French lecturer writes ’Plain history book

“The people of Mitchell’s Plain impacted my life. The Plainers whom I met while working in Mitchell’s Plain motivated me to discover more about the history of the area.”

So says Dr Ludmila Ommundsen Pessoa, a senior lecturer at the University of Le Havre-Normandy in France and a member of GRIC (Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures). Her research focuses on South Africa’s contemporary literature and culture. She is the former director of the Alliance Française in Portland, Mitchell’s Plain.

Dr Pessoa has written the book Welcome to Mitchell’s Plain: Filming a ‘Model Township’ during Apartheid. The book aims to give a balanced history of Mitchell’s Plain. She says she it after she discovered a short documentary film Mitchells Plain, which was released in 1980, and had been commissioned by the apartheid government for worldwide distribution.

“Apartheid’s successive governments recognised documentary films as powerful tools. They used them to promote South Africa’s public image at home and abroad. These documentaries were made available in most European languages. They were presented under the pretext of narratives serving historical and educational functions while advancing political interests,” she said.

“I thought that the old Department of Information’s visual propaganda could not be left archived without any counter-perspective,” she said.

After Dr Pessoa discovered the documentary, that had been commissioned in City Engineer Brand‘s 1980 report, in 2018, she contacted the National Film, Video and Sound Archives (NFVSA) to check if it had been made. The NFVSA and the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) were interested in her project, so they provided her with a digital copy.

She then contacted Janine Van Rooy, founder of the non-profit organisation Blaqpearl Foundation, who organised a screening and debate (“Telling Mitchell’s Plain’s stories,” March 13, 2019). The screening was to see if residents knew about the film and how they felt about it, said Dr Pessoa.

Dr Pessoa said she discovered “another Mitchell’s Plain” when she began consulting documents at the Rocklands Library and at the National Library in Cape Town.

“I realised that the history of the township was not a trivial one. During apartheid, Mitchell’s Plain had been a strategic site for both the apartheid government and protest movements,” she said.

The apartheid government conceived Mitchell’s Plain as a “model township”, a flagship for the regime. It was planned in the 1960s and designed in the 1970s, Dr Pessoa said.

In 1978 Mitchell’s Plain was the subject of a special 32-page report in the top business magazine Financial Mail. In 1980, City Engineer Jan Brand declared that South Africa had received much favourable publicity in the foreign press and influential foreign circles as a result of visits arranged to Mitchell’s Plain where cohorts of political leaders and journalists were invited to admire first-hand how racial segregation could be paired with progressive social planning, she said.

Professor Uma Dhupelia- Mesthrie (UWC) who undertook a literature survey of scholarship on the Cape Flats in 2010, said the area is perceived as a place with no history as if history had remained only in the areas from which the residents were displaced. That’s why Dr Pessoa felt this book is important.

“There is still a lot more to discover about the area. I encourage everyone to start looking for the past in their families’ histories and start playing big,” she said.

“This is my and France’s contribution to South Africa because, according to Ubuntu, we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye. I enjoy considering myself an honoured citizen of Mitchell’s Plain,” said Dr Pessoa.

The book has been published in the collection Africae of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS Research) in Johannesburg. IFAS was created in 1995 by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) to demonstrate France’s willingness to participate in the construction of a democratic Africa.

“The dominant representation of Mitchell’s Plain, and the whole of the Cape Flats, is that it’s a place of poverty and violence. For most people, Mitchell’s Plain is synonymous with gangsterism and drugs. Yet, it has more to offer than sensationalist stories of violence,” said Dr Pessoa.

This book was financed jointly by the University of Le Havre-Normandy (Group for Research on Identities and Cultures) and IFAS-Recherche. It is already available online. It can be accessed and downloaded free of charge on https://books.openedition.org/africae/pdf/3939 or http://www.ifas.org.za/research/