Adapted from an autobiographical 2006 novel by André Carl van der Merwe, Moffie is set in South Africa, in 1981, with the white minority government embroiled in a conflict on the southern Angolan border. Like all white boys over the age of 16, Nicholas Van der Swart (Kai Luke Brummer) must complete two years of compulsory military service to defend the Apartheid regime. 

The threat of communism and die swart gevaar is at an all-time high. But that’s not the only danger Nicholas faces. He must survive the brutality of the army – something that becomes even more difficult when a connection is sparked between him and a fellow recruit.

The movie, which is now streaming on first on Showmax, screened at various film festivals around the world to great acclaim. Most impressively, it’s currently on the longlist for the Golden Globes’ Foreign Film category.

Moffie is also that rare South African film to have a 100% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As Variety raved: “South African auteur Oliver Hermanus makes his masterpiece with this brutal but radiant story of young gay desire on the Angolan war front… establishing him quite plainly as South Africa’s most vital contemporary filmmaker… Both a shiver-delicate exploration of unspoken desire and a scarringly brilliant anatomy of white South African masculinity. It fair takes your breath away.”

What the director says 

Oliver Hermanus, who wrote and directed the film, admits that at first glance, it might not have been a natural fit for him. “I knew very little about the Border War between South West Africa (now Namibia) and Angola. I also knew very little about the generation of white South African men who were forced to fight that war. 

“In fairness, I have never given much thought to the hardships of white South Africans. In my mind, informed by the hardships and struggles of my own Coloured parents and their parents before them, all white people in South Africa have had it easy. 

“For the most part, this is true. The system favoured them and it was wholly unfair and unforgivable. As a result, I never considered young, gay, white youth living in the 80s, never saw them as enemies of the state.”

No matter how engaging the personal story explored is, there are also wider issues to explore that are just as relevant today as they were in the 80s. “This is a film about such a youth. White, eighteen and coming to terms with his illegality. There have been many stories told over the past two decades about the Apartheid system and the lives it ruined, the heroes it spawned and the toll that it took on the heritage of South African people. 

“However, here is a seemingly more complex point of view – a hidden history of the generation of white men who had to endure the Apartheid propaganda machine. For many, their conscription into the army destroyed them because it forcibly imprinted upon nearly one million white boys a diseased ideology of white supremacy, racial intolerance and the desire to eradicate homosexuality and communism from South African society. 

“Even though he is part of the ruling race, our lead’s life is at risk. Nicholas is property of the state, there to defend the indefensible without question or resistance. He is commanded to relinquish himself to the cause of the government which could so easily lead to his death. The war he is fighting is ultimately pointless and the lives lost are lost in vain. The terror that was inflicted on the innocent was racially motivated and in the end, no side could claim true victory. 

“Our story is Nicholas’s journey to overcome, not without loss and suffering but in the end with an acceptance of who he is in ‘that’ South Africa.”

The memory lingers

In 2021, we’re very much focussed on the often-overwhelming problems of the present. But the past is just a hair’s breadth away. “It must be mentioned that the last of this generation of men, moulded to be soldiers not just for the border but for the streets of South Africa, are still alive today. They are fathers and brothers, sons and uncles. Very few speak about their time in the army, as if the militarisation of these boys near the fall of Apartheid never happened. But the memory lingers and even for those who were not gay or politically averse to the system, the damage is significant and present. This is a film about how white South African men have been made for nearly a century.

Hermanus explains that the title of the film is deliberately inflammatory – a derogatory Afrikaans term for gay. “Any gay man living in South Africa knows this word and has a relationship with it. It is a South African weapon of shame, used exclusively to oppress gay or effeminate men. When you are called this word for the first time, you start to hide from it. You begin to edit yourself. It is when you first pretend you are someone else. The shame is instant; the realisation that you are visible. People can tell you apart. All you know about that word is that it means you are bad. You are reject-able and unlikable and unacceptable and during Apartheid, just like a black man or woman, you were a crime. And so you needed to put it away, you needed to cover it up, kill it – the moffie inside you.

“I felt a strong pull to exploring my own history with this word, which ended up being a scene in the film. I think it was the want to denuclearise and reform this word that was at the heart of my decision to make this film.

“I avoid using the word. It still has stigma for me and making this film allowed me to talk to other gay men about their relationship with this word. For most, I think, it still carries a pain. I am all for the act of appropriating it for good but like the book, I hope that having it as the title of the film will go some way to eroding the word’s toxicity.

“We are living in a global culture where we still see the persecution of the LGBT community all over the world. At the same time, never before has the voice of this global community been more heard. A film like Moffie is there to remind us of what has come before, what we have endured and suffered through and why it is important to never stop being vocal and proud.”

Watch Moffie on Showmax, and then stream other LGBTQI+ gems, starting with Schalk Bezuidenhout in Kanarie, which also explores the experience of a gay troepie in the Apartheid-era army, and Skeef, the documentary presented by Renaldo Schwarp exploring the Afrikaans gay experience. DM/ML

Subscribe to Showmax from R49 per month »