Paradise lost in Jerusalema                             READ COMPLETE Q & A
By Daniel Dercksen

The dark underbelly of a New South Africa is ripped open with the latest local film Jerusalema, a provocative and haunting journey into an apocalyptic Hillbrow where the hijacking of buildings turns ordinary street criminals into millionaires and profiteering businessmen.

This latest South African film was written and directed by Ralph Ziman, a South African now living in Los Angeles. He was only 18 years old when he joined the SABC as a cameraman.

"I've been involved in one way or another as a filmmaker ever since, first as a cameraman and then I moved to the UK where I did editing and camerawork and I did music videos for about 20 years."

"One of the really important things for me as a director in making the film was to make it as authentic as possible in terms of the language and characters," says Ziman, who desperately wanted to make a film about crime set in contemporary South Africa, an "epic gangster action" film that will challenge conventions and perceptions.

"I heard a story about a guy who had literally hijacked a building in Hillbrow and within a matter of hours 3 000 people moved in. It was reported that he continued his hijacking spree and was making up to R15-25m a month. It was this story that inspired me to tell the tale of my protagonist, Lucky Kunene, who becomes one of the most feared and prominent gangsters in Hillbrow."

As part of his extensive 4-month research, Ziman interviewed many people who were actually involved in the so-called 'hijacking of buildings', and also accompanied Police task forces and the Brixton Flying Squad on weekends to get a feeling of what it is like and what is going.

"Once the cops relax they start telling you stuff," says Ziman, who did not have too many expectations in his search for his story, but was quite surprised to learn how organised these syndications that take over buildings are.

"It really is an operation that has a PR side to it. It has a violent, enforcing side to it.," he says,  "What I found talking to the police as well, is that crime in South Africa is not random crime, but very specific. If you are in your car, and it happens to be hijacked, it's not because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's because somebody was looking for a very specific car. That's what surprised me."

In Jerusalema Ziman describes Johannesburg as a city "fathered by gold, mothered by money and commandeered by white men?"

"That was the idea of Jerusalema, this place where different people claim to have ownership of a land based on different criteria; you can see the one side and see the other side, there doesn't seem to be a happy medium in it."

Ziman's lead character "feels justified to steal because he feels he's been robbed, and he's taking a step to put it right."

"It's not necessarily a sentiment I agree with, but I wanted to understand some of the justifications because you meet people and, whether they rob banks or whatever, people always have their story, and their own story always puts them in the right and explains what they are doing. This was a justification, and I felt it was important to include in the film." 

It is extraordinary to not have a cop out, but to have a character admit his own weakness at the end of the story and say to his own mother that he is not ashamed of what he has done?

"The criminal is unrepentant and feels within his rights to have done what he's done," says Ziman. "I think that is something to understand. It's not necessarily my point of view, but to make crime film in modern day Joburg, you have to try and get into those spaces and hopefully do it well."

In the film Lucky Kunene tells the policeman that "he will never win this war…"  Is this how Ziman sees the New South Africa? As a war zone?

"When I used to drive with the Flying Squad, we'd put together at least three armoured cars, and each car's got three police in it, and each one of them has got a level three armoured vest, which is what you'd wear in Baghdad, and each one of them has got automatic weapons, so it is a little bit like a war zone."

"We'd stage the raid of the building, but anything you see where there's a police vehicle in Hillbrow was real. So we kind of intercut the two and blended them to make them look real. But we'd gone out with cameras and filmed actual police raiding buildings and we chased after them but it was quite difficult, they clearly did not want us to be there. But when they got in they go in combat gear with combat helmets and lots of support, it does feel like a war."

Another powerful statement in the film comes the character of a young white woman (played by Shelly Meskin) whose drug addict brother falls victim to the drug lords and says that: "When you are rich, poverty seems glamorous, it has a certain charm."

"It's that kind of war-tourist idea that people like to go to places like Baghdad or Rwanda," says Ziman.

"I am always amazed. There's tours now of Soweto where tourists can come and check it out."

"I guess I am guilty of it as anything," says Ziman, who remember a trip to the war-torn part of Mozambique, when he was approached by an old man who questioned their motives for being there.

"That always stuck with me and kind of worked its way verbatim as I remember it into the film," he says.

"It was a very awkward moment for me as well, because you don't really know how to respond to that and you do feel that you are kind of an ugly voyeur, looking at these beautiful old Portuguese buildings ruined with bullet holes in them and we love it, but the people who live there look at it very differently."

Did living outside South Africa help Ziman gain perspective to write a script about what goes on inside the country?

"The fascinating thing ever since I left is that every 3 or 4 years you come back and Joburg has done a sea change. Hillbrow in town was a hip place, now you can't go there anymore, everyone moving to the North. It's always in transition and it's fascinating."

"You see things through fresh eyes because you haven't seen all the little changes that made that possible."

Ziman remembers Hillbrow from when he was a teenager, and in his late teens going to the Chelsea Hotel basement to watch a band playing.

"I remember Hillbrow when everybody there was white and now I'm in Hillbrow and everybody is black and it's like a whole new world. It gives you a jilt, and that jilt is important because sometimes it happens when you live in a city and know it better than anyone else, and then sometimes people who live in a city don't see it through fresh eyes.  It's a balance."

Ziman raises a lot of issues in Jerusalema: to what extent people will go to make a living and survive; the different faces of crime; how money and the search for wealth changes people; land distribution via the back door; and lawlessness in South Africa, to name a few, and not that clear on solutions to these problems.

Was that intentional?

"I don't really have solutions. If I had them, I'd love to give them, but it was difficult. I could see everything that was wrong, but I think, maybe it's enough just to raise issues so people talk about them or think about them."

Ziman feels that it is important for outsiders to get an intimate glimpse into the realities of a New South Africa.

"It's important to see what life looks like there," he says.

"I think it's quite a shock. It was a shock to me. For me to have made it a film which is an action film and an entertaining film but not to look into the social issues, issues of wealth versus poverty in the New South Africa, issues of Xenophobia, issues of crime, etc. I wanted to raise issues and put them out there. Hopefully people will think about it and talk about it."

Jerusalema releases nationwide in South Africa on August 29.

READ MORE ABOUT JERUSALEMA

Copyright © 2008 Daniel Dercksen
Published with permission in The Good Weekend (Argus) August 23, 2008