The Butcher's Heart

Shepherds and Butchers, the latest film from South African master director Oliver Schmitz, tells the story of a young white South African facing the death penalty for the slaughter of six black men during the closing years of apartheid. Unflinching in its depiction of the death penalty and South African reality at the time, the film is told largely from the perspective of its young protagonist. I spoke to Schmitz, who lives and works in Berlin, about this remarkable and difficult film.

Peter Machen: Can we begin by talking about this notion of “white tears”, which has been part of the response to your Shepherds and Butchers, and which, of course, is part of the current conversation in South Africa.

Oliver Schmitz: I’ve heard this used in some people’s reactions, so obviously it is making the rounds in a perspective criticism of stories in which white characters are the central focus. But this film is not about white tears and it’s not an apology for white society then or now in any kind of way. Any debates that are happening in white society trying to justify itself in South Africa are not part of my notion of this film. For me, the film is very much about a generation of young white South Africans and what happened to them and what was done to them. It’s an indictment of the older generation of white South Africans who ruled the country, and who sent these youngsters off to war and taught them to fight, taught them to hate. That is clearly what the film is about for me and there is no instance – and I was very careful about this – where I want the audience to feel sorry for the man on trial. But I do want them to pause and think about who this young man is and who he was before he became this monster. Because we’re not born evil – we’re all human beings who are born and then take in whatever comes towards us in life and learn from that.

25 years ago, I couldn’t have made this film. Because the majority perspective had been so negated and obliterated from national media, it was important for me as a young filmmaker to make a film like Mapantsula – reflecting the voice of the oppressed, the voice of the majority. Now I feel less comfortable because there is a debate, quite rightly, about ownership of stories. And I’ve never seen myself as a liberal trying to represent other people or the downtrodden or fighting somebody else’s fight. But I think it was important back then to make Mapantsula, and I think it’s just as important for me now to own this story about this generation, and to tell it as honestly as I can. Even if it runs the risk of criticism of a white perspective, it’s not revisionist in any way.

PM: In the film, the black characters do not have very much focus on them as characters. But that’s what apartheid was, a denial of blackness, a denial of the black body as a human body, and, for me, your film replicated that.

OS: That was the intention. It was very difficult for me but I didn’t want to revise the book and the intention of the story and relativise it because I think that would have weakened the focus on the main character. I can understand that there are and will be criticisms of the treatment of black characters in the story, but it is the intention. It’s not the intention to negate the existence and the meaning of those characters but in terms of the story at hand, I wanted to create a narrative told from the main character’s perspective. And I think the film is all the more disturbing as a result.

But just because the black characters are on the periphery, it does not mean that they are denounced. It just means the focus is on the white character. I think any black viewer would have a harder viewing than a white viewer because of that and because of the humiliation that the black prisoners go through. Because it’s a humiliation that doesn’t just have to do with death row. It’s a humiliation that black South Africans have suffered for decades and centuries. But the fact is it’s a challenging film. It was never made to be an easy film, and the rest I leave up to the public now. I’ve made the film.

PM: Earlier this year, City Press journalist Charl Blignaut spoke about the prospect of having to watch the film with his black boyfriend. And other people have spoken about the prospect of how uncomfortable it might be for black and white viewers to watch the film together. But I think it’s a very uncomfortable full stop. It’s devastating.

OS: Absolutely. It is a deeply uncomfortable film. It is a film that will make anyone uncomfortable, and, yes, sure, it will make an audience of black and white sitting together in a theatre uncomfortable because of the physical nature of the violence that is displayed in the film and its absolutely uncompromising nature.

PM: I have one last question. Given that there is now a whole generation of South Africans who did not experience apartheid and have only experienced its very substantial legacy, how important is it for you that this film attracts young adult viewers?

OS: I think it’s crucial that it attracts young adult viewers. I’m delighted that young audiences still watch Mapantsula. I recently did a Skype lecture with students at Wits university who’d just watched Mapantsula. And they were amazed and full of questions. It was very thought provoking, and I think they saw things they hadn’t seen in that form before.

And I think, similarly, that they will see aspects of apartheid South Africa in Shepherds and Butchers that they haven’t seen before. I don’t think anybody’s looked at the nature of state violence in the same way before. And I think it is important. I think it gives a young person insights – it gave the young actor insights into what the society was like – he grew up in a free society. So, for any young person who grew up in a democratic South Africa, it’s a call to defend what has been gained and to celebrate what has been lost.