SUN ETD - Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing SUN ETD - Theses and Dissertations by Author "Bester, Cornelia Margaretha"

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    The South African Transition and Ideological Disillusionment: Johnny is nie dood nie and Die Seemeeu
    (Stellenbosch University, 2024-12) Bester, Cornelia Margaretha; Mbao, Wamuwi; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    This thesis aims to explore how the South African transition is represented in two films by the Afrikaans filmmaker, Christiaan Olwagen, which is Johnny is nie dood nie (2016) and Die Seemeeu (2018). I am specifically focussing on a constructed version of this transition. This extends the transition further than the accepted end of 1994, after South Africa’s first democratic election, or when the Constitution was instituted in 1996, until after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission since the films in question have this wide range. Furthermore, the films’ focus on specifically Afrikaners’ experience during the transition aim to interrogate how they as Afrikaners is in a precarious position – both exploited by their elders during the apartheid regime which left them traumatised and unable to adjust to the new South Africa after losing their position of privilege, but also guilty for partaking and profiting in apartheid’s oppressive regime. The focus of the thesis is the representation of disillusionment during the South African transition. This is due to how it impacts the characters’ approach to South Africa’s apartheid past and how they reconcile their own complicit actions that was done in the name of the apartheid regime. Another added layer to this disillusionment is the hopelessness felt by the characters during the transition because the lofty promises made by this new democratic regime is revealed to be just as morally suspicious as the previous political order. I used both Johnny is nie dood nie and Die Seemeeu in my analysis, since both represent a different period of South African history. This is done by looking how the Voëlvry Movement, anti-conscription movement and Border War are represented in Johnny is nie dood nie and how it impacts the characters, and how the Performing Arts Councils’ closure led to the creation of a thriving South African theatre after apartheid ended with theatre moving to the arts festivals in Die Seemeeu.