The New Dark Age

118 minutes Genre: Action, Drama

Before I put my signature to the list of well-wishing producers, financiers, actors, film critics and the panel asked by the National Film and Video Foundation to consider Jerusalema for Oscar nomination for yet another inexplicably violent depiction of Africa and Africans, I want to say, that I am aware that it all comes with the territory.

In Jerusalema, the Hollywood spectre almost consumes the narrative of South Africa’s urban cities, as they struggle to combat and overcome the insidious local and foreign sub-culture of criminality, corruption and the usurpation of our social edifices before our very eyes.

The social effects of the tale resonate with my early movie-going experiences. It reminds me, as an impressionable movie ‘fanatic’ during the late 40s and 60s, of the legendary Sophiatown era before the bulldozers razed our homes and the two major cinemas, the Odin and the Picture Palace, known at the time as Balansky. My late mother, Agnes Tinkie Lebakeng, washed and ironed for the Balansky brothers, Abie and Issy.

American, British and a few French movies, became the fare of almost every kid in the ghetto. The bioscopes were our haunts of entertainment and provided sanctuary from the harsh realities of life at the bottom rung of society. We learned and imitated American slang juxtaposed against Britain’s highbrow English and Shakespearean turn of phrases. Just like some of our elders before had done. We listened to jazz, swing and the blues.

We clapped hands and whistled in confused joy and misplaced admiration when the hoods beat up the cops – just like in the Bronx and Harlem. We loved corrupt and crooked lawmen like the one Dana Andrews played in Where the Sidewalk Ends. We hated the straight ones and we chewed gum like Richard Widmark’s ‘Styles’ character in Street with no Name. Our gangs were named after some of the killers in the movies.

And when the blue-coat US cavalry colonizers blasted the so-called hostile ’Red Indians,’ we clapped hands. When white America ridiculed the slaves and the ‘niggers’ in their films, some of us showed no compassion because that was how our parents were being depicted. We hated being African; being black. We hated ourselves for resembling all that degradation. We loved it when the ‘white’ Tarzan flung the barbarian pygmy heathen witchdoctors in the air. We bought jungle knives as big as his, and like him, we shed the blood of our African counterparts. Not all, but many of us.

Obviously, not all were as gullible and impressionable as we were; there were sterling exceptions to that crude rule. But for both good and for the ill, American movies shaped my negative social consciousness and subsequent behavior. Read the late Drum reporter, Bloke Modisane’s uncelebrated autobiography, Blame Me on History for elucidation and veracity.

Jerusalema, the movie, is a sad and colossal glorification of crime, criminality and bloodshed. It is a poignant commentary on our scant regard for human life.

Sadly, for this scribe, the Ziman production offers the thinking and critical mind no moral and compassionate antithetical portrait to the sordid human carnage and social decay displayed in the film – other than the weeping of a church-going mother. The ’foreign’ characters receive fleeting stereotypical treatment – just like some photographs on a wall; no origins, no history; no soul; just money, drugs, women bloodshed and death.

This is a film whose audience at a Sandton, Johannesburg, bioscope (which included my 15-year-old impressionable hip-hop and rap-loving son), gave a rapturous standing ovation to criminal ingenuity and bloodshed – particularly the scene in which two novice car thieves cleverly elude police. The audience also shouted triumphantly when their hero, avenger, Lucky (Rapulana Seiphemo), is seen strolling on a Durban beach without a care in the world ready to start his criminal activities all over again; the cruel and cold stereotypical Afrikaner cop and his face-slapping lackey – and the entire South African police force, beaten yet again. Hooray…

Just crime; just bloodshed; just routine; just South Africa. Bad stuff for kids to ‘emulate’ if you ask me.

‘Great movie, Toppie,’ my son commented as we remained in our seats to read the credits.

For the record, I’m no moralising prude. With a note of shame and remorse, I remember I was once a top-gun city slicker; believe me, I remember. I was there and much of the wrong which I subsequently learnt, became and did, had been largely influenced by the movies. The chances are that there are and will be many more ‘Luckys’ and ‘Nazareths’ out there, waiting to be born.

Finally, and despite the much-vaunted public and private praise and admiration for Jerusalema’s undisputed craft and quality in the crucial areas of production, including great acting by some of the actors, the Ralph Ziman story could well have been lifted from the cold and bloody streets of Chicago, Harlem, the Bronx and the South Boston inner-city ghettos of organised banditry and bloodshed. Who knows, perhaps where Denzel Washington’s American Gangster failed to bag an Oscar, Ralph Ziman’s guts and gore Jerusalema, might just succeed. Thumbs up!

Cast: Rapulana Seiphemo, Jeffrey Zekele, Ronnie Nyakale, Kenneth Nkosi, Shelley Meskin, Robert Hobbs

Director / Writer: Ralph Ziman; Produced by Muti Films.