa Now and is thus structured as an in-depth, fast moving news story.

SYNOPSIS

Coverage of the Namibian independence process.

CRITIQUE
The video starts abruptly without any contextualization to orientate the viewers as to where Namibia is, how it came to be the last African colony, or the nature of its struggle for independence from South Africa. A number of omissions exonerate the United States from complicity in South Africa's withholding of independence until 1990. The group of American observers interviewed are hardly representative of the US Administrations under Ford, Reagan or Bush, even though the impression is given that US influence was the prime catalyst towards independence. The fundamental role of the United Nations is skirted and a single reference to it in the context of the massacre by South African troops of SWAPO (South West African Peoples Organisation) soldiers errantly returning to Namibia from Angola during the run-up to elections wrongly implicates the Organization as a co-conspirator with South Africa.

The commentary takes for granted acronyms like UNTAG (United Nations Task Group) and SWAPO. The structure of the video is also confused as MacDonald, Director of the Commission for Independence on Namibia, first appears in the role of a news presenter, but then herself becomes an interviewee by a concealed interviewer. Most seriously, the video relies almost exclusively on American lawyers, academics and Congressmen to speak `for' the Namibians. Apart from a single interview with a returning SWAPO official and an interview with a white politician, Namibians are usually imaged as the protesting or celebrating `crowd'. In contrast, the Americans are vested with individual personalities.

Overall, the video offers a romanticized view of Namibia in the making in terms of American perspectives. However, it does visualize an area of the world rarely seen on film or television in terms of the people and conflict rather than purely deserts and the more often filmed Kalahari San. Exposed in grisly detail are some of the atrocities perpetrated by the South African forces during its war against SWAPO. If screened to audiences knowledgeable about Namibia, who can fill in the omissions and balance claims of American initiative, the video would be very useful as supporting documentation to courses on Southern Africa and political process.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators,1991).

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1997
   
MY BELOVED COUNTRY. THE EXTREME RIGHT IN SOUTH AFRICA

51 mins. First Run Icarus Films. Dutch/Afrikaans with English subtitles.

SYNOPSIS
The film starts with the charismatic Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the neo-fascist Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), reciting poetry into a microphone about Boer land ownership at a meeting. The imposing Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria is overlaid by dramatic Afrikaans freedom song.

An illustrated history of Dutch settlement of South Africa follows. Dramatic epic footage of Zulu attacks on Trekkers taken from De Voortrekkers/Winning a Continent (1916) illustrates early history. Now we cut to interviews with an elderly Boer armed with a rifle. Interviewees explain the origin of contemporary Afrikaners. They discuss the `boerestaat' established in the late 1880s of the Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics, which the current Boer State Party wants to reestablish after 1990. They claim that it is now impossible to do this democratically because Mr De Klerk has betrayed his people.

The crew interviews the family of a local AWB commander. Shots of family life. They are no different from normal churchgoers except that Dad wears an ankle holster to Church. Biblical justifications of apartheid are offered by the narrator as the origin of apartheid. Shots of a lecture from the AWB commander at a meeting on the God-given right of Afrikaners to retain their land which they have earned historically. Singing of Boer War songs. Quick history of AWB is offered, established on 7 June 1973 (A Biblical reference to REVELATIONS, visualized in the AWB nazi-type logo of three `7s'. The three 7s are set to combat the three 6s of the anti-Christ.) AWB is an extra-parliamentary organization geared to fighting communism. Pictures of the reenacted Great Trek in 1938.

The new leader, Rev Karel Boschoff wants to appropriate a new, empty land, Oranje. He shows a map of this proposed state, in the Western and Northern Cape. This will become the new Afrikaner `volksruimte' (Afrikaner peoples nations/land/spirituality).

Another family is introduced, living in Oliphantshoek. the man is the PR official of the Oranje Development Corporation. Oranje is a small country town which has been taken over by these Afrikaners, who are now getting inquiries from all over the world about the possibilities of living there. The Afrikaner children tell that they don't play with blacks or coloreds, and mouth pejorative descriptions of the majority colored population in the area. (They will be allowed to stay only if they are of use to Oranje.)

Oranje has its own flag, derived from the previous Union flag. Orange stands for Afrikaner Freedom, derived from the Dutch House of Orange, and signifies Dutch royalty. The white band is for white Africans and blue symbolizes the people's royal roots. The AWB flag has a vertical left-hand side black line, which symbolizes the desire to live in harmony with blacks. But the AWB fears for the freedom of Afrikaners if living in the same country with them. Blacks are described as aliens. (Brief cut to black mass action.)

AWB braaivleis (barbecue). One man tells how he lost his job because of his AWB membership. Growing poverty is occurring amongst whites, who now have to rely on charities. Bitterness thus grows. Crime has increased and because a white skin is no longer a guarantee of a good future, many are turning to right-wing groups - practicing shooting, preparation for the new battle against the ANC revolution. AWB protest march, with marchers, horses and wagons. The AWB was built up around Terreblanche, says a off-camera Boschoff. A different organization is the Boer Resistance Movement which is the military wing of the Boer Staat Party. Special forces personnel have joined from all over the world, and this Party is more underground and secret than the AWB.

Max du Preez, an anti-apartheid Afrikaans-speaking journalist reveals that his newspaper offices were blown up by the AWB. He points out that the AWB has become the haunt of soldiers and death squad hitmen for whom governments no longer have any use. AWB members drawn from the police and military are the most dangerous, he says.

A two-family get together in Oranje. They talk about being swamped by blacks, of harassment by older black pupils of younger white girls, etc. The usual cliches about the dark continent, culture, civilization and development abound. Pictures of volks (folk) dancing while blacks are doing the manual labor. "Blacks are ignorant and stupid, they are part of nature" - we brought them to a higher level of civilization and dug our own graves, says a young AWB member. Du Preez explains that these racist attitudes will take time to disappear.

Oranje is symbolically opened as an Afrikaans area - TV news, planting of trees etc. They intend to turn the desert into fertile land. The establishment of Oranje can rid South Africa of much tension - if negotiations don't work, then a terrorist war will be waged to secure it.

News shots of the aftermath of Barend Strydom's shooting of blacks in a Pretoria street. A former policeman, he is a member of the AWB. Boschoff acted as an expert witness for Boschoff vis-a-vis the context which drove Strydom to this "unacceptable" deed.

An AWB meeting. Terreblanche dramatically remembers the 26,000 Boer women and children who died in British concentration camps (1899-1902). The ANC's communism is the new enemy. The new Battle of Blood River looms, says Boschoff.

CRITIQUE
The narrative is interspersed with wide and medium shots and close ups of singing and toyi-toying blacks on the march - signifying the march of history, of victory. While this metaphorical strategy is effective at hinting at the inevitable victory of the ANC, and the coming tide of democracy, it also can be frightening for viewers not convinced that blacks have the moral high ground. Where the right-wingers are humanized, shown to be ordinary people fearful of their future, who have normal emotions and values, the black presence is depicted in the mob, the crowd, the close-ups of marching feet, the chants of mass action. Black individuals are not encountered, interviewed, nor spoken to. Thematically, blacks are always in the background, doing the manual labor, but their impressions of the AWB are not solicited.

Overall, the film is an even-handed representation of groups of Afrikaner right wingers. The crew attempts to get to know them, to let them tell their story and spontaneously reveal their own prejudices, abiding fears, and to explain their motivations. They are not caricatures, they are not made fun of; they are taken seriously. These are real people with real fears. This is the strength of the film.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli, 1997)

MOZAMBIQUE: THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

1987. 57 minutes. Video. Produced by Bob and Amy Coen

TOPICS: Politics, War, Hunger, Sociology, Mozambique, Apartheid, South Africa, Terrorism, History, Foreign policy.

USES: U, G and A

SYNOPSIS
This film was made for American audiences to counter attempts by conservatives in Congress to persuade the Reagan Administration to switch its support from the Mozambican government to RENAMO, which opened an office in Washington DC to disseminate disinformation about its activities.

The film reveals the history of FRELIMO's struggle against Portuguese colonialism and South Africa destabilization during the second half of the 20th Century. The documentary explains why the fate of the entire Southern African region depended upon the outcome of the conflict between South Africa and Mozambique. It analyzes the importance of Mozambique's three major transport routes which offer ports to a variety of Southern and Central African states. While RENAMO rebels sabotage these trade routes, the region remains locked into South Africa's economy and rail links and ports.

Mozambique offers a very well structured and illustrated historical background to Portuguese colonial exploitation, and the emergence and development of the FRELIMO resistance movement, which won independence in 1975. Rather than shocking viewers with endless stories of human tragedy like Killing a Dream and Destructive Engagement, Mozambique is relatively optimistic. The film does document the gruesome effects of RENAMO on civilians, but it explains these atrocities through interviews with former RENAMO bandits. Furthermore, the film reveals the self-criticism undertaken by FRELIMO under Joaquim Chissano, who succeeded from Samora Machel, who died in a mysterious plane accident inside South Africa in October 1986. More so than Destructive Engagement, Mozambique explains the role of the Zimbabwean military in helping to defend one of the key rail links to the port of Beira against RENAMO. The film offers a sense of regional cooperation and agency hidden in other documentaries.

A key narrator is Ken Flower, former chief of Rhodesian Intelligence, which established RENAMO to provide information on the guerilla forces of the Patriotic Front guerrillas, which operated out of Mozambique. Flower tells unequivocally that RENAMO was handed over to South Africa when the Smith government fell, and that he had seen indications of the RENAMO penchant for atrocity while it was still working as a Rhodesian intelligence arm. He also states that its members were people disaffected with both the Portuguese rulers and FRELIMO, particularly over its enforced communal farming village program.

The film explains why the Mozambican economy is such a shambles, due to looting by the departing Portuguese, and wrecking of civilian infrastructures by RENAMO which was well armed and logistically supplied by South Africa. Statistics of appalling literacy amongst blacks and the flight of whites back to Portugal or South Africa reveal how the economy was denuded of capital and skills. But the film is clear on the massive improvements brought about by FRELIMO'S brand of African socialism until development, health and educational programs were smashed by RENAMO. Mozambique tries to shame Congress by explaining British support for FRELIMO in the form of training of the Mozambican army and other forms of aid.

CRITIQUE: All the films on Mozambique blame the `white minority regime' in South Africa for conditions in Mozambique, and point to its blatant transgressions of the Nkomati Accord, signed between South African State President PW Botha and Mozambican President Machel in 1984. The uni-dimensional apportionment of blame onto South Africa alone forgets, however, the fact that certain US and Portuguese business interests also funded RENAMO, and that the horrifying conflict on the ground actually symbolized the more abstract clash of forces that were being fought out between communism and capitalism at the global level during the '80s.

Blaming the `white minority regime', a wonderful liberal and media catchphrase, also conceals the multiple patronage systems that clawed a variety of black repressive forces -- bantustan governments, RENAMO, UNITA etc -- into support for apartheid, and the fact that apartheid itself was a racial-capitalism which had the tacit support of the Western democracies. This subtlety is recognized in the film only by President Chissano, when he lays the blame for what South Africa has done to his country on apartheid, not whites, or `minority regimes' or other racial categories. This liberal explanation also cannot admit the fracturing of the South African state that occurred during the late 1980s when rogue elements within the South African military were conducting their own war in Mozambique, in contravention of the Nkomati Accord. This fracturing was split wide open after South Africa's retreat from Angola in 1988, resulting in the loss of power within the state by the military, and the rise of the FW De Klerk faction which opposed the military's solutions. But Mozambique was a throw-away political chip for the US which did not pressure South Africa to eliminate the rogue elements. The conservatives in the US and South Africa could still pick on Mozambique and its socialist government and thus indirectly support the breaking of the Nkomati Accord.

The contradiction in the film is the glowing report given by the narrator of how the International Monetary Fund's `free market' principles were `breathing new life into the economy', notwithstanding her earlier commentary on the positive developments that had occurred under the previous socialist policies of the FRELIMO government. The narrator does, however, caution that even free market dynamics cannot work while regional destabilization continues. This is a sop to liberals in the American Congress. The question now, is, where does this new relationship between the IMF and FRELIMO leave FRELIMO. It came to power on the basis of its anti-colonial, pro-socialist policies. The only way Mozambique is going to be rebuilt is to create the conditions for massive foreign investment and linking the country into the global function of capital. The destruction of socialism in Mozambique by RENAMO will ensure the revitalization of the country's economy under the leadership of the IMF.

Another assumption by all the films on Mozambique is that FRELIMO represents the popular consensus. A weakness in the historical introduction is that it glosses over just how difficult it was for FRELIMO to win over the peasants, and that its influence is geographically limited to the Northern provinces, whereas the Eastern and Southern provinces, from where the country is administered, was never totally supportive. RENAMO exploited this ideological dissonance and provided them with a vocabulary of resistance to FRELIMO. This division is sourced to historical differences in Portuguese exploitation between the North and the South. The more mobile laborers of the South were exempt the forced labor system imposed on the cotton fields of the North, and they therefore had more of a stake in the system created by the Portuguese than did the northerners.

(Reviewed by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators,1990)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
SYNOPSIS:

Riding Out the Storm relates the effect of the war through the experiences of a railway engineer on one of the lines often attacked by Renamo. A second narrator is a student attempting to return home after two years, and third, a singer who returns to her village after bandits had begun to attack the area.

CRITIQUE
Samora Machel and this film complement each other. Ideas that Machel talks about in Samora Machel are further developed in The Storm. Both are good films for classroom use. Riding Out the Storm was not as depressing as Destructive Engagement. It contains only one scene of horrific imagery. Both of the films stand on their own. They do not need supporting material. They tell how Renamo started, and how South Africa took it over after the fall of the Smith regime in Rhodesia, as a tool of destabilization.

The Samora Machel film indirectly pointed out American collusion in destabilization. This film intercuts interviews of John Saul of New York University and President Machel. Machel's expansive and infectious smile, his ability for oratory come shining through. Samora took control of the interview itself. His response is an indication of how oppressed people have to take control of the language of political debate, and the way the debate is framed, to overcome the way they are so often forced to conceive and articulate their reality in terms of concepts and rearticulations of the oppressor, or in terms of dominant Western media values.

Machel, for example, identifies Saul's first question as a Western question. He reframes it, and tells why Mozambique had to move so fast in making changes. He concludes that this is what the question should have been about. The original framing of the question suggests the problems that Western media have in understanding the real contextual issues that affect Africa. Machel compares the situation in Mozambique to the US, then the issue of Mozambique disappears, as it's experience is a part of a larger picture. Disasters in Africa are reported in worse terms than in the US, and man-made ones are always seen to have nothing to do with the Western reality or causation. Machel talks about the process of colonization and what the struggle was about. He explains the rhetorical question 'the struggle continues "against what"? -tribalism, ignorance, hunger, misery, a lack of clothing, illiteracy, superstition, gender inequalities. The struggle continues so that one day all will be equal. This should be highlighted because when the US talked about Mozambique under Machel, they emphasized its Marxist government, not the problems he was trying to solve. Neither did they acknowledge his achievements. Both films show that Frelimo has a popular base, as opposed to terrorist Renamo (MNR). Machel's government was trying to stabilize -a negative news value in the world media - while MNR was destabilizing the country in the interests of third parties, essentially fascist American, Portuguese and South African financial interests. The latter interests are seen by the media in positive terms, simply because they are anti-Marxist. However, in these films, concrete achievements of the FRELIMO government are emphasized - how the land is distributed, how people make a living. The film shows the collaborative efforts between community, parents, teachers and children and the concrete action of building schools, the development of womens' cooperatives etc.

Samora Machel shows that women actively participate in liberation. This is one of the few films that does not relegate depictions of their involvement to the background. Wherever their activities, which may not be in the frontline, their contribution is shown to be of fundamental importance. But, as so often happens in African politics, after liberation, the women disappear from notice. These films do raise the issue of gender bias. As one woman says: "When all these women are here, where are the men?" The film is narrated by a woman, who might have foregrounded womens' issues more acutely, and illustrated the support they provide behind the media scenes.

Short performances by women and men are used to educate people. Old women talk about political issues. Public debate occurred under Machel, to make people aware of their oppression, both under the Portuguese and residual practices in contemporary Mozambique.

Both films are on the whole really excellent productions which provide an African view of conditions in Mozambique.

Further Reading
Thompson, C. (1998). Mozambique: Soldiers of misfortune, Southern Africa Report, (March), 22-25.

(Written by Keyan G Tomaselli and MSU Evaluators, 1990).

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
Mapantsula (1988) appeared as part of the new wave of anti- apartheid cinema which began with the making of Darrell Roodt's Place of Weeping in 1986. That year marked a shift in the South African film industry in that the new owners of the South African Theatre Investments (Satbel) Company began to cinematically examine less savory aspects of South African history. Previously dominated by conservative Afrikaner capital which rarely produced innovative or socially challenging films, Satbel had monopolized the production, distribution and exhibition of cinema in South Africa since 1969. Through a system of state financing and tax incentives, the industry had been channeled into producing uncontroversial movies (Tomaselli 1988). Roodt and the makers of Mapantsula found gaps in this system and turned them to aesthetic and political advantage.

Oliver Schmitz and co-scriptwriter, Thomas Mogatlane, manipulated the state's conservative line to get Mapantsula registered with the Directorate of Publications (the censor board) for subsidy purposes. They registered the film as an apolitical black township `gangster' movie. The central theme of this low budget genre, set in the sprawling black townships, is `crime does not pay' (Tomaselli 1988: 53-82). Despite these initial administrative and thematic constraints, and working under a state of emergency, they nevertheless produced an allegory on the psychological struggles that all South Africans, not just Afrikaners, or squatters, or blacks, have to work through. Schmitz and Mogatlane fused their different class and race experiences into a narrative which signaled the continuing maturity of a critical South African cinema that had struggled to develop following the neo-realist Athol Fugard/Ross Devenish movies since the early 1970s. The Directorate of Publications, however, demanded 17 cuts (about 40 seconds) before it permitted public screening of the film.

Before proceeding with my analysis of Mapantsula, it is necessary to explain the recent historical context within which the film is situated. The main actor and co-scriptwriter, Thomas Mogatlane, drew his inspiration from his personal experiences as an activist, and detainee. These three roles are meshed cheek-by-jowl in the crowded conditions of black urban areas. Class, social, and language differences do not easily find separate spaces within these areas where wealthy families can isolate themselves from the poor, the criminals or gangs, or militant political groupings, as occurs in normal free-market driven economic spaces.

FOUR PHASES OF RESISTANCE
Resistance to apartheid developed through four phases between the mid-1950s and the release of Mapantsula in 1989. The discussion will include the film's strategic value as a means of exposing contradictions within apartheid. I will also clarify the maze of organizations and their acronyms that so often confuse and bewilder non-South African viewers of films about this country.

Congress of the People-1950s
The first phase of black resistance to apartheid rule occurred in the 1950s, known as the Congress of the People movement. This was a "series of campaigns held in huge rallies, small houses, flats, streets and factory meetings, gatherings in kraals and on farms" (Suttner and Cronin 1986:12).

During 1954 and 1955, activists known as `volunteers' traveled South Africa visiting households and places of work to collect mainly black 'demands' for a democratic 'constitution'. The Congress catalyzed a popular social dialogue which would conscientize people across the country. This resulted in the Kliptown meeting in 1955 where the 'demands' were collated into the Freedom Charter. This Charter provided the means to a national unifying consciousness transcending class, ethnicity, tribalism, language and most political positions (Tomaselli and Ramgobin 1988). Brief shots of the Kliptown meeting are seen in the documentaries Makhalipile - The Dauntless One (1989) and The Freedom Charter (1986).

Anti-apartheid communication mainly occurred through word-of-mouth, small groups and mass rallies. Black resistance at this time was assisted by massive urbanization in response to industry's need for a permanent, stable black work force in the cities. Soweto and other huge black dormitory towns adjacent to the white cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town were constructed to house the new working class. Urbanization brought a shift in emphasis from an oral culture to a mass-media dominated way of life. The gangsters in Sophiatown of the '50s, a period reconstructed in Freedom Square and Back of the Moon (1988), for example, adopted their dress, gestures and way of life from American film noir of the 1940s.

Following the massacre of black protesters by police in Sharpeville in April 1960, the internment for life of Nelson Mandela and other ANC activists in 1964, internal opposition was totally crushed in the decade that followed. The Freedom Charter, labeled `communist' by the state, was banned and fell from sight. A World Apart (1988), written by Shawn Slovo, daughter of the then exiled SA Communist Party leader, is an autobiographical script set during this time when the ANC went underground and into exile. This film reveals the trauma experienced by Shawn over the `disappearance' of her father, Joe, who became commander-in-chief of the ANC's armed wing, and her estrangement from her mother, whose political activities took precedence over family.

Black Consciousness and Populism- 1970s
The second phase of resistance appeared in the form of Black Consciousness (BC) and Populism, during the 1970s, filling the political and cultural vacuum caused by the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960. The now urbanized black petty bourgeois intellectuals led by Steve Biko established the Black People's Convention in 1972. This period witnessed the emergence of an indigenous theory of black resistance. It drew on the experience and codes of the American Black Power movement, meshed with the theories of Algerian Franz Fannon. Its focus in South Africa was a psychological liberation from racism, a critique of capitalism, and an attempt by those directly experiencing repression to respond directly and intellectually to the source of this ideology.

BC was characterized by a populist top-down intellectual leadership with regard to the development of cadres and theory. This stage also produced the first significant use of mass media in the form of newspapers, pamphlets, books and magazines. However, it was only many years later that BC was popularized in cinema by Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom (1977), based on Donald Woods' books¹ , and the documentary, Biko: Breaking the Silence (1988). The latter film, though dealing with Biko, the making of Cry Freedom, and BC, reconstitutes political developments after Biko's death within a UDF perspective.

The 1970s saw a "renaissance" of resistance following the "long night" of the 1960s (Patel 1985). This emerged initially in the form of the illegal Durban dockyard strikes of 1973 in the context of an economic downturn related to the international crisis of capitalism triggered by dramatic increases in oil prices. Encouraged by the fall of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola, this period set the scene for the mobilization of BC's theoretical and cadre resources. The Soweto uprising which exploded on 16 June 1976, was the turning point in internal anti-apartheid resistance. An earlier film, Generations of Resistance (1980), deals with the various phases of black opposition to apartheid up to 1976.

Paradoxically, however, the success of BC in reawakening the spirit of revolution and black dignity, contained the seeds of its own decline. Following the death in detention of Steve Biko in 1977, the resistance broke into two main strands. The Azanian Peoples Organization (AZAPO) continued with a narrower exclusively black philosophy that had been articulated by Biko. BC organizations affiliated to the National Forum during the '80s. The parallel development of a non-racial movement, arising out of the same moment of struggle, and broadly based on the racially inclusive humanist principles of the Freedom Charter (known as Charterism), cohered in the formation of the UDF in August 1983. The UDF was catalyzed by the reactivation of mass participation in resistance following June 16, 1976, notwithstanding the state's vicious response during which more than 700 Sowetan school children were killed. Biko: Breaking the Silence shows how the newly emerging dominant fraction of resistance in the form of the UDF sought incorporation of all South Africans (including whites) into a broadly based anti-apartheid coalition.

From Populism to the Popular - 1976-1983
Phase three thus saw a shift from populism to popular (bottom-up) organization between the late '70s and 1983. While acknowledging the formative influence of BC on their ideas and self-image, black activists now questioned the top-down intellectual BC style. The emergence of an embryonic organic intellectual popular resistance reactivated proletarian organizations and leadership, particularly through the now legal and growing black trade union movement.

This was a period when the apartheid state responded to the needs of capital which after Soweto '76 demanded the termination of influx control to permit the development of free labor and retail markets, the facilitation of `responsible' trade unionism and the extension of political rights to urban Africans. Thus capital negotiated with the state to bring about changes rather than of the existing order (Stadler 1987: 3 and 6), to revitalize a maturing economy no longer adequately served by illiterate migrant labor. The limited nature of these changes, however, evoked a mass-democratic response, an unprecedented extended crisis for both capital and the state, and in February 1990, the unbanning of the ANC and scores of other anti-apartheid organizations.

Mass Democratic Resistance -1983-February 1990
The period 1983 to January 1990 was characterized by a see-sawing control over the black urban environment as the state and the resistance struggled over space, resources, media and the popular will.

The UDF became the central nexus for co-ordinating local level anti- apartheid resistance and channeling it into a national multi- class non-racial force. It was a popular response to the National Party's new Tri-cameral Parliament which in 1984 co-opted fractions of the Indian and colored middle classes into an unequal political alliance with whites but which excluded blacks. The mass opposition which occurred during this period, and imaged in The Struggle From Within (1984), scoured legal spaces and political contradictions previously closed with the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1961.

The UDF succeeded in developing political practices which activated local grievances such as bus fare hikes into national political issues. In Mapantsula, the meeting with the black councilors called by the trade union, demands to know why the area is lacking in basic social services and urban infrastructures. The rent boycott by tenants living in hundreds of thousands of state-owned houses which bankrupted Soweto in the late 1980s, was one of the counter-strategies used by ordinary people to protest their oppression. The result of this politicizing of civic issues was a linking of small community-based groups into a multi-dimensional national Mass Democratic Movement (MDM). The twin motors of this moment were the UDF and the giant Congress of South African Trade Unions (UDF), established in the early '80s. These kinds of issues are also the subject of Dark City (1990). This film candidly reveals both the police methods of working with collaborators, in this case, the very wealthy black Mayor of Dark City, and the techniques of popular resistance against a background of personal allegiances in which leaders sometimes have to sacrifice their comrades and family for the good of the struggle.

The term, MDM, seems to have arisen from a newspaper poster's attempt to encapsulate the UDF/COSATU alliance within an eye- catching headline. `Mass' was the term used by resistance organizations to describe their popular mandate. 'Mass-based' meant a popular democratically structured organization. So the acronym, MDM, derives from three terms extensively used within what emerged after 1983 as the 'progressive movement for democratic change'. Local community-level communication was structured to enable it to become the basis of mass national mobilization against apartheid. Between 1980 and 1983, print media in particular helped to politically mobilize local issues and groups, linking the various community bodies and their civic organizations into regional political structures, themselves connected to a developing national network.

The UDF established, in some black areas at least, an alternative state within the hegemonic apartheid political structures imposed by the government. For a while in the mid-'80s it was even able to claim jurisdiction over `liberated zones' in some black urban areas. The government's reforms which had attempted to limit black politics to local matters were interpreted as an attempt to force blacks to finance their own oppression by making local authorities self-financing (Boraine 1989). The two sources of income available to the now black-controlled urban councils were rents and service charges. Many councils raised these charges which, together with already high costs in transport, rampant inflation, rising hire purchase interest rates and growing unemployment, contributed an explosive catalyst (Swilling 1987: 29).

In 1984, a township in Sharpeville countered with a rent strike. A peaceful march on September 4 turned into a massacre as these residents attacked and `necklaced'². collaborators, councilors, and black policemen. Mapantsula plays out its narrative in the context of one such rent boycott to which the state responds with Riot Police violence. As in the film, the black Urban Council's and their administrations consisting of mayors, councilors, and compliant bureaucrats were kept in power and protected by the Security and Riot Police and Defence Force. In the opening sequences, the central character, Panic, is hauled out of a police van by a black policeman, herded along by a white member of the Riot Squad, and booked by a black sergeant. Thus, right at the outset, like Dark City, the film signals that the conflict is not purely a race war, but one in which different classes of blacks and whites joined forces to sustain a racial-capitalist social formation. This formation only benefitted those co-opted into the government's Tri-cameral Parliament and bantustan alliance.

The conditions operating in phase four materially changed with the declaration of the states of emergency after 1985. By the end of 1986, over 30 000 activists had been detained under emergency regulations (CIRR 1988:12). These emergencies, especially after 1986, severely cramped the activities of television journalists and some film makers. Indeed, one TV cameraman on the Cape Flats was killed in June 1986 in full view of the police who made no attempt to rescue him from the reactionary black vigilantes whom they had armed. These vigilantes were attempting to wipe out squatters who were opposing their community's forced removal.

Paradoxically, however, exploitation of contradictions designed to sustain apartheid, actually aided anti-apartheid producers. The so-called black channels, TV2/3, introduced in 1982 to broadcast to the urban black petty bourgeoisie and working class in the two main African vernacular languages, provided one route (Tomaselli et al 1989). Mapantsula could not have been made in any black residential area under the states of emergency after 1986. The protest and riot scenes were filmed in a studio backlot in Rivonia, near Johannesburg. Ironically, these mini-Soweto sets were built for the production of TV2/3 serials and series.

The Freedom Charter re-emerged as a rallying document of the mass-democratic phase, calling on all South Africans no matter what their officially designated racial categories, to work towards a democratic future. Mapantsula has its production roots in this moment: its director, editor and lighting cameraman were 'white', its co-scriptwriter and actors mainly black. The film arose out of the new conditions which had led to the establishment of a radical film making culture marked out by the Film and Allied Workers Organization (FAWO) after 1987. Progressive directors, unlike those of earlier times, now found easier access to capital willing to invest in anti-apartheid themes. This new liquidity was no doubt related to a perception that international markets would respond favorably to films about apartheid, as indeed it had with regard to the American release of Place of Weeping, Cry Freedom and A Dry White Season (1989).

By the late 1980s the black working class had acquired the skills and organizational forms to run media through which it could voice its interests. This was given further impetus because of the inability -- due to structural constraints imposed by market forces and media legislation --and unwillingness of the white-owned media, cinema, broadcasting and press monopolies to provide a systematic voice to either the growing counter-hegemony and/or working class. The film industry in particular was notorious for its complicity with the state, a co-operation designed to ensure the continuation of the state subsidy scheme which paid the producer a guaranteed income once the film has earned a threshold figure at the box office (Tomaselli 1988). Previous attempts to make a commercially viable cinema critical of apartheid had floundered, though by the mid-1980s less politically cautious financiers had been found.

Subjectivities and Roles in Mapantsula
Mapantsula has been translated by American press film critics as 'thief', 'thug', 'streetwise', or 'small-time crook'. Another interpretation is that amapantsula is slang for "the wide pants of contemporary fashion" (Beitel 1990). Another interpretation holds that mapantsulas are similar to tsotsis, notorious street gangs of black youths who fell prey to the evil effects of Western and thriller films (Commission 1950). The mapantsula sub-culture encodes elements of each of these descriptions, but is really a response to alienated ghetto life, one neither fully urban, but neither rural nor traditional. It is an exaggerated way of talking, dressing and swaggering. "What you wear is what you are, mama", says Panic to two bemused women bus passengers as he brazenly puts on clothes in the moving vehicle. He had moments before shop-lifted these from a Johannesburg store. Mapantsulas glide as if on ice, a super-confidence masking insecurity and social and political ignorance. This form of ostentatious expression is culled from American gangster (film noi ) movies of the '40s, and more recently, disco dancing popularized by Saturday Night Fever. Fashions are copied from Esquire, and other kinds of music, and, drugs and inebriation are other influences. It provides a way of winning self-respect and control over one's life, otherwise dangled within invisible social, economic and political structures beyond the comprehension of most individuals. Mapantsula behavior is a form of self-assertion through which ambivalent individuals - -usually ex-convicts - - -negotiate symbolic spaces for themselves.

Performance organizations affiliated to the UDF and COSATU cultural desks engage in pantsula dancing, in an attempt to 'politicize' this form of expression. So, the film's title, a noun, is a verb as well - -encoding contradictions caused by apartheid to the black body politic, and to the individuals making up that politic.

Mapantsula the film is about class identity and contradiction. Mapantsulas aspire to affluent lifestyles. But the discursive identities they create for themselves within criminal gangster practices often blocks achievement of class consciousness. The film, then, is about resolving the contradiction between an individual's anti-social behavior and the better life the politicized `comrades' offer, but could not deliver at the time of the film's making.

The film's ambivalent personalities relate to apartheid in contradictory ways. Central is the mapantsula, Panic. Panic plays out multiple identities, reflective of the social and personal schizophrenia caused by apartheid. The identity assumed depends on the form of survival Panic resorts to in different contexts. His given name is Themba, but is nicknamed Panic when he behaves like a thief. As a police informer, he has a 'white' Afrikaner name, Johannes. He is comfortable in none of these identities.

Panic's landlady, Ma Modise, stands for African women generally. It is black women who have taken on the full burden of apartheid. She keeps her broken family together, ensures that clothes are washed, the house is cleaned and that food is on the table. As mother of the nation, Ma Modise lives between the forces of lawlessness, resistance and legality, trying to sustain a degree of stability within the fractured community. She does not understand the political significance of the 'rent boycott' as explained to her by her son, Sam, but is wise to Panic's opportunistic reference to the boycott as an excuse for not having to pay his rent. Apolitical and uninvolved at the start of the film, she is politicized through the trauma experienced by hundreds of thousands of mothers when she hysterically confronts the police during the protest march about Sam's disappearance.

Pat, Panic's girlfriend, is symbolic of women structurally entrapped in domestic work. Panic abuses her for allowing her dislikeable white 'madam' to exploit her, and then steals her wages. Pat too, is apolitical. The catalysts for Pat are a political meeting opposing rent increases; and her visit to a trade union office after being fired because of Panic's threatening demeanor towards her employer. Like Ma Modise, Pat is an inherently responsible individual and she throws Panic out of her mother's house, much to his bewilderment. In African terms, this is a very strong feminist statement, and generally lacking in South African film and video culture.

Duma, the trade unionist whom Pat befriends, encodes the simmering strength of the democratic movement spearheaded the by UDF/COSATU alliance. The jail is full, laughs the group of UDF comrades when herded into a single cell. They contest attempts by the police and warders to intimidate them. Similarly, they are not cowed by Panic's street talk and threats as he tries to dominate the cell's social structure. He is bewildered when the comrades ignore his attempts to identify and impose himself at the apex of what he imagines must be cell's social hierarchy. The comrades know that people like Panic are part of the problem.

As the story progresses, Panic's confidence is peeled away by the comrades who don't respect him, the cinema-goers who make fun of his name ("Whose panicking in here?" as he runs in search of an accomplice), and the police who assault him. The defiance he exudes when hurling a brick through Pat's employer's window is moderated by his fear when the police shove him half-way out of the prison window many floors up. The comrades suspect him as an informer. Panic, however, is struggling with himself on the matter, his image of himself, like the broken window, shattered and threatening. He is happy to snitch on thieves for personal gain, but an ambivalence sparked by the solidarity that binds these comrades focuses his thoughts on how to respond to Police interrogation.

The sangoma (indigenous healer) provides cultural continuity for Panic who consults him after Sam goes missing. She throws the bones and reminds Panic that he is not the center of the universe. She tells him that the collective past inhabited by the ancestors is connected to the present of which he is an inhabitant. Just as Pani-the- mapantsula negotiated a symbolic space for himself, so the sangoma's advice attempts to re-orient him in terms of responsible communality rather than selfish individuality. She is the wise one so often shown as a buffoon by white directors making films `for' unsophisticated black audiences (see Critique of Shaka Zulu in this volume).

During his search for Sam, Panic encounters a bewildered old man who asks where are the parents of the children "running wild". The old man represents the 'old ways' when life followed predictable patterns, and elders were respected; the passing gang of schoolchildren are symbolic of the anarchic life of blacks areas under apartheid. The old and the young are totally separated by their different generational responses to the oppression caused by apartheid. Parents lost control of their children who spearheaded the revolt, many of whom degenerated into gangsters like Panic.

In contrast to Sam, the detained comrades, the unionist and the protesters on the political left, and the landlady and Pat in the middle, are the black Urban City Councilors on the political right. The film reveals the web of opportunistic cross-racial alliances and allegiances that bind fractions of otherwise antagonistic classes through mutual interests. The Councilors, though they may dislike apartheid, nevertheless benefit from it. Well dressed, educated and wealthy, their allegiance, like Dark City's mayor, was bought by the white government which confers upon them their status and power. Few were actually elected, and as the film shows, they are themselves caught in a double bind, unable to address popular needs while they hold illegitimate power. Mapantsula , however, lets them off lightly, and plays down the real fate that met so many of these functionaries: assassination, murder, assault and arson (as seen in Dark Cityetc.

Allied to the Councilors are the black Security and Riot Squad Police who work alongside their white colleagues. All these black characters are indicative of black complicity with apartheid: the bantustan governments, informers and soldiers, and the various administrative mechanisms that enforced apartheid on behalf of the white government.

The love/hate relationship that governs Pat's relationship with her white `madam' is indicative of white ambivalence about blacks in general, and their irrational fear of being swamped. The madam's friendly conversation shifts abruptly to aggressive defensiveness when Panic turns up. Similar attitudes are found in the white Security Police interrogator. His behavior represents more than the nice/nasty cop routine. He is also close to cracking, unable as he is to control the resistance, and even Panic himself. Indeed, this Afrikaans-speaking actor himself had, in reality, to confront who he was and what his culture had done to blacks, in interpreting his role.

The film's central theme is ambivalence. No-one is spared this insecurity in South African society. `Panic's' nickname encodes this. Everyone takes on split personalities, lurching from friendliness to aggression, from subservience to arrogance, from passivity to anger.

Individual Vs Collective Identities
The central protagonist in Mapantsula is not an individual; it is the community-in-struggle. Individuals only punctuate the film's context, apartheid and the democratic movement opposing it. Panic rubs shoulders with, but never really understands, the real protagonist. As an individual, he is thrust between the two arms of apartheid: state agencies and oppressive social practices. (The gangster in Dark City does not suffer from such ambivalence - he shoots the mayor's bodyguard, robs his state financed mansion, and dies at the end of the film in a hail of bullets fired at protestors by the security forces). In both films, alternative courses of action occur only within the relative spaces opened by the institutions that govern apartheid.

The contradiction in Mapantsula is constructed for Panic by the web of illusions woven by his Security Police interrogator. Panic gradually discovers that far from being his own man, his identity is, in fact, determined by political, social and economic structures which pre-existed him and of which he is not entirely aware. Panic is the site of two interlaced struggles unfolding simultaneously. First is the tug of wills between Panic and his Security Police interrogators. Second, is the struggle of subjectivities between Panic-the-thief and Panic-the-subversive.

The identity of the subversive is constructed for Panic by the Security Police through their misinterpretation of their own surveillance of Panic's behavior when he is looking for the unionist who 'stole' his girlfriend. Panic is puzzled by Police attempts to label him a 'terrorist'. He is confused by his UDF cell mates who treat him as an informer and who ignore his threatening gangster street talk and gestures. These two conflicts are visually manifested in the concrete confrontation at the funeral where Panic ends up after finding the unionist; and the symbolic struggle between `reality' and the signs of reality where the police use a video recording of Panic to `prove' that he is a terrorist (which he is not) because he was part of the funeral procession (which he was by default).

This scene, in which audiences see Panic's presence at the funeral framed through a video player in the Police cells before a later flashback in the narrative locates him in the funeral crowd, is a comment on film, ideology and media constructions of reality. Panic's interrogators, it seems, believe the video -it is their last resort in trying to turn Panic into a political informer. For the policeman, the video images symbolically stand for 'reality'. The VCR is the mechanism by which reality can be `captured' and `replayed'. The policeman believes in the opaqueness of his own (video) illusions about Panic. This deterministic logic which assumes that images equal reality, and that the media cause behavior, was found at every level of the state's theory of communication and hence, policies on censorship during the 1980s. The Directorate of Publications, for example, initially restricted the film's release to three film festivals only on the assumption that the film "has the power to incite probable viewers" and that the " large screen amplifies the dangerous political effects". This conclusion by the Directorate has no scientific credibility, but graphically illustrates Schmitz's point about reality and representation.

The interrogation of Panic accomplishes little of use for the Police as through it, he comes to question everything he had previously taken for granted. His experiential reality has no coincidence with this policeman's media constructed reality of his actions and motivations. A relative space is thus opened within which Panic begins to understand his own subjectivity. Panic, who knows that he was not politically motivated, realizes that the Police's reading of the video reality is incorrect. The policeman realizes that his bluff has been called. The window to reality has shattered and he loses his hold over Panic.

Metaphorically structured like shattered glass, recurring fragments of Panic's life in flashback punctuate an uneasy introspection induced by the harsh, psychologically disturbing prison conditions. South African society is criss-crossed with psychological cracks, cultural clashes and political and personal rifts. All the characters are close to cracking -- not least the interrogator who is unable to control the resistance and, towards the end of the film, Panic himself. The flashbacks take viewers through the way Panic constructs truth. Looking for Sam as he travels through his memories, Panic begins to see political reality for the first time. In the process he discovers himself - the school, symbolic of his childhood, now in state of disrepair, an indication of revolt, and rejection of Afrikaans. Afrikaans is the preferred language of the white policeman who wants to ensure its future through brutal repression of those who refuse to speak it.

Unlike foreign-made films about the struggle (Cry Freedom, A Dry White Season, A World Apart, Mandela) Schmitz uses South African actors with real Afrikaans accents and voices. The black township tsotsitaal (gangster-talk) is a rich combination of English, Zulu, Afrikaans and slang from all three. Panic, the man of multiple identities, is reflected in Panic-the-speaker: his fractured language-use reflects the coalescence of an ill-formed intercultural prism which equips him to move and live through different social spaces, to leech on, and rob people in each, but to exist in none of these environments comfortably or permanently.

Social fissures are held together in the black community by the kind of grassroots political organization depicted in Dark City. These give strength to Panic's cell-mates on whom he is cajoled to inform by his interrogators. In foreign films, this organization is in images of the black toyi-toying (dancing) `crowd' compared to the white individual. Images of blacks helping themselves through the intervention of white liberals is not part of this film. There are no easily identifiable heroes; and in the audiences's eyes, if not their own, the bad guys are bad for understandable reasons.

Mapantsula exposes the contradictions and paradoxes which so often strangle anti-apartheid organization, where thugs, informers and vigilantes co-opted by the state rampage through the communities in which they live. Mapantsula is an attempt to confront these issues through a biographical narrative of Panic-the- tsotsi who is eventually forced to face up to who is he is and what has made him that way. As Teshome Gabriel (1982) might say, Mapantsula is a trans-individual biography, a symbolic autobiography where the collective subject is the focus. The film is an expression of shared experience, a mark of solidarity. Mapantsula is a film which reflects the power of collective action in defeating oppression and ignorance from whatever its source.

The film accomplishes the state's worst fears: it suggests that the very "discipline and organizational control" offered by the comrades and unionists can guide mapantsulas to self-realization. The Directorate of Publication's reading falls between the above two interpretations, its view shaped by a fear of revolution:

The effective closing scene communicates a clear message to the viewer: refuse co-operation with the authorities and side with the rebellious elements in black society. Thereby the state becomes powerless to act against subversive organizations.

Conclusion
Mapantsula reflects the technical and symbolic immaturity of a dynamic film movement contesting not only apartheid, but Hollywood aesthetics as well. Rod Stewart's camera work has elements of the restrained style of Third Cinema, and aspects of Italian neo-realism, though neither style nor theory had yet had much impact on South African film making. Mark Baard's sophisticated flashback editing sometimes muddles its tenses and confuses relationships, but it suggests a theory of media-society relations and ways of making sense of reality which is usually associated with avant-garde European cinema.

Further Reading
Beitel, M. 1990: " Mapantsula: Cinema, Crime and Politics on the Witwatersrand", Journal of Southern African Studies, 16(4).

Boraine, A. 1989: "The Militarisation of Urban Conditions: the Security Managements System in Mamelodi." In Cock, J and Nathan, L (eds.): War and Society: the Militarization of South Africa. Cape Town: David Philip.

CIRR. Catholic Institute for International Relations. 1988: Now Everyone is Afraid: the Changing Face of Policing in South Africa. London.

Commission Appointed to Enquire into Acts of Violence Committed by Natives at Krugersdorp, Newlands, Randfontein and Newclare Pretoria: Government Printer, UG 47/1950.

Gabriel, T. 1982: Third Cinema in the Third World: the Aesthetics of Liberation. UMI Research Press.

Hirson, D. 1988/9: Mapantsula, Southern African Review of Books (Dec/Jan), p. 22

Louw, P.E. 1989: "The Emergence of the Progressive-Alternative Press in South Africa with Specific Reference to Grassroots," Communicatio, 15(2).

Patel, L. 1985: "How Small Media Can Organise", Media Development , (32)3.

Stadler, A. 1987: The Political Economy of Modern South Africa . David Philip, Cape Town. Suttner and Cronin, J. 1986: 30 Years of the Freedom Charter. Johannesburg: Ravan

Swilling, M. 1987: "The United Democratic Front and Township Revolt," Work in Progres , No 49.

Tomaselli, K.G. 1988: The Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in South African Film. Lake View Press, Chicago.

Tomaselli, K.G. and Ramgobin, M. 1988: "South Africa and the Freedom Charter: Culture and Violence", Enclitic, Vol 11 No 1, pp. 86-94.

Tomaselli, R.E., Tomaselli, K.G. and Muller, J. 1989: Broadcasting in South Africa. Lake View Press, Chicago.

Tomaselli, R.E. 1991: "South Africa's `Hidden Hand'", Covert Action Quarterly , No 36, pp. 22-26.

(Adapted with permission from Tomaselli, K.G., "Popular Communication in South Africa: Mapantsula and its Context of Struggle", South African Theatre Journal, 5(1) 1991, 46-60)

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¹See, eg, Biko (1978) and Asking for Trouble (1981).

²Necklacing is a gruesome form of execution in which 'comrades' execute suspected collaborators by placing a tyre round their victim's neck. The tyre is then filled with gasoline and lit. The victim burns to death.

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1995
   

THE MANTIS PROJECT

SABC TV Series, 1985. 13 x 52 mins. Written by John Cundill. Directed by Manie van Rensburg. Episode evaluated: Prophecy: The Mantis Project

TOPICS: Anthropology, Jungian Psychology, Kalahari, Archeology, Anthropology

USES: M, U, G, A.

SYNOPSIS
The Mantis Project is set in the Kalahari Desert into which a group of black, white, and coloured South African volunteers (including one white male American), have been sent by a Museum. The objective of this sponsor, which later sent a film cameraman to record the experience, was to see how a disparate group of people would cope in total isolation from the rest of the world. The `leader' of this expedition is a racist and brutal white Afrikaner ex-Rhodesian Selous Scout (commando). The archaeologist on the Project spends his time excavating caves in the eerie mountains. Of the two black characters, the young black man is an anthropologist, while the Scout's family maid turns out to be a sangoma (indigenous healer). Both the maid and the anthropologist are in communion with their ancestors - the maid in a spiritual sense, and the black anthropologist in an intellectual way. The once grand, seemingly haunted,dilapidated mansion, previously owned by German settlers, is their temporary home sinking in the middle of a sea of sand.

CRITIQUE
The Scout represents militarism run riot. The remaining characters represent other major social roles in conflict in South Africa during the 1980s. In opposition to the Selous Scout is the transcendental humanity and original innocent culture of the elusive San character.

In trying to recover the San heritage, the archeologist is also confronting his own shadow. While the archaeologist becomes hostile to the American's (imperialist) acquisitiveness of the San artifacts (drums) that he discovers in the caves in the mountains, the archaeologist is quite disconnected from his fellow South Africans. The mansion in which they all live allegorically represents South Africa isolated from the world at large, except for the sensationalist interest of the media.

Cundill has re-created Van der Post's personal consciousness in the white archaeologist who keeps hearing echoes of the collective unconscious: "You know, when I'm in that cave alone, it's as if I'm not alone. Something, and I can't describe, I can't put a name to it ...". Where Van der Post was trying to find the lost Eden, the lost innocent childhood of humankind, the archaeologist in The Mantis Project was attempting to confront his dark instinctual self. He tells the group that when he was only 12 years old he actually killed a San cattle thief. This character thus embodies the accumulated guilt of the history of white extermination of the San. He also tells of his dream: "We're in the desert and someone comes towards me from the distance, it's a Bushman, the one I killed ...". The archaeologist is one of the few in the group prepared to acknowledge his own `shadow' - to dig into his personal unconscious to respond to the approach of the archetypal image.

The archaeologist's monologue on the primordial idea positions him as a "uniting symbol" (of the opposites represented in the Scout (white colonizer/murderer/death vs indigenous San/First Culture/Life) who: "throws a bridge between present-day consciousness, always in danger of losing its roots, and the natural, unconscious, instinctive wholeness of primeval times." (Dieke 1993). The role played by the archaeologist is as mediator between the present, the past and the future. In Jungian terms, he is trying to penetrate through his `personal unconscious' by bringing to the surface deep, lost and painful repressed memories of the past residing in the `collective unconscious'. He explains to the group that the San were not vermin as blacks and whites believed. As both groups hunted the San who stole their cattle, this was a projection of their own shadows onto the San as Other.

Though he speaks of the San in the discursive manner of Laurens Van der Post, the archaeologist has set himself a different task. Where Van der Post entered the First People by leaving the 20th Century to re-emerge into the past through his Kalahari expeditions, the character of the archaeologist was located within "the fundamental layer of our contemporary culture". He is trying to bring to consciousness a culture and philosophy that was murdered by white (and black) colonizers in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. The San male, who disappears into the desert pursued by the archaeologist, is a mirror in which we see an unattainable reflection of ourselves. The mirror, however, shatters into a mirage as the narrative acknowledges that recuperation of our aboriginal selves becomes impossible. Eliciting this kind of `primordial type' through the use of film can perhaps oralise/visualize archetypal ideas in a general and secondary form.

Like the journey suggested by the Spoornet advert, The Mantis Project is an attempt to reach into the unknown - both past and future. But it is a journey that may be impossible indicated by the death in the desert of the archaeologist in The Mantis Project, who died chasing a chimera, a mirage, an unknowable archetypal symbol. As Jung argues, the ultimate nature of the psyche, for which the archaeologist was searching, is unknowable. The archaeologist's body was found by the others, his mission unaccomplished, spreadeagled in the form of another symbol of a savior, Christ on the Cross. These archetypal images interact within the confluence of Judeo-Christian cultures as occurred with the above interpretation.

The Mantis Project, then, is a metaphorical excavation which should be seen against the struggle by white South Africans to come to terms with their cultural homelessness, as well as with Africanicity, the past, the present and the future.

Further Reading
Dieke, I. (1993) The Primordial image: African, African-American and Caribbean mythopoetic text. New York: P Lang.

Tomaselli, K.G. (1995). "Introduction: media recuperations of the San", Critical Arts , 9(2), 1-xxi.

(Written by Keyan Tomaselli, 1995).

Author: Sudderth, William
Date:
   

Mandela

1987. Home Box Office. 120 minutes. Directed by Philip Saville. Scripted by South African born playwright, Ronald Harwood. Three part TV Mini Series

TOPICS: Resistance, South Africa, Apartheid, Nelson Mandela, Media Studies, Sociology, Politics, History

USES: A

SYNOPSIS

A dramatization of the early life of Nelson Mandela.

CRITIQUE
The release of the Mandela TV mini series in 1987 in the US and Britain coincided with the making of the myth of Mandela as a worthy successor to Steve Biko, immortalized in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom (1987). Both films were shot in Zimbabwe as a surrogate location for South Africa. The American media had begun to capitalize on Nelson Mandela, to the point of reducing the South African conflict to this individual's struggle for freedom.

Mandela is the tale of a superhero, a larger-than-life messiah, indomitable and powerful. The serial takes place in a South Africa with characters and social dimensions pulled straight out of a comic book. The heroes and villains are defined to the point of caricature, and no hyperbole is wasted when either Nelson Mandela or a National Party member speaks. For a while towards the end of the 1980s, white South Africans became Hollywood's irredeemably bad gays, filling the gap left by the KGB types of the crumbling Soviet Union. Films like Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) identified its villainous South African characters, while the TV series, Operation Cobra, has in one of its episodes an unidentified white African fascist speaking with the stilted, clipped, Afrikaans-speaking accent that has been popularized by films like A World Apart, in which coached American actors try to mimic Afrikaans accents.

Mandela presents a man who could not possibly exist, a two-dimensional world, and a one-dimensional supporting cast. This Critique will show how the serial's central character, Mandela, played by Danny Glover is a mythical, fictional hero who overpowers and makes insignificant the organization which he led, the ANC, and how the serial's setting undermines the factual credibility on which the series is supposedly based.

The first scene presents Mandela, Walter Sisulu and ANC President, Oliver Tambo, the only person of this triad not ever held on Robben Island, leaving their law offices in Johannesburg. The three leaders are reading a letter describing the happenings during the reading of the Freedom Charter. As Tambo concludes the letter, Mandela begins wafting about his companions like a Fred Astair, wrapping himself around a lamp-post lyrically shouting. "There will be peace!" "I am drunk. Drunk with the prospect of Freedom". He skips to the next lamp-post and repeats the swinging movement: "we are convinced he is going to break into one of these MGM production numbers which Gene Kelly made famous, with Sisulu and Tambo at his side ready to hoof and warble with the best of them" (Johnstone 1987).

Immediately noticeable is Mandela's (Glover's) physical size in relation to his colleagues. Glover, also the star of two Lethal Weapon films, is a towering, broad figure who dominates the screen to the extent that, at the end of the scene, the other two actors must peer around him to edge into the frame at all. Glover's physical presence immediately minimizes the roles of Sisulu and Tambo, while magnifying Mandela's.

All three ANC members are in uniform, each wearing nearly identical gray suits with black ties. The suits represent status and responsibility, prestige and respectability. In deeply conservative America, it would be unthinkable to aid `communist terrorists' which the ANC was labelled by prominent conservatives such as Senator Jesse Helms. By clothing the three leaders in well cut suits the series makes these men respectable in the eyes of the American public, notwithstanding the fact that the ANC by 1987 was receiving most of its material and armed support from Eastern Bloc countries.

The scene of Mandela's final trial begins with a long pan from the judge's chair to the back of the courtroom, with Mandela testifying throughout. As the camera focuses him, we see for the first time that he is wearing `traditional' African clothing. The rest of the ANC leaders seated behind him are all wearing grey suits.

Clothing Glover differently in this courtroom scene serves a basic Hollywood precept: when possible, make your star stand out. This dress finally excluded the ANC presence as an entity beyond Mandela. The ANC leaders are now Mandela's supporters, his cabinet, rather than Mandela supporting the ANC. Mandela is thus indexically portrayed as a traditional African representing traditional (black) South Africans.

The movie's finale is in 1986 with Mandela huddling in his cell. The camera zooms into to him through the barred window, cutting to a close-up. Glover's voice-over says: "I will return!". This entire scene is a metaphor which repeatedly appeared in pop culture indictments of the apartheid system until Mandela's release in 1990.

The two hour mini-serial now climaxes. We have come to care so much about Mandela that we are more upset over the injustice of his imprisonment that the cause that he fought for has been forgotten. The program's pitch is a clich'e: `Free Mandela.'

Glover's appearance at the serial's end bore no resemblance to the grandfatherly Mandela at the time he walked away from the prison. Grainy pictures taken in the 1960s froze the public's image of him for 25 years. Time , the week before his release, ran an `artist's impression of him in his seventies on the cover. The `impression', supposedly approved by Winnie Mandela, however, resembled Danny Glover, and the series was re-released barely two weeks later.

To properly inflate a hero, his nemeses must be deflated. Afrikaners in Mandela are practically comical in their evilness at times. At others, they are so gruesome as to be unbelievable. Upon Mandela's demand for a search warrant when he discovers him at his law offices, the sergeant remarks with mock horror: "Oh, I forgot! You're a lawyer. Hey, boys, looks like we got a kaffir lawyer!". More graphically, and much less likely, the policemen who gun down the Sharpeville protesters grin in anticipation and congratulate each other afterwards. The Afrikaners are depicted as the ultimate supervillains: petty, mean, and every last one of them power mad.

Hero inflation also requires an absence of doubt or contradiction. Again, to pacify American fears, the ANC's desire to first avoid violence; and then killing, is repeated over and over. The Congress' ties to the SA Communist Party are also minimized.

The screenplay takes quotes more or less verbatim from the transcript of Mandela's final trial. But the out-takes are selected carefully. Mandela's statement of allying with the communists merely to achieve a common end is included.

Though a well-made serial, Mandela fails as a docu-drama of the realities of the South African situation. The opening credits feature black-and-white `newsreel' footage of the implementation of apartheid. A bulldozer smashing through a township is freeze- framed, stopped for the credits: "HBO Pictures presents ... Mandela ". It has been humorously suggested that HBO executives meant to imply that HBO was stopping the bulldozers of apartheid. It would be more accurate to say that HB0 bulldozed over reality.

The series is marred with a number of errors, the misspelling of Pietermaritzberg (sic), is one example. Winnie Mandela, who had refused to meet the screenwriter, objected to the series, which she had not seen, as an invasion of her privacy, and that the series would serve no useful political purpose (Johnstone 1987). Her objections do raise an important ethical question - to what extent can re-creations of public figures like the Mandelas (or Biko) become the profitable private property of film and TV companies? Certainly, in the case of Mandela, HBO remained outside of the chains of accountability and responsibility established by the liberation movements to ensure the integrity of the individuals depicted

And at the end of the day, the bemusement of the British press on Winnie's objections to the series, must be measured against the potential of the series to popularize Mandela to a world-wide audience. But as Alexander Johnstone concludes:

Critics might look at this historical figure, whose `moderation' (whatever that may mean) is enthusiastically promoted, whose reluctance to consort with communists is stressed, whose admiration for British institutions and the American Congress is promoted, they may look at this figure and ask, if he still exists, how he fits into a struggle much deadlier than the one he led before his imprisonment.

This, indeed, was the problem that faced Mandela himself on his historic tour of the United States during 1990. Mandela's romantic media image did not match his real hard nosed philosophy.

Reference
Johnstone, A. 1987: "Don't Worry, Winnie - Even THIS Movie won't Harm Your Cause", Sunday Star September 27, 1987, p. 14.

(Written by William Sudderth; edited by Keyan G Tomaselli)

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 1990
   
Maids and Madams
'Maids and Madams,' apparently based on Jackie Cock's book of the same name, explores the relationship between white employers and black domestic servants in South Africa. The film and the book, however, fundamentally differ in terms of methodology, sample and explanation. Cock conducted her research in the Eastern Cape, the most economically depressed area in South Africa. Hamermesh's film is located in the very wealthy northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Unlike the book, the film makes no mention of the historical dimensions of domestic work, nor does it situate domestic work into the wider matrix of apartheid social relations.

'Maids and Madams' follows the orthodox BBC style of structured documentary which plays on the codes of 'objectivity,' 'balance', 'fairness' and so on. This creates the impression of a God's-eye-view of maid/madam relations, and that the interactions seen have not been mediated by the camera. The black interviewees speak the 'truth,' but when whites speak, their 'truths' are undermined by photographic style, editing strategies and the use of sound effects like echo, for example, where the pre-schoolers relate the jobs done by their 'nannies.'

The film treats domestic work as an act of oppression in itself. On one level, this is true. However, it obscures the fact that domestic work is both a symptom and example of the larger oppression of apartheid. It is easy to see how this confusion can arise --domestic work accounts for the second largest category of employed black women after agriculture. The film sees this exploitation as a moral one, manifested in poor conditions of service, and not as an inevitable by-product of black life under apartheid. To understand the oppression of black women in domestic service, it is necessary first to understand the position of black women under apartheid generally.

Only half way through the film are gender issues raised. This occurs in the context of a domineering female black social worker harassing the chief and elders at Rooigrond, a rural settlement. Instead of eliciting explanations from the men on why they feel women should know their places, the social worker preaches back at them. The chief is barely given time to quote a Biblical justification of men's superiority over women before being cut short. She then speaks 'for' the chief direct to camera, thereby also silencing him through elimination of both his face and his voice. Little information is obtained from this one-sided interaction about women's position in patriarchal society. The impression given, then, is that contextual issues are discussed, but that unacceptable patriarchal discussion has been cut from the film.

A second problem with this sequence concerns the ethics of 'setting up' an interviewee to ridicule his (or her) point of view, through the public use of the chief's humiliation at the hands of the social worker on film. The social worker concludes: 'I find it extremely depressing as a black woman that we have to fight on two fronts: the racial front and the sexist front.' No progressive would disagree with this statement, but as for film maker/theorists, questions about methodology need to be asked.

A fair amount of footage is devoted to the South African Domestic Workers Association (SADWA) which is working towards minimum wages, fair working conditions and informing domestic workers of their rights. SADWA also intervenes where domestic workers have been unfairly treated. These are purely descriptive scenes. 'Maids and Madams' also documents some of the programmes of the Black Sash and Centres of Concern in their attempts to improve the quality of life of domestic workers. The film contrasts opulent white-owned homes with the remote shacks in the black townships and homelands where the maids' families live. The very skewed sample of interviewees, both among employers and employees, bears no relationship to the broader phenomenon of domestic work and workers. But the film's codes present it as the norm. 'Maids and Madams' is a victim of Hamermesh's own ideology of 'objectivity'. The film takes no particular stand, though it does permit, perhaps even encourage, white madams to indict themselves with regard to their patronizing attitudes and practices. In this way, the causes of the domestic's servitude is often de-centered onto a personal relationship between the white women who are the employers, and the black women who are the employees. The underlying structures which trap both are over-looked.

Ultimately, it is difficult to determine what Hamermesh is trying to say about these Centers. They are filmed with the same narrative techniques as are the madams who are interacting with their maids or work seekers. Does this indicate disapproval? A spurious continuity, for example, is set up with Joyce when she is interviewed by an unnamed madam. The camera is positioned behind the woman being interviewed, and its penetrating over-shoulder gaze at the white employer is merciless as it strips the madam of any moral ground. Reverse shots create an impression of unedited snatches of life. In this way the director makes everything seemingly self-evident: the madam is condemned by the camera work, the performances of herself (sitting) and the maid (standing) and through the dialogue. How was this shot set up? Is it a reconstruction? A constructed continuity is then sutured as we then see Joyce at a Centre requesting courses in math, English and Afrikaans. The film thus builds a spurious narrative and flattens the critique of both employers and the Centers.

The director's assumptions are never explicitly articulated. Viewers are unaware of how certain incidents were filmed (reconstructed, observational, etc.) or informed how the crew persuaded the white 'madams' to expose their vulnerabilities to the camera. When ordinary people perform for cameras, they often tend to overplay their quirks and foibles, being on their 'best' behavior. It is doubtful that any of the madams portrayed would have agreed to participating if they thought their behavior would be portrayed as hypocritical or that the very intimate relationships that develop between maids and madams would be portrayed as morally wrong. The way the camera and crew distort everyday relationships and behavior has always been an epistemological problem for ethnographic film makers. But more than this, ethical questions are of concern, too.

The film ends with scenes of a massive rally organized by Centers of Concern in the Johannesburg Cathedral. 'Nkosi Sikelile iAfrika' is sung at the rally. This is an empowering song, not a song of disempowerment as it is used throughout the film, up until this final sequence. The song now suggests that the Centers of Concern have provided a positive forum for domestic workers to express their dignity and solidarity. The film does not resolve the question of whether the Centers ameliorate the status quo or not.

One reviewer argues that 'Maids and Madams' gives us 'an intimate view of South African culture today. This is a picture from the bedroom and the kitchen' (Fernea 1987). The film certainly reveals aspects of South African racial culture mediated by the gaze of Hamermesh's camera, but we should be cautious about how the film tries to position viewers vis-a-vis maid-madam relations. And we also need to question the implied reductionism that apartheid equals black servants for whites, or that the camera's 'intimate view' is accurate. How intimate can set up shots be? Apartheid is far more complicated than either this reviewer or the film would have audiences believe.

The film presents the master-servant relationships as a curiosity, rather than as a fundamental criticism of capitalism in general which permits -- indeed sanctifies -- the exploitation of labor on massive scales worldwide. Domestic workers are located at the bottom of this exploitative process. Domestic service is seen as an evil in itself and what is suppressed is that most women employed in domestic service have no alternative. While the documentary treatments are useful in making real their experiences, the film does not explain:

1. how this came about; or
2. the lack of resources available to black women through which to change their conditions of service and remuneration.

In conclusion then, both white employers and black workers, wanting to change the situation, have to work through the contradictions to overcome them. In the context of the South African economy, domestic service cannot be abolished in the foreseeable future, but the whole system needs to be drastically overhauled. This can't happen until domestic workers themselves are in a position to organize collectively and thereby put pressure on the state to regulate service. Increased public awareness, together with more stringent requirements in terms of hours, remuneration and accommodation conditions, are a first step towards this end. Ultimately, however, the whole structure of the apartheid economy, with its basis in migrant labor, needs to be restructured before significant changes in domestic labor, among other areas, will come about.

(Critique by Keyan Tomaselli, Professor and Director, Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban)

References
Cock, J. 'Maids and Madams.' Ravan, Johannesburg.

Fernea, E. 1987: 'Maids and Madams,' SVA Newsletter, Vol 3 Nos 1 and 2, 16.

Tomaselli, K.G. and Tomaselli, R.E. 1990: 'Maids and Madams -Servants of Apartheid,' SVA Review.

Author: Dodd, Vanessa
Date: 1998
52 minutes
Icarus/First Run Films
Directed by Zola Maseko
Mail and Guardian Television, Dominant 7, SABC 2, Dola Bill Productions

Reviewed by Vanessa Dodd,
Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban.    

The Life and Times of Sara Baartman

Synopsis
The Life and Times of Sara Baartman is a documentary about a young Khoi woman taken to Europe in the early 1800s, exhibited as a freak show and examined for scientific proof of the inferiority of her race. Sartjie (renamed Sara) Baartman was born in the Eastern Cape in 1790. After a commando attacked her community, she was taken to Cape Town where she worked as a slave for a farmer, Peter Cezar and was ‘discovered’ by Cezar’s brother Hendric, who was aware of Europe’s morbid fascination with the genitalia of the Khoi women. Cezar took Sara to London in 1810. There she performed in popular freakshows as The Hottentot Venus. After her exhibition met with disapproval in London, she was taken to France where she was sold to an animal trainer. In 1815, Sara was examined by three eminent French scientists, who wanted to view her ‘hottentot apron’, the existence of which would prove for them the inferiority of her race. This was prevented by her modesty, the problem of which was circumvented by her unexplained death in 1816. Cuvier then performed a post-mortem, in which he did not establish the cause of her death, but cut off her genitals, which he then presented to the Academy of Science as proof that the Khoi woman was not human.

The documentary does not attempt to re-enact this disturbing story, but tells it through the testimonies of historians and anthropologists; through newspaper reports, advertisements and letters of the time; through portraits, caricatures and cartoons, and through revisitation of places where the events took place. This technique gives an educated sense of the historical context of Sara’s life, and also makes the film less visually harrowing than a Spielberg version could have been.

 

Critique
The film deals primarily with the issue of racism as it pertains to Sara’s existence, death, and socio-cultural significance. Sara’s status in South Africa as a slave meant that she was unable to make decisions about her life. The farmer for whom she worked was in a position to say to his brother You find her bum interesting - take her and do with her what you will, as South African historian Yvette Abrahams put it.

The cruel way in which Sara was treated was motivated primarily by racism, by the perception of difference. Freak shows, which started in royal courts, were huge attractions in Europe. Sara was considered a freak because of her larger than average buttocks. Her presence in London was its people’s first physical confirmation of the myths about Khoi women. On 20 September 1810, an advertisement for the Hottentot Venus was published. The show, at two shillings a head, was a huge success. A British journalist, however, wrote of the Baartman exhibition, that the Hottentot was treated like a wild beast, a bear on a chain. She was kept in a cage, forced to dance even when she was ill, and threatened with fists or sticks when she did not co-operate. This reflects the racism entrenched in European society.

In 1915, Sara was observed by three eminent French scientists, including Georges Cuvier, at the Museum of Natural History. These scientists wanted to know about her ‘Hottentot apron’; the existence of which would prove to them that she was not human. Despite their lack of viewing success, as Sara clung to her modesty and refused bribes to reveal herself, they described her in relation to an animal - lips like a chimpanzee. These comparisons attempt to identify Sara as animal rather than human. Her similarity to animals is represented in the same way as her difference to other human women. Cuvier also described her thighbones as being like a carnivore’s, her buttocks resembling those of a female ape with a menstrual disorder. Representation attempts to place Khoi society as somewhere between ape and man, as a subhuman race. European society was obsessed with the need to classify everyone, to find the line where humans stop and animals begin.

Sara was perceived both as a Venus and an exotic freak, a woman and an ape. The French considered sex to be the definition of humanity. ‘Hottentots’ were believed to be inhuman, a different species, because of their different genitalia. After Sara’s death, the animal trainer gave her corpse to the Museum of Natural History. The cause of her death was not revealed in the postmortem, as Cuvier was far more interested in having a corpse to dissect that was unable to resist. He cut off her genitals, bottled them and presented them to the Academy of Science as evidence of Sara’s sub-humanity. Andre Langaney, director of Anthropology at the Musee de l’homme in Paris described Cuvier’s report of the autopsy as very exaggerated and fundamentally racist. According to Abrahams scientific racism was built on her body, and established the kind of thinking and classification which supported apartheid.

The representation of Sara Baartman relates to identity in the face of the Other. It seems that the Europeans wanted to reassure themselves that the Hottentots were the Other. Their fascination with freak shows stemmed from the desire to see anything different. Also, they needed to prove that Sara was Other, that she was subhuman, in order to justify their inhumane treatment of her. This desire to classify, to identify the Other, establishes a mode of relations, a hierarchy on which colonialism is based and which is necessary to support Western hegemony. Representation of the Hottentot Venus focuses on difference. Her larger buttocks and unique genitalia are cited as proof that she is different. Interestingly, the Bushman paintings shown in the film also depict the Khoi people with disproportionately large buttocks. For them, perhaps, this is a matter of cultural pride, a feature which distinguishes them as a group, yet for Sara in Europe, it makes her a rare specimen, a source of profit, a mythical phenomenon. The advertisement that appeared before her first exhibition referred to her as a most correct and perfect specimen and an extraordinary phenomenon of nature. A French journalist pointed out that she was not a very appealing Venus after seeing a Medici Venus. Her title The Hottentot Venus was more about revulsion than beauty, more about her extraordinary sexuality than her womanhood.

Representation is a significant theme in The Life and Times of Sara Baartman. The voiceover at the beginning of the film observes that Sara has been both a servant and a great attraction, both a Venus and an exotic freak, a cartoon in a song, a vaudeville in a book, she’s been a woman and she’s been an ape how could the same person play so many different parts? It does not seem, however, that Sara ever chose the roles she was to play. Her life was merely a consequence of the way others chose to represent her. Even in her death she was an object, like a beast drawn, measured and chopped, precisely preserved. Sara Baartman was not a woman with emotions and beliefs, a family and a husband-to-be. She was a skeleton in case 33.

The exaggerated plaster cast of Sara’s body, which depicts her with her eyes closed, also suggests her sub-humanity. The eyes are often believed to be the window of the soul, thus portraying Sara with her eyes shut suggests that she is a creature without a soul. Representation makes Sara into a symbol of sub-humanity. Sara’s image visually dominates the film. Her skeleton, the plaster cast of her body, her portraits and caricatures are frequently used as backdrops. This reminds one that is was her representation, in myth, in art, in literature, in science, as a woman and as an ape, a Venus and an exotic freak that destroyed her life.

Sara’s skeleton and body cast remained on display at the museum until 1974. Since the demise of apartheid in South Africa, there has been much debate about returning Sara’s remains to South Africa. According to Khoi belief, a soul cannot be at rest if the body is not respected. Thus there is profound social and historical significance in the returning of the remains of the Hottentot Venus.

Sara has become a symbol, for post apartheid South Africa, of injustice and discrimination that need to be redressed. The song played at the end of the film, Going back to Africa, seems to suggest that the wrongs Sara suffered will be put right if her body is returned to Africa where she belongs. The film makes a strong case for the need for Sara’s remains to be returned to her motherland, and for her body to be treated with proper respect, according to Khoi traditions. Obviously, this will not make up for the tragedy of Sara’s life. This documentary can be perceived as an attempt to change ways of thinking, to prevent the propagation of discrimination. It evokes racist signs which result in an emotional response, openly condemns racism, trying to persuade people to behave in a democratic manner, instead of in a racist way and aims to produce new responses to racism - resistance instead of acceptance.

Further reading
Tomaselli, K. 1988. The cinema of apartheid: Race and class in South African film. New York / Chicago: Smyrna / Lake View Press.

Acknowledgements
This research is partly funded by the Natal University Research Fund. The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation: Social Sciences and Humanities toward this research is also hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and not necessarily attributed to the National Research Foundation. The larger project is being co-ordinated under the research leadership of Professor Keyan Tomaselli, Graduate Programme in Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban.