Inside the prison, AB encounters “the Number,” which is how the country’s prison gangs collectively are known. The protagonist, Abraham, or AB, is molested as a teenager, forms a gang to take revenge on his attacker, gets arrested for a robbery, along with a close friend, Gimba, and is sent to Pollsmoor. Noem My Skollie (NMS) is set in 1960s Cape Town, and the action moves over a ten-year period between Kewtown, a section of Athlone township, and Pollsmoor prison, an infamous institution on the southern edge of the Table Mountain next to a white suburb and vineyards. The film, Noem My Skollie (in English, Call Me Gangster, or Thief), released in 2016, explores some of these themes. The gangster has baffled academics, mostly sociologists and historians, tabloid journalists, and filmmakers alike. He is, simultaneously, a figure of panic, an outsider, loser, avatar of moral decline, byproduct of apartheid’s negative effects, defiant outlaw, and, more recently, a reflection of the deep, systematic failures of the twin promises of postapartheid and capitalist society, as well as a neoliberal entrepreneur. The gangster, especially the coloured (“mixed race”) gangster, is a loaded cipher in South Africa.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |