‘A world in creolization’: Inheritance politics and the ambiguities of a ‘very modern tradition’ in two Black South African TV dramas

Abstract

From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) emphasized social engineering policies such as nation building and neo-liberalist policies in their programming that were in line with South Africa’s new political economy. Through a study of two South African drama series, Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, this article will demonstrate how these films drew from the neo-liberal policies and popular culture discourses germane to contemporary creolized cultural processes to construct ‘aspirational’ narratives (as defined by Vundla and McCarthy, producers of Generations and Gaz’ Lam II respectively), that reflect changing economic patterns in post-apartheid African society. Furthermore, the article will demonstrate how these films highlight notions of contemporeinity brought about by the interplay between tradition and modernity, the international world system and the local, and the flow of metropolitan meaning through national culture right up  to that of the most remote backwater villages. The change underpinned by the thematic frontiers of these films is read against the traditional cultural frames of inheritance convention, which in both filmic narratives are signalled by the pivotal use of the genres from the oral/popular discourse.

S.Afr.J.Afr.Lang., 31(2) 2011