Representations of crime, power and social decay in the South African post-colony in the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (2008)

摘要

The film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, released on August 29, 2008,decries the proliferation of crime, violence and social decay in the South Africanpost-colony. The aim of this article is to interrogate the banality in the use ofviolence and power in the South African post-colony. The filmic narratives ofGangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema reveal that behind the ‘rainbow’ façadepresented by South Africa, one encounters festering poverty in ‘non-white’communities, racial acrimony, broken promises, social and class struggles, andtales of betrayal of the majority of black people by the elite black leadershipwhich now sit comfortably in the seats vacated by their former colonisers. Ananalysis of the narratives of the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema permitsone to locate apartheid-based economic disparities as still haunting mainly ‘nonwhite’local communities, although some whites have not been spared by the vicious new normal of poverty and the effects of corruption. This interpretationis further questioned in the film which shows that, after apartheid, the nationalistleadership encouraged a negative culture of entitlement. The irony in the filmis that the masses are also tainted in so far as they commit crimes againstother ordinary people and refuse to take responsibility or, rather in an escapistway, blame all the woes of the post-colony on apartheid. Thus, the narrativesof Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema beg the question: What is going wrongwith the dream of democracy for all, irrespective of race, that was the foundingprinciple of the new nation?