‘Gangsters by the Bioscope’: South African Indian Cinemas as Spaces of Becoming during Early Apartheid

ABSTRACT

From the 1940s to the 1960s, South African Indians encountered new cinema spaces opening in their ghettoes in Durban and Johannesburg. Cinemas afforded working-class people an experience of luxury, a sense of a public, and a taste of opportunity and glamour. As part of the negotiation of new diasporic and hybrid identities during early apartheid, cinema played a constitutive role in the reshaping of selves. A balancing act of ‘traditional’ (Indian) and ‘modern’ (Western/South African) cultural elements was required in this reconstruction. Old parts of self had to be at least partially forgotten and new parts assimilated to deal with new conditions. Cinematic identification and the self-fashioning of identity facilitated a reimagining of identity formation as an ‘assemblage’ – a playing out or testing of various new ‘roles’ and positions alongside old ones. One of these new roles was an aggressive Indian ‘gangster’ masculinity, informed by prevailing national conditions and transnational cinematic gangster tropes. Not only did gangsters learn ‘moves’ from the movies, they were also energised by and profited from the movie houses themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• South African Indian cinemas
• identity
• apartheid
• gangsters
• identification
• cosmopolitanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 D. Heatlie, ‘“They Stood Their Ground!”: Professional Gangsters in South African Indian Society, 1940–1970’ (PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2019).

2 J. Desai, ‘Bollywood Abroad: South Asian Diasporic Cosmopolitanism and Indian Cinema’, in G. Rajan and S. Sharma, eds, New Cosmopolitanisms: South Asians in the US (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 116.

3 Interview with M. S., 5 July 2016, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

4 Interview with C. Mistry, 15 February 2016, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

5 B. Freund, Insiders and Outsiders: The Indian Working Class of Durban, 1910–1990 (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 1995), 10.

6 N. Coppen, ‘The Last Picture Show’, Neilcoppen.com (blog), 22 September 2008, https://neilcoppen.com/2008/09/22/the-last-picture-show/, accessed 5 December 2017.

7 Ibid.

8 V. Jagarnath, ‘Indian Cinema in Durban: Urban Segregation, Business and Visions of Identity from the 1950s to the 1970s’, Occasional Paper 22 (2014), 166, https://ojs.ruc.dk/index.php/ocpa/article/view/3808.

9 F. Meer and E.S. Reddy, ‘Passive Resistance 1946 – A Selection of Documents. Part 4 Special Focus: Wrangling between Political Groups –1947’, South African History Online, 23 May 2011, http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/passive-resistance-1946-selection-documents-compiled-es-reddy-fatima-meer, accessed 13 June 2018.

10 Coppen, ‘The Last Picture Show’.

11 A. Shepperson and K. Tomaselli, ‘South African Cinema Beyond Apartheid: Affirmative Action in Distribution and Storytelling’, Social Identities 6, 3 (2000), 327.

12 Interview with Y. ‘Chommie’ Saloojee, 5 October 2015, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

13 Jagarnath, ‘Indian Cinema in Durban’, 165.

14 Mistry remembers in the 1950s ‘we used to see a lot of Hindi movies – only Hindi movies. Now and then we used to go for a movie of Hollywood.’ Interview with Mistry.

15 Jagarnath, ‘Indian Cinema in Durban’, 167–170.

16 Interview with K. Rajab, 21 November 2017, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

17 Heatlie, ‘They Stood Their Ground!’, 13.

18 Jagarnath, ‘Indian Cinema in Durban’. 167–170.

19 D. K. Sharda, ‘India’s Fabulous Film Industry’, Drum, June 1955, 46.

20 ‘Key Sites: Cinemas,’ South African History Online, https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/key-sites, accessed 23 November 2017.

21 S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947–1987 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011).

22 P. Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

23 Heatlie, ‘They Stood Their Ground!’, 15–20.

24 Sharda, ‘India’s Fabulous Film Industry’, 46.

25 Ibid., 47.

26 Ibid.

27 Interview with Mistry conducted in Johannesburg.

28 Interview with M. Rajab, 31 January 2018, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

29 Interview with Saloojee conducted in Johannesburg.

30 L. Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in C. Penley, ed., Feminism and Film Theory (New York: Routledge, 2013), 803–816.

31 L. Mulvey, ‘Afterthoughts on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Inspired by Duel in the Sun’, in C. Penley, ed., Feminism and Film Theory (New York: Routledge, 2013), 69.

32 Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 59.

33 Ibid., 60.

34 Ibid., 63.

35 K. Tomaselli and A. Shepperson, ‘Mirror Communities and Straw Individualisms: Essentialism, Cinema and Semiotic Analysis’, Journal of African Cinemas 3, 1 (2011), 13.

36 b. hooks, ‘The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators’, in J. Belton, ed., Movies and Mass Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 249–258.

37 Ibid., 254.

38 J. Martin and K. Govender, ‘“Indenturing the Body”: Traditional Masculine Role Norms, Body Image Discrepancy, and Muscularity in a Sample of South African Indian Boys’, Culture, Society and Masculinities, 5, 1 (2013), 24.

39 A. Appadurai, ‘Cosmopolitanism from Below: Some Ethical Lessons from the Slumbs of Mumbai’, Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism: Salon 4 (2011), https://web.archive.org/web/20160414163946/http://jwtc.org.za/volume_4/arjun_appadurai.htm, accessed 17 September 2023.

40 H. Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, October 28 (1984), 125–133.

41 Appadurai, ‘Cosmopolitanism from Below’.

42 Sharda, ‘India’s Fabulous Film Industry’, 46.

43 ‘Inside India’s Hollywood’, Drum, May 1959, 26.

44 Ibid.

45 I was lucky enough to meet the late Sam ‘Mr Lucky’ Naidoo through his friend and writer, Aziz Hassim, over a decade ago. He was still involved in some way with the cinema industry and we edited some of his archive film footage into the documentary film I produced, Legends of the Casbah, in 2012.

46 ‘Mr Lucky’, Drum, February 1964, 18.

47 Ibid., 17.

48 G. R. Naidoo, ‘The Fabulous Rajabs’, Drum, January 1962, 14–17.

49 Ibid., 14.

50 Ibid., 17.

51 ‘It’s Mamoo’s Empire Now’, Drum, December 1973, 12.

52 G. R. Naidoo, ‘The Millionaire Touch’, Drum, February 1962, 67.

53 Jagarnath, ‘Indian Cinema in Durban’, 168.

54 Ibid., 169.

55 Coppen, ‘The Last Picture Show’, n.p.

56 Jagarnath, ‘Indian Cinema in Durban’, 168–169.

57 L. Lau and A. Mendes, eds, Re-Orientalism and South Asian Identity Politics (London: Routledge, 2012), 3.

58 Heatlie, ‘They Stood Their Ground!’, 120–137.

59 A. Hassim, The Lotus People (Johannesburg: Real African Publishers, 2002).

60 Ibid., 179.

61 Hassim, The Lotus People, 179–180.

62 Interview with Rajab conducted in Johannesburg.

63 Hassim, The Lotus People, 201.

64 Interview with J. P., 2015, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

65 Ibid, 16 Oct 2015.

66 Interview with Rajab conducted in Johannesburg.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 M., ‘The Gruesome Inside Secrets of the Globe Gang’, Drum, April 1954, 46.

70 ‘Gang War Crisis!’, Drum, November 1952, 17.

71 Interview with E. P., 30 Mar 2017, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

72 J. Mayet, ‘It Was the Party That Went with a Swing … ’, Drum, September 1964, 39.

73 ‘The Power of Old Man Y’, Drum, June 1971, 21.

74 ‘The Battle of Bullet Corner – Old Man Y: Part III’, Drum, August 1971, 59.

75 ‘Gangat’s Bid for Power – The Life of a Gangster Part II’, Drum, April 1964, 55.

76 Interview with E. P conducted in Johannesburg.

77 Interview with M. ‘Mac’ Carim, 6 Dec 2017, audio recording conducted in Johannesburg.

78 M. Carim, Coolie, Come Out and Fight! (Johannesburg: Porcupine Press, 2013).

79 N. Tolsi, ‘When Movies Still Had Magic’, Mail and Guardian Online, 26 July 2009, https://mg.co.za/article/2009-07-26-when-movies-still-had-magic/, accessed 29 July 2017.

80 Old Man Kajee, ‘My Life in the Underworld: III’, Drum, August 1953, 15.

81 Interview with M. S.

82 J. Schadeberg, ed., The Fifties People of South Africa (Johannesburg: Bailey’s African Photo Archives, 1987), 208.

83 Interview with Saloojee conducted in Johannesburg.

84 Ibid.

85 D. Hancroft, ‘Crimson League: A Name That Spells Terror to Thousands’, Drum, January 1953, 15.

86 ‘Goolam Gangat – The Life of a Gangster’, Drum, March 1964, 24.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Damon Heatlie

Damon Heatlie is a Senior Lecturer at Wits Film and Television at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). He has also taught at the Universities of Cape Town, the Western Cape, and Transkei. He has guest lectured at Arcada University (Helsinki) and Valand Academy (University of Gothenburg). He has an MA in Literary Studies (cum laude) from the University of Cape Town, an MBA from the Wits Business School, and completed a PhD undertaken at Wits and the University of East Anglia. His doctoral thesis comprised a feature film screenplay and research on South African Indian gangsters during early apartheid.