Louis Theroux is a British-American filmmaker. With his nasal vocal accompaniment, anoraky looks, and nonmoral, slouched air, Louis has brought out a good number of edgy documentaries – edge-of-the-mind rather than edge-of-the-seat.  From filming and chatting with prostitutes in their bordellos to venturing into one of America’s more notorious prisons, Theroux’s documentaries have often delivered, the peculair subjects coax you to watch and listen to their pathologies in a way that bemuses rather than shocks.  

Sometime ago Louis went to South Africa to capture the growls of Boer (white) supremacists and nationalists. The bearded men think apartheid was a good thing, they believe white people should be given a separate homeland since the system cannot be brought back, all too willing to reinvent the bantustanisation blacks were subjected to during apartheid.

Louis returned to BBC a couple of weeks ago with two-series documentaries on crime and criminality in two cities. The first city he went to is Philadelphia. In Law and Disorder in Philadelphia, he follows the city’s Police Department as they hunt thieves, drug-peddling ‘soljas,’ illegal gun carriers and so forth. For all the understated dramatic ironies Theroux may have slipped into the piece, one still has the feeling that this is no more than should be expected in a drug-blighted skid-row in an American city.  

I looked forward to seeing the second programme last Sunday; but I could not. This morning I decided to watch it on BBC iplayer. Law and Disorder in Johannesburg is a gripping watch, I mean it grips in the way Saving African Witch-Children still tugs at the heartstrings of anyone who watches it. For its part, Law and Disorder in Johannesburg tugs at the watcher’s sensitivities.

Louis goes to a slum whose birth as the abode of the dispossessed twinned the election of Nelson Mandela as the first black President of the Union of South Africa. Compared with Diepsloot West Township, South West Township (Soweto) - apartheid’s malodorous underbelly - now qualifies as a garden city.

West Diepsloot was conceived as a planned settlement - or township in South African parlance - for about 8,000 people. But over the years it has sprawled into a slumcity, attracting the jobless, the dirt-poor and refugees from neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe. In Diepsloot, crime is rife and there are armies of petty criminals who pick pockets, steal mobile phones, burglarise houses, and these thieves will easily kill to get any of these things.

Louis explores the phenomenon of private security firms who have sprung up as ancillaries to the Police and the courts, both of which are demonstrably dawdly and compromised. William Mavangoni is the local coordinator for a security firm called ‘Mapogo.’ Besides making citizen's arrests of thieves and robbers, William and his men seem to take a lot of pride in protecting their white clients.  Often they use torture and gratuitous beatings - which Mavangoni describes as ‘medicine’ - whenever they catch a ‘suspect.’

A man who had stolen a mobile phone is shown, crushed, bloodied, mute with humiliation, having been thrashed with the sjambok, the well-storied South African leather whip. A white client of William shrugs off such beatings as ‘an African solution to an African problem.’ Read whatever meaning you wish into this, again the import for Africans is clear: In the absence of civility, statutorily secure society, the sanity of legality, the benefit of rights, Africans have become amenable to ‘jungle justice’ and lawlessness. But at last, in the documentary, Mavangoni overreaches and is almost ‘burnt’, after he has threatened to burn someone he calls a criminal. We must remember that South Africa is the originator of that hellish style of lynching suspected criminals, dubbed ‘necklacing,’ a burning car tyre being the necklace.

The documentary-maker forays into downtown Johannesburg - an area named Hillbrow - with members of another security firm, ironically called Bad Boyz. Among other things, this company is combating the Mafia-like landlordism - or is it slumlordism? - of criminal gangs who extort rent from tenants of houses they have hijacked from the real landlords. It is also in the heart of Johannesburg that two most gruesomely boastful criminals I have ever seen are shown. If you did not know it was all for real you would have imagined you were watching grim humour on TV when the two young men were bragging about their crimes. In one of the milder moments during the macabre shoptalk between the fearsome pair, one of them simply declares, ‘I do crime.’ 

And then there is the Nigerian. It transpires after his first brief appearance that a young man who had spoken blandly is a Nigerian. He is described as the ‘Chairman,’ surrounded by several of his ‘boys.’  The Chairman rules over a precinct of downtown Johannesburg. You would not imagine the Nigerian could be anything more than a chairperson of street porters - the sort we have in Lagos, begging to help you carry some baggage - until he is described, possibly with some hype,  as the ‘Nigerian crime boss.’

The Nigerian crime boss is indeed one of the many Nigerian ‘hustlers’ in South Africa that I have heard a lot about. What I find disconcerting about the young man is that he is soft-spoken almost to the point of inarticulacy, he appears easy on the eye and seems camera-shy, deferring to the South African security guy showing the filmmaker around. The South African guide and the Nigerian criminal seem to have struck a rapport, the sort of shifty-eyed mutual respect between lawmen and thieves. But then the Chairman is described as a crime kingpin in the neighbourhood. All the boys that sell drugs and other contrabands belong to him, they all answer to him.

When the documentary-maker asks why the security people do not prevail upon the police to arrest and possibly imprison the Nigerian Chairman, the South African security man replies that some other 5,000 Nigerians are waiting in the wings to take his place. Somewhere in the documentary it is also revealed that most of the mobile phones stolen in the city end up with Nigerians receivers, who would then resell them in the mobile phone black market. 

The appearance of the Nigerian in the film is incidental, but there is also an inevitability about it. We seem to be everywhere these days, trying to make a living every way we can. Of course just as it is likely that a lot of Nigerians will be doing legit work in South Africa - doctors, traders, teachers - it is again inevitable that a fair number will be doing things less than straight. And when it is possible for thousands of Nigerians to take the position of a crime chairman in a corner of Johannesburg at no moment’s notice, it’s quite understandable why it has been difficult to buff up the country’s image.

As for South Africa itself, I hope it gets its act together soon. It will be beyond shame for another country in which white people lately dropped the reins of control to become another Zimbabwe. I don’t see the likelihood of that now. In spite of the odds, South Africa is still a good place to do business. And, on the political scene, we must not forget both Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki gave up power without any fuss. 

 Adebowale Oriku

Robot  # 1 | 15.12.2008 01:04

Louis Theroux is a British-American filmmaker. With his nasal vocal accompaniment, anoraky looks, and nonmoral, slouched air, Louis has brought out a good number of edgy documentaries – edge-of-the-mind rather than edge-of-the-seat. From filming and chatting with prostitutes in their bordellos to venturing into one of America’s more notorious prisons, Theroux’s documentaries have often delivered, the peculair subjects coax you to watch and listen to their pathologies in a way that bemuses rather than shocks. Sometime ago Louis went to South Africa tocapture the growls of Boer (white) supremacists and nationalists. The bearded men think apartheid was a good thing, they believe white people should be given a separate homeland since the system cannot be brought back, all too willing to reinvent the bantustanisation blacks were subjected to during apartheid. Louis returned to BBC a couple of weeks ago with two-series documentaries on cr...Read the full article.

Austin  # 2 | 15.12.2008 07:04

Thanks Oga, for a brilliant stuff. I agree with all your point except for the optimistic part. In my humble opinion, it is inevitable that SA ggoes the way of other 'shabby-modern' African states. Why? Sorry, because all the necessary ingredients are there. Remember what the Yorubas say, "Ile ti a ba fi ito mo, iri ni yio wo". Translated, "A house built on quicksand, will bow to the first strong wind flow". The above does not call for despair though. What it call for is a careful reflection and action. Lets just hope that some people will get it and act.