Title: The Gods Must Be Crazy
Director: Jamie Uys
Year of Release: 1980
Language: English, !Xun, Afrikaans.
Run time: 109 minutes.
“It was unfair of the gods to make him throw it off the earth. In fact, he began to doubt whether they really were gods!”
By the 1970s, most of Africa was under independent rule with leadership that reflected the racial demographic realities of the people. A notable exception was South Africa which was under apartheid rule along with its colony, Namibia. Due to the discriminatory regime of apartheid, the film industries in these countries were dominated by white minorities who excluded the indigenous population from the process of filmmaking, and many of the films that were made under this regime turned out to be propaganda. Naturally, these films received very little attention outside their countries of origin, so it came as a shock when Jamie Uys’ 1980s film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, became an international hit.
The film follows Xi, a member of the San tribe who dwell in the Kalahari Desert, as he attempts to discard of a strange evil object (a Coca-Cola bottle) which has sent his usually peaceful clan into conflict. On his quest, he encounters Andrew Steyn, a bumbling white man who is researching the animals in the Kalahari and is enamoured of the newly arrived schoolteacher, Kate Thompson. When Kate and her pupils are captured by a gang of rebels, Andrew and Xi join forces to rescue them, combining their modern and primitive skills to comedic effect.
On the surface, the film is a thoroughly entertaining gem riddled with memorable slapstick sequences that are sure to rouse bouts of stomach-hurting laughter from the audience. Andrew’s sudden loss of intelligence whenever he is in the presence of Kate, Xi’s fish out of water interactions with civilisation, and the incompetence of the rebel fighters all make for a hilarious viewing, but when one situates the film in the realities of the period, the cracks begin to show.
The major points of question relate to the involvement of the apartheid regime in the making of the film as well as the condescending portrayal of the San tribe on screen. At interviews during the film’s run, Uys usually dismissed these issues, maintaining that his film was a pure comedy with no political subtleties. But how true was this?
APARTHEID
As one of the last blatant expressions of the racist imperialism that dominated the 20th century, apartheid was such a cause of global shame and very few outside South Africa and Namibia wished to be associated with it. Conscious of this fact, the makers of the film attempted to conceal the involvement of the two countries as much as possible. Thus, although it was written, directed, produced, and edited by Jamie Uys, a white south African, features mostly South African actors, and was filmed partly in South Africa and Namibia, the film was marketed as Botswanan. The apartheid government did not oppose this strategy even though the film was financed by a subsidy program initiated by the apartheid government.
Of course, the entire fact of apartheid is ignored throughout the film, and unfamiliar viewers get the picture that the whites and the indigenous people interact freely and live joyfully with one another, enjoying all the non-negotiable liberties of modern political society. The apartheid laws that excluded the indigenous people from public places, seeking education, exploring romantic relationships with whites, political involvement, and so many other freedoms are conveniently ignored, but certain elements of the film appear to mock the struggle against the regime. Most notably, the portrayal of the rebel forces as incompetent communist puppets who would kidnap helpless women and children and intend to seize power for nefarious reasons was an obvious jab at the efforts of the many freedom fighters that had the guts to act against the apartheid regime.
The film’s apartheid flavour was the main cause of calls to boycott the film during its international run in the United States, but the filmmakers’ strategy of concealing the film’s connections to the regime helped mitigate these agitations. When asked about apartheid in South Africa during an interview in the US, Jamie Uys replied that it was a “mess” but added that dismantling apartheid would be “very complicated”.
UNFAIR PORTRAYAL OF THE SAN PEOPLE
Contrary to the portrayal of the San people as ‘Bushmen’ who had no contact with civilisation and lived off the land, they were actually a tribe that were experiencing an unpleasant interaction with the apartheid government who had hoarded them into a homeland called Bushmanland. The practice of isolating black tribes into homelands was an apartheid tactic to racially segregate the black population from the whites.
To make his film more appealing (and also to conceal the evils of apartheid), Uys claimed that he scoured the Kalahari looking for the perfect ‘bushman’ to take on the role of Xi. He claimed that when he found N!xao, he was only the second or third white man to interact with him. Uys also claimed that N!xao did not grasp the concept of acting as a job since the San people had no word for work, and he further went on to say that N!xao was so confused by the cash payment of three hundred dollars that he let the money blow away with the wind, having no use for money.
In truth, N!xao was not only familiar with the concept of work and money, but he was already employed as a cook in a school in his homeland and had been previously working as a herder. Three hundred dollars was four months’ worth of payment at his job, and it is unlikely that N!xao would have let such an amount just ‘blow away’.
The documentary style with which Uys chose to introduce and document the lives of the San was a deliberate attempt to present the scenes on screen as authentic, making the audience believe that the San were noble savages who belonged in the desert, far away from civilisation. While the !Xun language spoken by the San people contains distinct clicking sounds, it is alleged that Uys deliberately included additional clicks for comical effect and to make the San people sound more exotic. N!xao, in a 1991 interview, stated that he was ashamed by the fact that he had to wear loin cloth and act as a ‘bushman’ in front of so many people, clearly contradicting Uys’ claim that N!xao was in his natural element on screen.
One would question why Uys would concoct these false narratives about an entire people if he intended his film to be an innocent comedy. To appreciate Uys’ conduct, it is important to consider his background as a filmmaker.
JAMIE UYS: THE FILMMAKER
Uys was originally a math teacher who realised very quickly that he was meant to be doing something else with his life. When he discovered filmmaking, one of his first short films starred himself as a bumbling farmer who had to drive a brakeless car to pick up a schoolteacher. This plotline was expanded in The God’s Must Be Crazy.
As Uys’ career developed, he began to make films that were successful in South Africa. Although Uys made mostly comedies and claimed to be uninterested in having any message in his films, there were obvious undertones that one would discover upon reflection on these films. While it has been argued that, as a white man, Uys could not possibly make films featuring the indigenous population that would not be offensive in one way or the other, this argument is defeated by the fact that some celebrated films of African cinema have been made by white men and women. Most notably, Ingrid Sinclair’s Flame (1996) navigates the story of women freedom fighters with so much heart and consciousness that it remains celebrated till today.
Unlike Sinclair, Uys did not care too much about accurate representation of his subjects. He cared about producing his films more than anything else, and it was unfortunate, since he had shown signs of conscious filmmaking at certain points in his career. Particularly, his 1964 film, Dingaka, contains some pivotal scenes that unmistakably infer that black South Africans would not receive fair trials from the justice system. However, the film makes no mention of apartheid and depicts unrealistic interactions between the indigenous people and the white population which would have been criminal under apartheid.
Before Dingaka, Uys had made The Condemned are Happy (1958), a propaganda film financed by the apartheid government which portrayed the forced removals under apartheid as a scheme which the oppressed black South Africans not only benefited from but happily welcomed.
Thus, it is difficult to believe Uys’ statement that The God’s Must Be Crazy was an innocent comedy without political complexion. While he may not have set out to make a propaganda film, his reckless misrepresentation of an entire culture for the sake of comedy is ignorant at best (and despicable at worst).
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The God’s Must be Crazy was released to critical acclaim and broke box office records in South Africa. During its international run, it gained popularity around the world, even becoming one of the highest grossing films in Japan in 1982 (under the title Bushman). It also managed to break into the US market, playing for months in many theatres. By the end of its theatrical run, it had earned approximately sixty million dollars, almost twelve times its reported budget. The film remains one of the most fondly remembered film on the continent and is easily accessible on the internet. However, if one ever gets the opportunity to view it, please do so with a consciousness of the harsher realities that prevailed when the film was made.
