Westbury, Plek Van Hoop and Waiting for Valdez: Self-Representation, Memory and Coloured Identity in Westbury, Johannesburg

This article explores how the documentary film Westbury, Plek van Hoop (2003) and the short fiction film Waiting for Valdez (dir. Dumisani Phakathi, 2003), as two films produced by residents of Westbury, Johannesburg, negotiate the tensions of finding a voice in the new South Africa. In examining the self-representation of the coloured community in this area, the article interrogates to what extent residents of Westbury have succeeded in subverting apartheid-era stereotypes of a gang-ridden, violent community. The concept of “coloured identity” is problematic due to the uncomfortable stance of the coloured community, whose sense of self has historically been situated between the more generally accepted binaries of whitenes” and blackness. When hybrid communities reflect on their own social circumstances and try to imagine themselves in different ways, representations of community and identity become open to revision as people reflect on their perceptions of the circumstances of their lives. In the absence of a shared common history and deep-rooted, collective cultural codes, members of coloured communities are engaging in a process of social reconstruction, and they may have chosen to reiterate, if not perpetuate, their marginal status and collective sense of marginality. The films suggest that that the apartheid legacy may have distorted community memory and selfhood in Westbury and that the stereotypes of the past still emerge as dominant representations in the present.