Resistance Is Futile: Tolerating Tyler Perry In South Africa

By Guest Contributor Christopher Keith Johnson

Writer/director/actor Tyler Perry. Photo via rollingout.com

All of the things I had grown accustomed to in the US were engaged often and early in my move to South Africa. I felt right at home after experiencing housing discrimination in my apartment search. Seeing airports filled with white travelers, while bus stations overflowed with folks who looked like me. It all seemed so familiar.  South Africa was a long way from being post-racial.  I could deal with that. I came from that.

What was pleasantly surprising was the level of activist engagement of the South African people. The documentaries I had seen were capturing something real. From service delivery protests to pushback against Wal-Mart’s acquisition of South Africa’s largest retailer, the people were not afraid to protest—nonviolently and otherwise.

South Africans won’t let you off the hook easily. In my role directing programming between the largest American trade union and its counterparts in West African, more than a few meetings with partners ended with tough questions about U.S. foreign policy and my employer’s take on positions supported by the American government. One had to be quick on the toes to navigate queries on Palestine, Israel, and Cuba. The activist community in which I had to engage expected that I would be able to respond to issues and concerns in and outside of Africa. As the only G20 member on the continent, politics beyond its borders mattered to my South African counterparts.

With the above in mind, I was wholly unprepared to be faced with the popularity of Tyler Perry in South Africa.

I would have rather tried to explain why it was mandatory for U.S. presidential candidates to be well received at The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), than to be questioned on whether I had female family members who acted like Madea. I would have rather been forced to justify the US embargo of Cuba, than address if I knew brothers back home who acted like the characters played by Steve Harris and Blair Underwood in Perry’s films.

I couldn’t understand it. How could there not be some manner of South African backlash against what any sane person could only interpret as old-school buffoonery? Surely the nuanced political debates taking place in South Africa would create an environment where an anti-Perry campaign would move from the global South northwards. What was wrong? How could this be? Why were the theaters filled with black people at every showing of Perry’s films in Johannesburg?

The cast of “InKaba.” Courtesy: mzansimagic.dstv.com

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