Illicit affairs, crimes of passion and political intrigue combine in Love Stories, a new series on SABC3
Lesley Cowling
Love has very little part in the cultural stereotype of what we are as a nation. South Africans are hardly considered the great romantics of the world – after all, we’re driven by political rather than sexual passions, aren’t we?
A new documentary series by Curious Pictures (formerly Mail & Guardian Television) promises to examine this forgotten area of the national psyche.
Six Love Stories – made by five directors – have been gathered from all over the country and from a number of eras. They range from relationships that made headlines – like South Africa’s so- called Bonnie and Clyde couple, Charmaine Phillips and Peter Grundlingh – to a relationship so quietly conducted and hidden that no-one knew it existed.
Predictably, there is a story of love across the colour line and one about a relationship between a political prisoner and his partner on the outside, but these are not the stereotypes they could have become if less intelligently handled.
Producers Harriet Gavshon and David Jammy say they developed the idea at the time of “the great documentary slump”, when local interest in documentaries began to wane.
“We wanted to find ways to continue to tell stories of our history so that they would be popular and interesting to viewers,” says Gavshon.
Gavshon and Jammy went through a long process before deciding on the six stories that are told in Love Stories. It was important to them, firstly, that the story was more than just tragic and sensational, and they turned down some stories where the dramatic events of the couple’s lives outshadowed the relationship itself.
But, on the other hand, “we learnt that a great love story is not necessarily a happy-ever-after story,” says Jammy, and that tragedy and abandonment often accompany great passion.
This is very evident in Charmaine’s Story, the story of Charmaine Phillips and Piet Grundlingh, who murdered four people on the road between Durban and Johannesburg in 1981. Phillips, who was 19 at the time, tried to take the rap for the murders, but the judge didn’t believe her and her lover was hanged for them. She was given a life sentence and is now in Kroonstad prison, where she has trained as a hairdresser and is a sculptor.
In looking at this very tabloid couple, director Sara Blecher has avoided a sensational approach and the story incorporates Phillips’s perspective, rather than simply viewing with an outsider’s eye. It also uses reports, news broadcasts and court transcipts from the time of her trial.
Charmaine’s Story was actually shown a few years ago on Special Assignment, acting as a pilot for the whole series.
Another tragic love that played out in the public eye was the story of beautiful black 1970s model, Bubbles Mpondo, and her white Afrikaans body-builder boyfriend, Jannie Beetge. They were a cause clbre and much featured in Drum magazine.
And it is the chief archivist at the Bailey Archives, Marie Human, who directs their story. Bubbles and Me is told from the point-of-view of Bubbles’s daughter, Jackie Luthuli, and explores her journey of coming to terms with the mother she never knew. It kicks off the series on Tuesday May 30.
The love between Robben Island prisoner Wilton Makwayi and the woman who would become his wife, Irene, is the subject of director Kgomotso Matsunyane’s documentary. The Moon in My Pocket draws much of its fascination from their correspondence of decades, which kept their love alive, and his lyrical and beautiful letters to her.
The Doctor and Mrs M, directed by Sharon Cort, is also about love kept alive by small things. It’s the story of a woman who had a secret affair with a married man for 41 years – almost her entire adult life, and found happiness in it.
White Girl in Search of the Party is a story that dates from the 1940s, about the love of the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants for the dashing South African Communist Party hero, HA Naidoo. Their exile in Hungary and London and Naidoo’s disillusion with the SACP and subsequent isolation is told through the eyes of Pauline Podberry, now living in Cape Town, and the testimony of their daughters and friends.
And finally there’s an indigenous Romeo- and-Juliet story from that land of Romeos and Juliets, KwaZulu-Natal. The Sins of the Father tells the story of one man’s journey to correct a wrong done to his grandparents, who were prevented from marrying in 1909 by a rift between their families. Kgomotso Matsunyane directs.
Love Stories shows on SABC3 every Tuesday at 10pm from May 30