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From Matieland to Mother City: Landscape, Identity and Place in Feature Films Set in the Cape Province, 1947-1989.”

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From Matieland to Mother City: Landscape, Identity and Place in Feature Films Set in the Cape Province, 1947-1989.” “FROM MATIELAND TO MOTHER CITY: LANDSCAPE, IDENTITY AND PLACE IN FEATURE FILMS SET IN THE CAPE PROVINCE, 1947-1989.” EUSTACIA JEANNE RILEY Thesis Presented for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Historical Studies UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN December 2012 Supervisor: Vivian Bickford-Smith Table of Contents Abstract v Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 The Cape apartheid landscape on film 4 2 Significance and literature review 9 3 Methodology 16 3.1 Films as primary sources 16 3.2 A critical visual methodology 19 4 Thesis structure and chapter outline 21 Chapter 1: Foundational Cape landscapes in Afrikaans feature films, 1947- 1958 25 Introduction 25 Context 27 1 Afrikaner nationalism and identity in the rural Cape: Simon Beyers, Hans die Skipper and Matieland 32 1.1 Simon Beyers (1947) 34 1.2 Hans die Skipper (1953) 41 1.3 Matieland (1955) 52 2 The Mother City as a scenic metropolitan destination and military hub: Fratse in die Vloot 60 Conclusion 66 Chapter 2: Mother city/metropolis: representations of the Cape Town land- and cityscape in feature films of the 1960s 69 Introduction 69 Context 70 1 Picturesque Cape Town 76 1.1 The exotic picturesque 87 1.2 The anti-picturesque 90 1.3 A picturesque for Afrikaners 94 2 Metropolis of Tomorrow 97 2.1 Cold War modernity 102 i Conclusion 108 Chapter 3: "Just a bowl of cherries”: representations of landscape and Afrikaner identity in feature films made in the Cape Province in the 1970s 111 Introduction 111 Context 112 1 A brief survey of 1970s film landscapes 118 2 Picturesque topographies and privileged views 124 3 Local landscape and local gazes 129 4 Apartheid landscapes 134 5 World opinion and foreign threat 137 6 Insiders 142 7 Good Afrikaners, new Afrikaners 146 Conclusion 155 Chapter 4: The dark side of the Cape landscape: social realism, subjectivity and sense of place in four films by Jans Rautenbach and Ross Devenish, 1969-1979 159 Introduction 159 Context 161 1 Substantive landscapes and divergent senses of place 164 2 Rautenbach’s subjective Cape landscapes 165 2.1 Truth and naturalism 165 2.2 The Picturesque and the Romantic in Katrina 167 2.3 Country and City 169 2.4 The Cape as coloured place 175 2.5 The Cape as Afrikaner place 181 3 Social realism and the anti-picturesque in Devenish and Fugard’s films 185 3.1 The documentary effect 185 3.2 Rootedness, locality and sense of place 188 3.3 The politics of place 193 Conclusion 200 Chapter 5: “Beautiful country”: Afrikaners, coloureds and the representation of the Cape in feature films, 1984-1989 203 Introduction 203 ii Context 204 1 Jans Rautenbach’s Broer Matie 208 1.1 “Volkies” and baasskap in Broer Matie 210 2 Broer Matie’s representation of landscape 218 2.1 Complicating the pastoral mode 218 2.2 The indigenous landscape 221 3 Fiela se Kind 225 3.1 Fiela se Kind’s pastoral and indigenous landscapes 226 3.2 Indigenous Afrikaans and brown Afrikaners 230 4 Jobman 233 4.1 Jobman and politics 233 4.2 Coloured people and Afrikaners in Jobman 234 4.3 Landscape in Jobman 237 Conclusion 241 Conclusion 245 Bibliography 255 Appendix 1: Filmography, 1947-1989 285 Appendix 2: Interviews with directors 290 Interview 1: Jans Rautenbach 290 Interview 2: Ross Devenish 312 Interview 3: Katinka Heyns 324 Interview 4: Darrell Roodt 327 iii Abstract This thesis analyses the representation of landscape, place and identity in films set in the Cape between 1947 and 1989. These films are products of a “white”, largely state-subsidised film industry, although they include a small number of independent, “alternative” films. A critical reading of these cinematic “apartheid landscapes” provides evidence of the historical context, discourses and values informing their production, as well as the construction and transformation of place and identity in apartheid South Africa. The Cape is an important symbolic landscape, historically associated with the origins of Afrikanerdom and the white South African nation. In film, Cape landscapes (urban and rural) are represented as either picturesque and pastoral or dystopian and anti-pastoral. Over the period discussed, a shift occurs from the former – idealised landscapes, appearing in largely state- subsidised, “apolitical”, escapist films – to the latter: social-realist landscapes, documenting repression, poverty and racial inequality, appearing in more critical, usually independent films that were influenced by the global anti- apartheid movement of the 1970s and 80s. By analysing film landscapes from the whole period, this thesis demonstrates how the representation of the Cape changed over time, mirroring national social, political and ideological changes. These include changes in the representation of Afrikaner nationalism, Afrikaner identity, the “Cape coloured” and the Cape as place. This thesis is the first in-depth study of the visual representation of the Cape on film, analysing it in the frameworks of film and landscape studies, film and history, and the aesthetic history of the region. This cross- disciplinary perspective demonstrates the links between popular film and state ideology. It also reveals how cinematic landscape conveys information about ordinary people in apartheid South Africa: their tastes, attitudes, and senses of identity and place. v Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people and organisations: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their funding support; My supervisor Vivian Bickford-Smith for his vast knowledge and constant encouragement and guidance; Nigel Worden for administrative support and writing assistance during an important period in my PhD; Henrietta Rose-Innes, Terry Adams and Janine Dunlop for their professional expertise, friendship and practical assistance; The librarians and archivists at the various institutions I used in my researches; My friends in South Africa and the USA for their enthusiasm and encouragement; Veronica and Catherine Buckingham, my mother and sister, for their love, support and research assistance; Konrad Scheffler, my husband, who got me started and kept me going until the end. vii Introduction This dissertation analyses landscape in a range of “white films” made in the Cape Province during the apartheid era.1 Most are commercial, state-subsidised productions, although a small number of alternative, artistic or even oppositional films are discussed. These films reflect the interests of power and the unequal social and political power relations of the period.2 They portray “territorial identity” in the apartheid landscape, mostly naturalising it through the spatial regulation or erasure of black characters and the confirmation of privileged white, Afrikaner or tourist spaces – thus reinforcing, however covertly, apartheid ideas of separate identity.3, 4 This tendency is particularly clear in the “A-scheme” films, which were made under the restrictive state subsidy scheme introduced in 1956.5 These films also reflect common perceptions of the time. As “everyday” entertainments, examples of popular visual culture rather than the grand narratives of nation favoured in South African film histories, commercial fiction films offer insight into the construction of popular culture and identity. These films entertained ordinary, white, largely Afrikaner cinemagoers, reflected their tastes and concerns and spoke to their aspirations and material actuality.6 These films’ often complex landscapes represent physical environments as well as 1. The region called the Cape Province during this period incorporated what are now the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape provinces. “White films” were made by and for white, largely Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. 2. G. Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2001), 69-70. 3. While race, class and culture are the most studied identities, it is “impossible to understand contemporary South Africa” without acknowledging sense of place, i.e. territorial identity. S. Bekker, Reflections on Identity in Four African Cities, eds S. Bekker and A. Leildé (Stellenbosch: African Minds, 2006), 1-8. 4. The term “Afrikaner” was first used to designate whites in the 18th century (along with “burgher”, “Christian”, “Boer” and “Dutchmen”). Between 1652 and 1875, the term “burgher” was used for a Dutch or Afrikaans-speaking white person; after 1875 this became “Afrikaner”. H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2003), xix. 5. The scheme enforced language and ideological restrictions and ensured commercial film’s dependence on government. 6. Scholarship on Afrikaner identity underpinned this aspect of the project, including: A. Grundlingh, “The Politics of the Past and of Popular Pursuits in the Construction of Everyday Afrikaner Nationalism”, in South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities, eds S. Dubow and A. Jeeves (Cape Town, Double Storey, 2005), 192; A. Grundlingh, “‘Are We Afrikaners Getting Too Rich?’ Cornucopia and Change in Afrikanerdom in the 1960s”, Journal of Historical Sociology 21 no. 2/3 (June/September 2008), 145; A. Grundlingh, “Chapter 3 - Afrikaner Nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s”, SA History Online, accessed 25 Sept. 2012: http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-3-afrikaner-nationalism-1930s-and-1940s. See also H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners; H. Adam and H. Giliomee, The Rise and Crisis of Afrikaner Power (Cape Town & New Haven & London: David Philip & Yale University Press), 1979. 1 prevailing material, social, political and cultural conditions. Thus even the most superficial
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