On the way to interview Joe Theron, publisher of Hustler and the largest porn- video distributor in the country, my taxi driver opined: “For this pornography thing, I’m a bit concerned about the area of morals. I think I can tell my child these things myself. My parents told me babies came from aeroplanes but with sex magazines, when a good thing is in the wrong hands it becomes dangerous – it’s like a gun.”
Theron, it seems, is a safe yet raunchy handler of the sex machine. He’s a major player in the legitimate pornographic film industry in South Africa which is worth around R160-million per year, with pirate dealing worth more than double that gross. Theron couldn’t be happier that under the new dispensation we’ve not only got the most democratic Constitution on the planet but one of the horniest populations on earth.
His head office is located deep in the grungy urban decay of Jeppestown. Granite walls are surrounded by barbed wire; security guards pack handguns and shotguns. Wendy the telephonist says that, in spite of the security, “there’s a stigma about working here, for sure, but it’s like any other office.
“People think the receptionist will be sitting here with her top off and her boobs swinging around and loads of naked people roaming up the passage, but it’s a very professional set-up here.”
Theron is urbane and charming. He shows me a card he recently received from Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise after winning a highly publicised court battle related to his importation of hard-core videos into Britain. It reads: “Here’s hoping our paths do not cross on a professional level next year! Kind regards”.
As the local distributor of Private and Vivid titles – the two biggest names in hetero porn in the world – his latest addition is the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson home movie. He also co-produced and is distributing three homegrown porno movies, Screwin’ SA I and II, and Africa Rising . The first two are dreadful – badly shot and edited with “actors” fumbling around each other while an off-screen voice shouts out “come on, this is not a joke”. A music radio station plays over the banal action.
Even with a huge amount of swingers’ clubs in the country (Theron estimates there are 20 000 swinger subscribers to Hustler), it’s all very discreet. South Africans seem unwilling to take their kit off in front of a camera. “South Africa still has a mental block against adult entertainment. That’s why we don’t have any actors for adult pictures. In America it’s regarded as a profession. They look at themselves as glamour models; the fact that they’re screwing for a living is just the way it pans out,” he says.
Rudi van Dijk, a photographer and line producer on Africa Rising, agrees: “With the chicks we don’t really have a problem, but the ous are terrible, man. South African males live in this macho society of beer- drinking and rugby and braaivleis, but they can’t fuck. I think we need to get some flaky ou on dope and we’ll find he can deliver the punch.”
A counter-hand at the adult shop Sextopia says he “can’t stand” local porn movies: “They’re totally shit. I mean, here you have the girls moaning in Afrikaans saying ‘O ja, o ja’. I mean that’s not a sex movie. They should be going ‘Oh, yeah!’ like in the American flieks, otherwise it’s just not porn.”
All the same, the local porn films have done booming business. Screwin’ SA I and II – produced on a meagre R30 000and shot back- to-back on Betacam – are selling well in the lower range of the market. Theron believes this is because “South Africans like to see themselves doing themselves.
“It’s like the Beaver Hunt we feature in the magazine [where ordinary housewives send in nude pics of themselves]. The closer to home it is, the more people like it.”
Directed by veteran porn connoisseur Stuart Canterbury, Africa Rising was made on a far bigger budget and shot on 35mm – a rigorous test for the performers, as film magazines have to be changed and tracks relaid while they maintain arousal. It even has a plot – American businesswoman travels to South Africa, goes missing and is the subject of a search led by seasoned American sex star Mike Horner.
His journey becomes a rite of adult initiation in the veld; rhinos and giraffes graze and distinctly West African music wafts over the images. Horner’s character tells us he has been “living off the land, sleeping under the stars, rifle at my side, always alert for some creature in the bush”. He soon finds one, of course: a black maiden whom he saves from a crocodile. Within 30 seconds she’s on her knees servicing him.
For some hick in America’s Midwest this might pass as an alluring and exotic tale, but for local lechers, it’s bound to feel contrived. Locals will, however, find solace in the appearance of Neena, a 26-year-old high-class Bedfordview prostitute whose husband approves of her job.
In Private Style magazine she confesses to having a voracious appetite for bonking: “I love sex and that’s my job. I get paid to do what I enjoy most. When I thought about doing this, it seemed like the perfect combination: having sex all the time, enjoying myself and getting paid for it.”
Although stiff as an actress, she’s undeniably perfect porn material. Theron acknowledges that she’s a sexual discovery for the small screen and is proud that she made the grade after only appearing in photo-shoots for Loslyf and Hustler. Her companion, Rudi van Dijk, has just accompanied Neena to the United States, where she performed in more than 17 movies over three months. Rudi says: “Neena was born to do this sort of thing – you can see when people are faking it, but she’s different, she just goes bananas.”
Neena and Van Dijk are setting up Neenavision productions, which Van Dijk hopes will produce a slew of local porn flieks every year: “It will all be very South African: braaivleis, visvang, rugby.”
The gay market hasn’t been neglected in this area either. A couple of years ago, Cape Town film-maker Jeff van Reenen made a successful series of soft-core videos with pretty boys lolling naked on sand dunes. Now Charles E Tierney of Adam, a Pretoria gay shop, has produced and directed a hard-core video called Jocks of the Bushveld, which also exploits the curio aspect of Africa.
The video’s cover reads: “A tale of white Africa and a full cast of hot white Afrikan [sic] boys. Returning to nature, in the wild bushveld, these boys discover more than they expected under the hot African sun. It is rutting season and they are all swept away by the wild primeval forces of the veld.”
The reality is there’s no story – just a series of pretty boys getting it on in the setting of Beau Brummel’s Waterberg bush camp in Vaalwater. What makes this film different to gay porn from abroad, though, is the breakdown of active/passive roles: unlike most American stars, usually stereotyped as either top or bottom (never both), these local lads all take and give and get.
Industry insiders like Theron and Van Dijk believe this is just the beginning of what will prove a boom in the local sex industry. They predict that the local porn-movie industry is soon to reach orgasmic heights. Products are selling well – from videos to aphrodisiacs to dildos. The only thing that’s not moving off the shelves is the talking vibrator …
He believes South African taste in adult movies has developed since the barrage of product when censorship was first lifted: “When it first happened, an ou would come with this crap about wanting to see a story but that was just an excuse for their wives. Now the customers want hard-core screwing.”
It’s all pretty routine, but what compromises the picture is its lame deification of Africa. When South African actor Billy Scott, in a humiliatingly high- school performance, is asked if he knows anything about Africa, he replies: “No one does. Africa is a dark continent, beautiful but mysterious.”