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‘Africa Thina’? Xenophobic and Cosmopolitan Agency in Johannesburg's Film and Television Drama**

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070802685676

1465-3893

Loren Kruger,

African history and culture studies

Abstract The characterisation of Johannesburg as a city of crime perpetrated by foreigners and other outsiders is as old as the city itself. What is new in the post-apartheid period is the tension between the fear of foreigners as shadowy figures who allegedly spirit away the livelihoods of locals, and the attempt, in planning as well as imaginative initiatives, to reconceive of strangers as cosmopolitan agents of new modes of ‘belonging and becoming’. The cosmopolitan invoked here is less the Enlightenment concept of the knowing and usually wealthy citizen of the world who might transcend difference and conflict, than the informal cosmopolitan, the transnational migrant engaged in improvised economic, social and cultural exchange. Set in Johannesburg, films such as The Foreigner (1997), and television serials from The Line (1994) to Yizo Yizo (2000–2002), Gaz'lam (2002–2006) and A Place Called Home (2006), suggest, in their portrayals of encounters between locals and strangers, the effects of built environments on character and action, and posit the roles of ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ as alternatives to violent nativist attempts to expel strangers even if those ‘strangers’ turn out to be citizens. While South African official discourse has only recently addressed migrants, cinematic fictions have for at least a decade offered narratives of city life that look hopefully, but also plausibly, to a more cosmopolitan future. Notes 1 J. Matshikiza, ‘Instant City’, Public Culture, 16, 3 (Fall 2004), 482–3. *Earlier versions of this research were presented at the University of Pretoria and at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WISER). Thanks to Marie-Heleen Coetzee and Sarah Nuttall for inviting me, to Liz Gunner, Sonja Narunsky-Laden, Lwazi Mjiyako, and Fred Hagemann and the students at both institutions for critical input. 2 Although Mbeki's government appeared surprised by the nativists who killed more than 60 people, one-third of them South African citizens, and displaced 35,000 mostly Zimbabwean and Mozambican migrants in May 2008, smaller-scale attacks occurred in 2004, and research confirms that resentment among those who have yet to benefit from so-called black economic empowerment has been growing for some time. For analysis of migrants in Johannesburg, see L.B. Landau, ‘Urbanism, Nativism and the Rule of Law in South Africa's “Forbidden” Cities’, Third World Quarterly, 26, 7 (2005), pp. 1,115–34. Despite initial assurances that it would integrate migrants with the support of the UNHCR, the government proved unable to provide migrants with secure refuges in camps or to reintegrate them. On the contrary, as Alexander Prezzanti of the Centre for Human Rights argues, incompetence and corruption at the Department of Home Affairs in the handling of asylum claims suggests that xenophobia is routine government practice if not formal policy. See Prezzanti, ‘Xenophobia Institutionalised’ Johannesburg Mail and Guardian, 7 November 2008; available at http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-11-07-xenophobia-institutionalised; retrieved on 7 November 2008. 3 For the deaths of South Africans mistaken for migrants, see ‘Xenophobia Deaths: One-Third Was South African’, Mail and Guardian Online, 12 June 2008, available at http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-06-12-xenophobia-deaths-onethird-was-south-african, retrieved on 9 July 2008. On the numbers of migrants crossing borders in Africa, which is five times that of African migrants in Europe, see C. Kihato, ‘Governing the City? South Africa's Struggle to Deal with Urban Immigrants after Apartheid’, African Identities, 5, 2 (August 2007), pp. 261–78. On educated migrants' impact on their home and host countries in Africa, see L.B. Landau and D. Vigneswaran, ‘Shifting the Focus of Migration Back Home: Perspectives from Southern Africa’, Development, 50, 4 (December 2007), pp. 82–7. 4 L. Kruger, ‘Filming the Edgy City: Cinematic Narrative and Urban Form in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg’, Research in African Literatures, 37, 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 141–63; Z. Maseko The Foreigner (Johannesburg, La Sept Arte/Channel Four/Primedia, 1997); B. Tilley, The Line (Johannesburg and London, Afrovision and Channel Four, 1994); A. Gibson et al., Yizo Yizo, (Johannesburg, BOMB Productions/Umsobomvu Youth Fund/ SABC, 1999–2002); A Place Called Home (Johannesburg, T.O.M. Pictures, 2006). 5 U. Beck and N. Sznaider, ‘Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences: A Research Agenda’, British Journal of Sociology, 57, 1 (March 2006), p. 7. 6 R. Tomlinson et al. (eds), Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the Postapartheid City (London, Routledge, 2003); L. Bremner, Johannesburg: One City, Colliding Worlds (Johannesburg, STE, 2004); A. Mbembe and S. Nuttall (eds), Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, Special Issue of Public Culture, 16, 3 (Fall 2004). 7 On ‘re-imagining Johannesburg’, see Tomlinson et al. (eds), Emerging Johannesburg, p. xii. ‘Tour Guides of the Inner City’ was assembled by Stephen Hobbs. For an analysis of these events and their efforts to make locals not only feel like foreigners but improvise within this experience, see L. Kruger, ‘Letter from Johannesburg: Performance and Urban Fabrics in the Inner city’, Theater, 38, 1 (2008), pp. 5–17. 8 G. Götz and A.M. Simone, ‘On Belonging and Becoming in African Cities’, in Tomlinson et al. (eds), Emerging Johannesburg, pp. 123–47. On recent planning initiatives, see J. Robinson, ‘Inventions and Interventions: Transforming Cities – An Introduction’, Urban Studies, 43, 2 (February 2006), pp. 251–8. 9 Mayor Amos Masondo announced the Migrant Office in the State of the City Address on 8 March 2007, available at http://www.joburg.org.za/content/view/713/114/, retrieved on 17 March 2008. 10 O. Schmitz and T. Mogotlane, Mapantsula (Johannesburg, Max Montocchio, 1988); M. Hammon, Wheels and Deals (Berlin, Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie, 1991); L. Blair, Jump the Gun (London, Channel Four 1996); G. Hood, Tsotsi (Johannesburg/London, UK Film & TV Production Company, 2005). K. Tomaselli's Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in South African Film (New York, Smyrna/Lakeview Press, 1988) set a precedent by analysing both the institutions of production and individual films. Recent scholarship on South African film has tended, with few exceptions, to formal rather than institutional analysis: see J. Maingard, South African National Cinema (London, Routledge, 2007). K. Tuomi, ‘The South African Feature Film Industry: A Comparative Analysis’, Social Dynamics, 32, 2 (2006), pp. 81–110, is unique in focusing on the film industry as industry, including capitalisation and distribution as well as production. 11 C. Sapadin, Gaz'lam (Johannesburg, Ochre Moving Pictures, 2002–2006); H. Gavshon et al., Hard Copy (Johannesburg, Curious Pictures, 2005–7); B. Tilley, Crossing the Line (Johannesburg, Big World Cinema, 2005). On Soul City, see http://www.soulcity.org.za/programmes/the-soul-city-series, retrieved on 10 July 2008. See Footnote 4 for A Place Called Home. 12 Most research on television focuses on news and nationhood, but M. Tager, ‘Identification and Interpretation: The Bold and the Beautiful and the Urban Black Viewer in KwaZulu-Natal’, Critical Arts, 11, 1 & 2 (1997), pp. 95–119, and M. Flockemann, ‘Watching Soap Opera’, in S. Nuttall and C.-A. Michael (eds), Senses of Culture: South African Cultural Studies (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 141–54, treat audience responses to imported serials. For the SABC's negotiation of the tension between public good and revenue generation, see L. Kruger, ‘Theatre for Development and TV Nation: Educational Soap Opera in South Africa’, in J. Conteh-Morgan and T. Olaniyan (eds), African Drama and Performance (Indiana, Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 155–75, J. Duncan, Broadcasting and the National Question: South African Broadcast Media in an Age of Neo-Liberalism (Johannesburg, Freedom of Expression Institute, 2001), and J. Duncan, ‘It's Time for a New Board at the SABC’, Mail and Guardian Online, 2 March 2007, available at http://www.mg.co.za/article/2007-03-06-its-time-for-a-new-board-at-the-sabc, retrieved on 14 July 2008. 13 For an account of this period, including an analysis of Soweto, see J. Maingard, ‘Transforming Television Broadcasting in a Democratic South Africa’, Screen, 38, 3 (Autumn 1997), pp. 260–74. For a critique, with the hindsight of the neoliberal present, of this brief ‘Prague Spring’, see K. Bloom, ‘Pan-African Ambitions’, The Media Online, 1 September 2005, available at http://www.themediaonline.co.za/themedia/view/themedia/en/page4212?oid = 3886&sn = Detail, retrieved on 14 July 2008. 14 Broadcasting Act (No. 4 of 1999), sections 2a, 3d, available at http://www.icasa.org.za/Manager/ClientFiles/Documents/broadcasting_act.pdf, retrieved on 14 July 2008; Duncan, Broadcasting, pp. 112–62, and Duncan, ‘It's Time’, corroborated by the editor of the BBC Storyville series, N. Fraser, ‘A Very Public Meltdown’, Mail and Guardian Online, 16 May 2008, available at http://ww2.mg.co.za/article/2008-05-16-a-very-public-meltdown, retrieved on 14 July 2008. 15 ‘ICASA’, available at http://www.doc.gov.za/index.php?option = com_content&task = view&id = 80&Itemid = 282, retrieved on 22 July 2008. 16 ‘ICASA South African Television Content Regulations’, Government Gazette, 31 January 2006, available at http://www.info.gov.za/gazette/notices/2006/28454.pdf, retrieved on 14 July 2008. ICASA sets local content quotas at 35 per cent of drama programming, 60 per cent of educational programming and 55 per cent of children's programming. 17 Duncan, Broadcasting, pp. 113–62. 18 Landau, ‘Urbanism’. For Johannesburg's regional pre-eminence, see A. Boraine et al., ‘The State of South African Cities a Decade after Democracy’, Urban Studies, 43, 2 (February 2006), pp. 259–84. 19 J. Robinson, ‘Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26, 3 (September 2002), pp. 531–54. 20 J. Robinson, ‘(Im)mobilising Space – Dreaming (of) Change’, in H. Judin and I. Vladislavić (eds), Blank_____: Architecture, Apartheid and After (Rotterdam, NAI Publishers, 1998), p. 170; M. de Certeau, L'Invention du quotidien (Paris, Gallimard, 1992, 2nd edn), p. 142; M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988, trans. S. Randall), p. 93 (emphasis added). Randall's translation of ‘s'insinue’ as ‘slips into’ misses the potentially uncivil and informal performative moment of ‘insinuates’, which several urbanists have fruitfully deployed in the analysis of city street life. 21 De Certeau, L'Invention, p. 144; Practice, p. 95. 22 U. Chaudhuri, Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 55; A. Bayat, ‘Un-civil Society: The Politics of the “Informal People”’, Third World Quarterly, 18, 1 (March 1997), pp. 53–72. 23 A.M. Simone, ‘People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg’, Public Culture, 16, 3 (Fall 2004), p. 407. 24 Joburg 2030, available at http://www.joburg.org.za/content/view/123/58/, retrieved on 15 July 2008. 25 For upwardly mobile black migration in the 1990s, see A. Morris, Bleakness and Light: Inner-City Transition in Hillbrow (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1999). On more recent migration, see Landau and Vigneswaran, ‘Shifting the Focus’. 26 J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, ‘Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony’, American Ethnologist, 26, 2 (May 1999), pp. 279–303; ‘Alien–Nation: Zombies, Immigrants, and Millennial Capitalism’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 101, 4 (Fall 2002), pp. 779–805. 27 As Landau confirms, black xenophobia appears to target other Africans first and Asians second, rather than whites: Landau, ‘Urbanism’, 1,119. 28 The first episode aired on Saturday 30 July 1994, barely three months after the election. According to J. Carlin, ‘Inkatha Death Threats over TV Drama’, Independent (London), 1 August 1994, a spokesman for the Inkatha-aligned National Hostel Residents Association threatened to unleash ‘special Inkatha units trained by Eugene Terreblanche's far right Afrikaner Resistance Movement’ thereby confirming the truth of the fictional series' portrayal of links between Inkatha and rearguard pro-apartheid forces. 29 For Video News Service, later Afrovision, Tilley directed documentaries such as Fruits of Defiance (1990), which juxtaposed footage of violent police action with anti-apartheid agitation and concluded with crowds greeting Mandela in Cape Town. Mapantsula (1988) was co-scripted by lead actor Mogotlane and directed by Schmitz, who also worked on the story for The Line. For Mapantsula's debt to gangster glamour, see K. Oa Magogodi, ‘Refiguring the Body: Performance of Identity in Mapantsula and Fools’, Theatre Research International, 27, 3 (October 2002), pp. 243–58. 30 C. Chipkin, Johannesburg Style: Architecture and Society, 1880s–1960s (Cape Town, David Philip, 1993), p. 229. 31 Morris, Bleakness and Light, pp. 69–78. 32 Morris, Bleakness and Light, pp. 183, 338. 33 For more recent developments in Hillbrow, including the Ekhaya project's combination of harnessing city improvement district funds and fostering accountability among tenants, see L. Davie, ‘Making Hillbrow a Neighbourhood’, 10 March 2008, available at http://www.jda.org.za/2008/10mar_hlb.stm, retrieved on 16 July 2008. 34 (u)muti – traditional medicine (Nguni). 35 In 1998, the year the film was released, Ponte City was so run down that the owners considered selling it to the police, who were attracted by the internal panopticon provided by the atrium. See L. Mda, ‘City Quarters: Civic Spine, Faraday Station, KwaMayiMayi and Ponte City’, in Judin and Vladislavić (eds), Blank, p. 201. Coca-Cola, which had advertising rights to the roof (later sold to Vodacom), opposed the deal. 36 M. Diouf, ‘The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’, Public Culture, 12, 3 (Fall 2000), p. 702. 37 The pilot year was followed by a period of discussion before the producers received another contract – Yizo Yizo ran in 1999 and then in 2001 and 2002. According to Gibson and Perlman (interview, Johannesburg, 9 June 2007), the pilot was approved by the Department of Education's COLT (Culture of Learning and Teaching) Service based on comments by teachers and educational consultants. 38 For media comment at the time, see ‘Truth Hurts, but it Helps’, Mail and Guardian, 10 February 1999; ‘Stronger Than Soap’, The pilot year was followed by a period of discussion before the producers received another contract – Yizo Yizo ran in 1999 and then in 2001 and 2002. According to Gibson and Perlman (interview, Johannesburg, 9 June 2007), the pilot was approved by the Department of Education's COLT (Culture of Learning and Teaching) Service based on comments by teachers and educational consultants, 8 November 2002. 39 The first was a talk at the University of Pretoria on 9 March 2007 for drama undergraduates, about half of whom were black students; half again had attended township schools while the remainder went to ‘Model C’ schools. The second was a research seminar at WISER on 23 July 2007, whose respondents included a Zimbabwean who welcomed the representation of Nigerians in Yizo and regretted the absence of foreigners from Gaz'lam, directed in part by Yizo's Barry Berk. Discussion on both occasions was lively; students were able and willing to disagree with one another and with anyone posing as a figure of authority. Gaz'lam does not portray foreigners (and is therefore not discussed here), but on its depiction of young people grappling with city life, AIDS and money, see L. Kruger, ‘Critique by Stealth: Aspiration, Commodification and Class in Contemporary South African Television Drama’, forthcoming in Critical Arts. 40 For analysis of the practice of ‘hijacking buildings’ and the city government's response, see M.J. Murray, Taming the Disorderly City: The Spatial Landscape of Johannesburg after Apartheid (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 131–53. 41 ‘Hobbs/Neustetter – UrbaNET – Hillbrow/Dakar/Hillbrow’, University of Johannesburg Kuns Sentrum, July 2007, available at http://www.onair.co.za/pdf/H_N_Hillbrow_Dakar%20Project1.pdf, retrieved on 17 March 2008. 42 N. Hoad, African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2007), p. 126.