Part II: Zef/Poor White Kitsch Chique: Die Antwoord's Comedy of Degradation

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Acknowledgements

An earlier draft of this chapter was presented as a paper at Performance Studies International #16 (Camillo 2), an international conference held in Utrecht, the Netherlands from May 25–29, 2011. A longer version of it is due to appear in the book Performative Trans-Actions: Innovation, Creativity & Enterprise in African Theatre, edited by Kene Igweonu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012.

Notes

²² Afrikaans: “whatever.”

²³ Antwoord, “Enter The Ninja (Official),” YouTube video.

²⁴ Archbishop Desmond Tutu is generally credited with having first described South Africa as a “Rainbow Nation.”

²⁵ News24, “Interview with Die Antwoord.”

²⁶ Ballantine, “Re-thinking ‘Whiteness’?,” 105.

²⁷ The name means “free as a bird” and also has connotations to being an “outlaw.”

²⁸ See Marx and Milton, “Bastardised Whiteness,” 735.

²⁹ Melissa Steyn notes that the “early settlers of mixed European, though primarily Dutch, ancestry unified in a common identification as Afrikaners, people of Africa, and retained little actual or sentimental attachment to their European homelands” (“Rehabilitating a Whiteness Disgraced,” 148). The exclusive ethnic definition of an Afrikaner “volk” reinforced by the Nationalist Apartheid government has become problematized in the New South Africa by attempts to extend the categorisation of “Afrikaners” to include all speakers of the Afrikaans language (an indigenous creolised version of Dutch), which include many coloured (or “Brown”) people.

³⁰ Vestergaard, “Who's Got the Map?,” 19.

³¹ Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa.

³² Steyn, “Rehabilitating a Whiteness Disgraced,” 147.

³³ Ibid., 150.

³⁴ Vestergaard, “Who's Got the Map?,” 19.

³⁵ Reuters, “Growing Number of Poor White South Africans.”

³⁶ Vestergaard, “Who's Got the Map?,” 21.

³⁷ Gordon (“Apartheid's Anthropologists,” 537) writes that during the formation of the Nationalist government in 1948, “The issue that dominated Afrikaner intellectual life was that of the (largely Afrikaner) poor whites. A series of factors ranging from ecological catastrophes, the ravages of the Anglo-Boer War and the Depression had served to push the number of poor, if not destitute, whites up from 106,000 in 1921 to 300,000 in 1933 (Adam and Giliomee, The Rise and Crisis of Afrikaner Power, 150).”

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Caravan parks are the South African equivalent of American trailer parks.

⁴⁰ Du Preez, “Die Antwoord Gooi,” 102.

⁴¹ Afrikaans: fuck, pussy, fuck, cunt.

⁴² Die Antwoord, “Zef Side (Official),” YouTube video.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Marx and Milton, “Bastardised Whiteness,” 738.

⁴⁵ Steyn, “Rehabilitating a Whiteness Disgraced,” 148.

⁴⁶ Gordon, “Apartheid's Anthropologists,” 537.

⁴⁷ Saul Dubow notes that for Geoff Cronje, a Pretoria University professor of sociology who helped to disseminate Apartheid as a sociological necessity, the notion “that poorer whites are particularly vulnerable to racial intermixture remain[ed] a constant focus of anxiety” (“Afrikaner Nationalism,” 229).

⁴⁸ For example, one of the major Afrikaner holidays during the National Party rule was the Day of the Covenant, which celebrated the victory of a small group of pioneering Voortrekkers over a Zulu army numbering more than 10,000. Today, the holiday has been renamed “Reconciliation Day” and the memorial at the site of the battle mourns the loss of the 3000 Zulu warriors. Similarly, Vestergaard points out the some of the many symbols which have changed or been reinterpreted in the new dispensation: “The national anthem was an Afrikaner anthem; the flag was an Afrikaner flag. The streets were named after heroes from nationalist Afrikaner history, and airports and dams bore the names of Afrikaner politicians” (“Who's Got the Map?,” 24). All of these have changed since 1994.

⁴⁹  www.watkykjy.co.za

⁵⁰ See comments on web pages by Gittins, “Die Antwoord – Review,” Gabe, “Die Antwoord Is ‘Fake’,” and Reddit, “Die Antwoord's Ninja.”

⁵¹ Sonar, “Concerts and DJ's 2011.”

⁵² From the comments page of “Enter the Ninja,” YouTube.

⁵³ It seems ironic that the medium which formerly defined the mass media (television) has in this instance been the most limiting form. It is highly unlikely that anybody outside of South Africa has so much as heard of the Zef television series Kompleks. However, after building up a following over a decade, the stage show The Most Amazing Show and Zef musician Jack Parow have performed in Europe and Die Antwoord are currently embarking on their second world tour.

⁵⁴ Ballantine, “Re-thinking ‘Whiteness’?,” 106.

⁵⁵ As Brendan Jury says: “parody and pastiche give the alternative musicians [in South Africa] a vehicle for adopting new resistant identities in a re-negotiation of self-definition.” (Jury, “Boys to Men,” 102).

⁵⁶ Vestergaard, “Who's Got the Map?,” 35.

⁵⁷ Gordon, “Apartheid's Anthropologists,” 549.

⁵⁸ Du Preez, “Die Antwoord Gooi,” 107.

⁵⁹ The Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk was famously parodied in the naming of Johannes Kerkorrel's “Gereformeerde Blues Band.”

⁶⁰ Marx and Milton, “Bastardised Whiteness,” 743.

⁶¹ “In contrast to the explicit political ideological stance of … the alternative movements that went before [Die Antwoord] are not overtly political and do not attempt to make openly ideological statements … there is an almost banal, nihilist notion, denying boundaries and celebrating a hybrid identity that resists being named (or compartmentalised)” (Marx and Milton, “Bastardised Whiteness,” 734).

⁶² Die Antwoord, “Zef Side (Official),” YouTube video.