Representations of crime, power and social decay in the South African post-colony in the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (2008)
Khan, Khatija
The film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, released on August 29, 2008,
decries the proliferation of crime, violence and social decay in the South African
post-colony. The aim of this article is to interrogate the banality in the use of
violence and power in the South African post-colony. The filmic narratives of
Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema reveal that behind the ‘rainbow’ façade
presented by South Africa, one encounters festering poverty in ‘non-white’
communities, racial acrimony, broken promises, social and class struggles, and
tales of betrayal of the majority of black people by the elite black leadership
which now sit comfortably in the seats vacated by their former colonisers. An
analysis of the narratives of the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema permits
one 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 interpretation
is further questioned in the film which shows that, after apartheid, the nationalist
leadership encouraged a negative culture of entitlement. The irony in the film
is that the masses are also tainted in so far as they commit crimes against
other ordinary people and refuse to take responsibility or, rather in an escapist
way, blame all the woes of the post-colony on apartheid. Thus, the narratives
of Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema beg the question: What is going wrong
with the dream of democracy for all, irrespective of race, that was the founding
principle of the new nation?
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