Unravelling Pretville (Korsten, 2012) and encountering Marikana: The superfluous cheer of the Afrikaner volksiel

Abstract

Drawing on the thought of Achille Mbembé and Jacques Rancière, I observe the spatiotemporal proximity of the Marikana massacre and the production of an Afrikaans musical called Pretville (‘Funville’), attempting to understand the intricate dialectics of othering. I specifically consider the persistence of this mechanism in the ‘Afrikaner volksiel’, a metaphysical construct ostensibly uniting white Afrikaans speakers. To this end, I contextualize Pretville within the larger Afrikaner cultural project before maintaining that the text exhibits a fervent forgetfulness of the South African socio-political landscape. It is thus an aporetic text in that it deconstructs itself through the presences implied in their very invisibility, particularly the present-absence of the racialized labour exploitation buttressing an affluent neo-liberal society. I conclude that, through this entanglement, the world of Marikana is inseparable from the world of Pretville.