A new television series will put figures from South Africa’s past on trial. Matthew Krouse reports
Santarama Miniland, on the shores of Wemmer Pan dam, is an unexpected setting for a historical television drama of high integrity. A mammoth Gulliver hovers over tiny replicas of apartheid-era monuments, rekindling memories of brainwashing school outings.
Shored up in the reeds of the dam rests the mighty Dromedaris, a playful copy of the ship that brought the Dutch coloniser Jan van Riebeeck to the Cape in 1652. It is here on the deck, at sunrise, that a television crew has set up their camera. They’re recreating a scene in which Van Riebeeck – saintly figure in apartheid mythology – looks out to sea, contemplating his failure to live up to his lofty role in settler history.
Denim meets velvet, as director John Matshikiza briefs actor Tertius Meintjies. Two commanders: one, a high-ranking black writer and director. The other, a highly regarded Afrikaans actor.
In the Gauteng Legislature the following day, director Mickey Dube commands a room of extras, showing a bunch of khaki-clad Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging supporters how to wave their flags in the faces of Zulu impis.
In the meeting place of the province’s leaders, he is preparing to shoot a sequence in which the Zulu king Dingaan comes face to face with a 20th-century judge (Nambitha Mpumlwana), a dreadlocked woman who will evaluate his role in the murder of Piet Retief.
Controversial director and actor Mbongeni Ngema sits before a mirror in a press briefing room of the Gauteng Legislature, dressed for the part of the Zulu king. A make-up artist is rubbing baby oil into his skin as he chats on his cell.
These are the bizarre moments in the making of Saints, Sinners & Settlers, a series of hour-long docudramas set to challenge our perceptions of revered historical figures: Van Riebeek, Dingaan, Piet Retief, Nongqawuse, Lord Kitchener and Hendrik Verwoerd. Each name seems to carry the baggage of the past. While all are supposed to have had their big moments of heroism, they were moments that further divided South Africa, widening the historical gulfs.
Producer Mark Newman of Phakathi Films presents Saints, Sinners & Settlers as a sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of distant history. Mail & Guardian editor Phillip van Niekerk initiated the idea in 1995, and SABC3 grabbed it right away, funding the initial research.
While working as a correspondent for The Observer, in 1994, Van Niekerk says he was ”writing about how the present had changed and how we have to look at rewriting the past. I felt that it would be good to use a soap opera device to retell the way the past mythology was rammed down our throats.
”A courtroom examines holy truths and everything is up for grabs. It’s a good place to bring these people back from history and let them answer for themselves. I thought, let’s modernise the stories through a medium most people are used to, and try to give the characters a sense of who they would be if they were alive today.”
On this basis the initial scripts were written. Van Niekerk wrote about Dingaan and Piet Retief, Matshikiza took on Van Riebeeck, Zakes Mda wrote about Nongqawuse, Antjie Krog investigated Lord Kitchener and Michelle Rowe and Roger Smith researched Hendrik Verwoerd.
Months later the development of the series fell victim to what Newman refers to as the SABC’s ”McKinnsey process”, when the corporation allegedly went into the red, placing a massive moratorium on local content. This year the SABC took the project on again, splitting the bills with the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology and foreign NGOs. Such is the process of film and television finance in South Africa – fraught with endless insecurity, making do with budgets that are tight.
Having wrapped up the first episode – Van Riebeeck’s story, titled The Reluctant Settler -Matshikiza comments on the limitations of low-budget video production: ”This is an important series that’s really ambitious. It’s real drama that we don’t often get in South Africa. It’s just such a pity that we don’t get a proper budget from the national broadcaster.
”It’s tough when budgets are tight, it lends much too much pressure. But, what can I say? It’s the South African way – we manage.”
In the process of managing, though, most of those involved in the production have become quite passionate about it. Encounters with the directors of the series make for more interesting anecdotes.
Stuck in the queue of a Melville takeaway, director Robbie Thorpe, who is booked to direct the episode on prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, says: ”Don’t give the plot away – it’s got to be a surprise otherwise the whole thing will be a fuck up.”
Later, in an interview he speaks about the difficulty of presenting a rounded picture of a leader like Verwoerd, one who is readily denounced for his negative role in history.
”The test of reconciliation is to be able to palate the person with the most obnoxious views,” he says. ”In a way, what the series is doing is testing the concept. We’re going to test your beliefs by giving him (Verwoerd) a strong case.”
In others, like the Lord Kitchener episode that investigates the British concentration camps, historical photographs will be used as courtroom exhibits. Director Minky Schlesinger says, ”We’re getting Kitchener to come to court to justify this: why did he put women and blacks into concentration camps?
”Presently there’s a lot of interest in making the British apologise for Kitchener and what he did. Britain has refused. I’ve got pictures of emaciated children that look like they come out of Buchenwald. My episode can demonstrate how the British laid the grounds for apartheid. It’s not a show and tell. It has to have a popular element.”
It is this element that could place the series in a prime time slot when it is aired in mid-1999. Satire, actuality, tragedy, violence and political intrigue could all combine to offer viewers the magical element that kept millions glued to their televisions during the OJ Simpson trial.
With some of the country’s finest actors in the leading roles – Sean Taylor as Kitchener, Bill Curry as Dingaan’s defence counsel, Dawid Minnaar as a disciple of Verwoerd – the opposing forces of our disparate history will rise again. And, as with all good therapy, burning issues could be resolved.