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 concerned2. 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.
References
African
National Congress. 1986: "The South African government's
attempt to undermine the cultural boycott and improve its
international image abroad". Memo distributed in Los
Angeles calling for boycott and picket action against KCOP
TV, November 19.
Cawelti, J. 1970. The Six-Gun Mystique. Bowling Green University Popular Press, bowling Green.
Frye, N. 1957: Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton University Press.
Griffin, C. "Shaka Zulu", Wave, Vol 61 No 43, pp. 1-4.
Hamilton, C. 1989: "A Positional Gambit: Shaka Zulu and the Conflict in South Africa", Radical History Review, Vol 44, pp. 5-31.
Mahler, R. 1986: "Harmony Gold Offers Costly African Drama", Electronic Media, September 22, p. 1.
NAACP
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People). 1986: "South African Government Sees Goldmine in
the Harmony Gold Project "Shaka Zulu". Release by Beverley
Hills Chapter, November 19.
Kunene, Mazisi 1979: Emperor Shaka the Great. Heinemann, London.
Mersham, G 1993. "Mass Media Discourse and the Semiotics of Zulu Nationalism, Critical Arts , 7(1/2).
Mersham, G. 1987: Political Discourse and Historical Television Drama: A Case Study of Shaka Zulu. Ph.D Thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria.
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:
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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.