Afrikaaps

On the surface, Afrikaaps appears to be a theatre piece within a film, based as it is on the creative processes and performances of the critically acclaimed stage production of the same name. But rather than depending on the drama on stage and the production’s prominent characters to carry the narrative, Valley finds revealing moments from the cast’s and production crew’s personal narratives that transcend what happens on stage. Afrikaaps, the film and the stage play, breaks ground by boldly attempting to reclaim Afrikaans – so long considered a language of the oppressor – as a language of liberation. It does this by foregrounding alternative histories of ‘the Creole birth’ of the language and shattering long-existing efforts to whitewash and purify Afrikaans. While the ideas of the film are informed by rigorous academic study, the presentation of those ideas are steeped in the now – conveyed by hip hop-generation Cape Town-based artists like Jitsvinger, Bliksemstraal, Blaq Pearl and Emile XY, who school audiences with an immediacy, irreverence and vibrancy often frowned upon in the academy.