Not to be confused with Malcolm Purkey’s theatre piece of the same name, Sophiatown is a documentary about the Johannesburg suburb that was destroyed by the apartheid government in the late 1950s. It was destroyed because it was an area of the city in which people of colour had freehold rights to their properties. It was also an oasis of transracial contact, as well as a hothouse of jazz and crime. Later Sophiatown came to represent a kind of golden age in South Africa’s history — a moment in which the non-racial future could be glimpsed. Of course it also stood as a symbol of the sheer destructiveness of apartheid.
British director Pascale Lamche’s documentary takes us back to those heady days, drawing on the memories of many who experienced the Sophiatown of the 1950s, and revolving around a recent reunion concert in Sophiatown itself. We have the stars who began back in the Sof’town days (Hugh Masekela, Dolly Rathebe, Dorothy Masuka and others) performing and telling their stories of the time; we even have, briefly, Nelson Mandela himself to explain why Sophiatown was historically and culturally important. The only person conspicuous by her absence from both the reminiscences and the reunion concert is Miriam Makeba, though she is present in a clip from the 1950s.
The elements of the documentary are skilfully, touchingly and often humorously woven together. Sophiatown moves swiftly between the concert and reminiscences of the old days, all powered by that extraordinary music, still flowing from people now half a century older than they were when Sophiatown was pulled down. Lamche even finds a couple of gangsters from back then to return to the site (now Sophiatown again, having been renamed Triomf after the demolition) and have a look around at what used to be their stomping grounds. This, along with some other details mentioned by the participants, reminds one that all was not entirely rosy in what was, for all its vitality and glamour, essentially a crime-ridden slum.
Woven into the texture of Sophiatown, too, is what seems to be documentary footage from the 1950s, including a shebeen scene with Can Themba and others having a chat before Makeba comes in to sing a song. We are not told so, but this is an excerpt from Lionel Rogosin’s movie Come Back, Africa. While Rogosin used a semi-documentary method and style to create a picture of what life was, for black people especially, in the South Africa of the 1950s, it is certainly not pure documentary. In a book on the making of the film (just out from STE publishers), Rogosin talks about the difficulty of rehearsing this scene, and how it took several days to shoot. This scene is not acknowledged as a clip from Come Back, Africa in Lamche’s documentary, at least not while the clip is on screen. It may be acknowledged in the credits, but (like an ordinary moviegoer and not like a good critic) I left the theatre before all the credits had rolled.
Then, too (while we’re on the quibbles), there is the presence of poet-raconteur Don Mattera, who speaks eloquently about growing up in the cauldron that was Sophiatown or, as it was also called, Kofifi. He is partly in the film, surely, because he wrote the seminal Kofifi text, Memory Is the Weapon, though that book is not mentioned while he’s on screen.
Perhaps these are not big issues; in the context of this highly enjoyable and informative documentary, they are indeed small, and they in no way cloud one’s appreciation of the whole. I do think, though, that the work that has gone before, the work that underpins and enriches Lamche’s version, could have been acknowledged more prominently. Such an acknowledgement could also help viewers follow up on what they had seen in the movie, if they so desire — a sort of bibliography.
That said, Sophiatown should be seen by all who have an interest in South Africa’s relatively recent past — especially those interested in the way politics and culture were necessarily entwined. Mostly, though, what gives Sophiatown its special flavour is the gritty frankness of its human subjects’ reminiscences, whether it be the admission by one star that she was basically a gangster’s moll, or the confession by another that she actually took a knife to a rival. That is set against the moments of quietly ordinary humanity, such as Masuka’s proud rundown of where she got her different pairs of sunglasses. It’s irrelevant to the story, no doubt, but it makes you smile — and makes you like her more than ever. Or there’s the poignant moment when Rathebe wonders what might have happened had she married Mandela.
All in all, Sophiatown warms the heart. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of Kofifi’s destruction, the movie brings us full circle, and past and present reach rapprochement.