Abstract:
This article argues that Steve Hofmeyr’s Afrikaner identity, an identity he performs across various
media platforms, including a selection of feature length Afrikaans films, is a paradoxical hybrid
of Afrikaner exceptionalism and claims to victimhood. The exceptionalism and self-imposed
victimhood are engaged in an across-media dialogue, as Steve Hofmeyr’s social media and
political activist persona speak to his participation in three Afrikaans language films: Pretville
(Korsten, 2012), Platteland (Else, 2011) and Treurgrond (Roodt, 2015). Hofmeyr’s presence
foregrounds and exacerbates an already problematic ideological context in which attempts at
multiculturalism are rendered moot by the conservatism in these films, especially where land – the
farm – is concerned. While Pretville invents a 1950s South African town that fails to correspond to
any inhabited reality of that time, Platteland offers an Afrikaans musical-western wherein Hofmeyr
dominates as patriarch. Finally, the attempts of Treurgrond at raising farm murder awareness
are nullified through casting Hofmeyr as a farmer facing a land claim, given Hofmeyr’s active
campaigning against an alleged Boer genocide.
Description:
This article, specifically section two on Afrikaner identity, draws on the author’s doctoral research on the
political impotence of contemporary Afrikaans language cinema in a study titled, Absences, exclusivities,
utopias: Afrikaans films as a cinema of political impotence, 1994–2014 (2015).
