Outside Johannesburg, Cecil John Rhodes is conquering the Matabele all over again. JUSTIN PEARCE visited the set of the BBC mini-series
OUTSIDE the old petrol station near Lanseria airport, they’re making Matabele shields. Fifty shield-shaped plywood cut-outs are spread out on the grass, and four men armed with industrial spraypaint equipment advance to give them the requisite cowhide pattern.
To discover the purpose of this arcane activity, you have to turn off the main road and drive a few kilometres over ever-deteriorating farm tracks to Nash’s Farm, where Zenith Productions are busy shooting Rhodes, a nine-part television series about the 19th- century empire-builder, commissioned by BBC television.
Up on a hill there’s a reconstruction of a 19th-century Kimberley street, and further down the valley there’s the reason for the spraypainting: a kraal where Colenbrander (Ian Roberts) repeatedly arrives with a letter for King Lobengula (Washington Sixelo). The greeting he receives from Lobengula’s warriors involves a lot of drumming on shields: this time the real cowhide items, which make a nice resonant noise when you drum on them. The plywood imitations, it turns out, are for a mass battle scene to be shot the next day, where the musical qualities of the shields don’t count.
In between takes, an assistant heaps straw on to the kraal fire to make it smoke picturesquely. And outside the kraal and off-camera, spare warriors sit around wearing shirts and dressing gowns over their scanty traditional gear to fend off the morning breeze.
Nash’s Farm has become something of a movie-set shopping centre, providing virgin veld-to-order for Cry the Beloved Country, Gandhi and Danger Zone, as well as Rhodes. The reason is simple: it is one of the few pieces of land within 100km of Johannesburg which does not have a single power pylon in sight.
Today, all the action seems to revolve around Sixelo, whose kingly manner does not end with the cry of “cut!”. Gesturing expansively, he indicates “my kraal … my warriors … my indunas”. His left arm bears some gruesome needle-scars, courtesy of the make-up department — one little-known fact is that Rhodes introduced Lobengula to morphine to relieve his gout, and the conquest of the Matabele was made much easier by the fact that their king had become an incurable
Sixelo is a veteran of African language radio drama (where his roles included Malawian president Hastings Kamuzu Banda) and was one of the first black South African actors to make regular appearances on the small screen with the advent of TV2. He also appeared as the king’s grandfather in Shaka Zulu.
After all those products of the old-style SABC, Sixelo has been able to identify more strongly with the foreign-produced Rhodes than with any of his previous productions. Rhodes, he believes, gives a telling and sincere account of the subjugation of black South Africans under colonialism: “The turning point is where Rhodes tells the government in Cape Town how to treat black people. He told them that blacks would never
Sixelo acknowledges that the series “is being made from a colonial perspective — but the faithfulness is
Jerry Mofokeng, who plays the induna Unguba, makes the same point more bluntly: “It’s not pretentious in the way that Cry Freedom was. They don’t call it Lobengula and then make a story about Rhodes. They call it Rhodes — and it is about Rhodes, but it is made with respect for the other people and cultures he came into contact
Sixelo recalls that “in Shaka Zulu there were a lot of things that were un-African. When I questioned this, they said they were for the sake of the movie.”
The actors are impressed that Rhodes director David Drury takes the opposite approach: “David respects those things that are us,” Mofokeng says. “What compromises he does make are acceptable, and are done without watering down African culture.”
It’s time for the next take: again, it’s Colenbrander delivering the letter, but this time shot from inside the kraal. “Cut!” comes a British voice over the walkie-talkie held by third assistant director Philip Moseu. “There’s a guy in green overalls in shot.”
Moseu leaps into action, yelling “hlala phanzi!” at the late-20th-century cowherd who has unsuspectingly wandered into the picture.
At the end of this take, Sello Dlamini sidesteps the bees that are swarming round the cooldrink dispenser (dressed only in a hide loincloth, he’s vulnerable), and talks about his role as Lobengula’s son, who fell from princely privilege as a result of Rhodes’ interference: “He died as nothing. He married an English woman and was taken to England to work as a circus actor. He died far from his father, and, as a result of the indoctrination he received from Rhodes, his whole mentality switched off.”
Like his colleague, Dlamini is impressed by Drury’s level of cultural sensitivity, and the director’s refreshingly un-directorial humility is evident as he speaks over lunch. “Someone in my position can’t possibly claim a genuine understanding of that (Matabele) culture. I have to hand over a lot to the black actors — and if I go wrong, they tell me. It works very well, and it’s great fun.”
Drury says that little is known about Rhodes in Britain, although people are interested in the times in which he lived. The approach in making the series has been to portray Rhodes as a product of his times rather than as the archetypal hero or villain which forms the subject of many popular accounts of the man’s life. Ultimately, the story of Rhodes has to be seen as that of a maverick personality operating in a society afflicted by “a myopic attitude concerning its own racial superiority”.
“As far as I’m concerned, Rhodes is a villain — but villains are more interesting if they are not out-and- out black hats. We are trying to find redeeming features in the man’s personality.”
Equally, Lobengula has to be seen as the product of his context, and Drury is fascinated by the comparison between politicking in the court of Lobengula and in the court of Britain’s Queen Victoria: “Lobengula was more powerful in his own right than Victoria. He held the power of life and death that Victoria never held.”
After the lunch break, a column of Matabele warriors winds its way over the hills, their spears sillhoutted against the afternoon sun. It’s a perfect movie take — until you realise that the spears are actually the legs of the upturned chairs which they’re carrying away from the catering marquee.