Comedian Rob Van Vuuren speaks about how Black Lives Matter, how his daughter inspired him to apologise, how and why white South Africa reacted so negatively to his apology, and the trauma he experienced that shaped his views.
Acclaimed South African comedian Rob Van Vuuren says his apology last week Sunday for using blackface in a 2013 Leon Schuster film ‘Schuks! Your Country Needs You’ was not by coincidence.
His public apology on Facebook and Twitter on Father’s Day, which received both criticism and praise, said, among others, that he was “deeply ashamed” about the blackface, and “as a white father of a child of colour” he failed to examine his “own privilege and prejudice” at the time.
“I wish I could say that I didn’t know any better at the time, but the truth is that I did. I made all sorts of excuses for myself at the time to justify doing it,” Van Vuuren said, in unreservedly apologising for the hurt his actions caused.
Van Vuuren says a lot of people responded to his apology sarcastically. They said he was only apologising due to the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and after streaming service ShowMax started removing racially insensitive content.
“And I mean, the short answer is, of course, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a huge part of why I chose to speak up,” Van Vuuren says, staring into the distance and taking a pause.
Lockdown has given me an unprecedented opportunity for self-reflection. And I’ve really taken the opportunity to try and take a deep dive into acknowledging my own faults in order to come through this stronger and better.
Speaking to News24 from his home in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, in a video interview, in line with lockdown regulations, Van Vuuren says he’s made a decision not to respond to the negative comments straight away. He promised, though, that he would respond because people had misinterpreted his words.
The 43-year-old, who is the co-creator and co-star of comedy duo Corne & Twakkie, and who recently starred in Netflix’s Queen Sono, has been working from home on digital projects over the past three months, as a means to make an income when all his other projects were cancelled.
The cover of ‘Schuks! Your Country Needs You’. (Screenshot, Itunes)
He says he had been thinking about making an apology for the blackface since he played the role, but when his adopted daughter made him a Father’s Day card, he felt the impulse to write the apology.
Biting his lips, Van Vuuren says: “While I was sitting there thinking about all of this, I realised that I do have a responsibility to my daughter.”
He says he then wrote the apology “really quickly” in that moment before posting it, but had been thinking about how the apology for many years.
“I just had this vision of her speaking to me in like [in] 10 years time and going, ‘When all that stuff was happening, why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you acknowledge that you did this thing?’
“I didn’t want her to go, ‘You know what, I’ve just watched this movie again and why the f*ck did you do that? Why did you never actually say anything about it? Especially when these conversations were so much at the forefront’.”
So I felt like every day that I leave this now is a day longer that I betray my daughter.
Blackface, around which awareness has grown in recent years in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, is a practice where black people were mocked for the entertainment of white people, and negative stereotypes were promoted across the United States and Europe.
During these performances, white people would make impressions of black people in a very exaggerated way – such as mocking their accent and their physical attributes.
He says he was initially afraid that his public apology on Facebook and Twitter would be considered insincere and too late by the black community – but instead he was surprised by the vitriol he received from the white community.
Some of the negative responses to his apology read, “another libby buckling”, “Stop gatkruip (suck up)”, “get a spine” and “why are you apologising”.
An open letter widely shared on social media claimed that Van Vuuren was “betraying the work of actors” with his apology.
Van Vuuren during his interview (screenshot)
Van Vuuren says that “white people lost their sh*t”, which surprised him because the apology wasn’t meant for them.
The apology was about people I have hurt through this thing. I’ve had people speak to me about it. So I know I hurt people. And I’m sorry for that.
He says he thinks black people responded positively because they heard the sincerity of the apology, while white people thought he was judging Schuster, and by implication those who still enjoy Schuster’s films.
Van Vuuren says the other leap that white people made is that he is apologising for his whiteness, which, to him, is “crazy”.
White people, he says, are incredibly defensive whenever race is brought up and they feel under attack because of the country’s troubled past, where white South Africans benefitted from an unjust system.
“That is like an undeniable fact.
“If the mere fact that I am apologising for myself – for no one else – about blackface, which is undeniably problematic for some people, and you are taking such offence to that apology, then that speaks to like, ‘Okay, well, there’s a problem here’.”
I think the very fact that people are so sensitive about it speaks to the fact that we have to continue having the conversation.
Van Vuuren has great respect for Schuster, whom, he says, he does not speak to often. He believes Schuster’s movies have done incredible work for social commentary in the country, and should be seen in the context of the time.
Schuster’s movies should not be erased from the country’s “collective cultural memory”, he says.
Rob van Vuuren, Laré Birk, Leon Schuster, Gray Hofmeyr and Alfred Ntombela at the premier of Shucks, Your Country Needs You on November 20, 2013, in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Foto24 / Denzil Maregele)
Van Vuuren sent Schuster a message a day after the apology when he realised people thought he was throwing the film maker under the bus.
Searching for the message on his phone, Van Vuuren says Schuster replied briefly: “No worry, Rob. I understand. No stress. Greetings Leon.”
In an interview with Channel24 this past week, Schuster said he is willing to listen, and if the content in question causes anyone harm, he doesn’t want to do it.
“I don’t want us to laugh at each other, I want us to laugh with each other,” Schuster said.
Van Vuuren says a podcast interview with fellow comedian Tumi Morake – who was threatened after she made comments about apartheid on Jacaranda FM in 2017 – this past week particularly influenced his views on the hatred in society after his apology.
The podcast episode is set to come out on Monday,
“She talked about empathy, she talked about understanding where the hate was coming from. And that these people are traumatised – to speak with that kind of vitriol and hate comes from a place of trauma,” Van Vuuren says.
He says he spent the lockdown period working on his own trauma, and has to acknowledge that, “as South Africans, we are deeply a deeply traumatised society”.
You know we’ve got that old South African adage of ‘f*k voort’.
“We just kind of push through it and we never really acknowledged that trauma. I think it kind of bubbles up and out in strange ways,” Van Vuuren says, scratching his neck.
And that is why, Van Vuuren says, South Africans cling to sporting events, such as the Rugby World Cup, to hold on to the hope of the Rainbow Nation.
“We are traumatised in so many different ways, by our deeply divided past. But we are also traumatised by the present and the incredibly high levels of crime. The, I suppose, abject disappointment in our leadership and the corruption, and the failed delivery on promises of a brighter future.”
His own trauma, which Van Vuuren says he doesn’t want to go into, includes growing up in apartheid South Africa and a little farming community outside East London in the Eastern Cape.
Shaking his head, he says:
You know, I grew up as someone who loves poetry and art in an extremely conservative, misogynistic society.
Van Vuuren says for long a time he just tried to ‘f*k voort’, and deny his issues, but is now finally working through it.
Rob van Vuuren.
He and his wife adopted a daughter of colour after they were unable to conceive naturally, which he says has also inspired him to be a better father and husband.
Asked about the criticism white South Africans often face for adopting children of colour, Van Vuuren says he and his wife were given the option to choose a race and gender when adopting, but decided against it.
“We felt like that wasn’t important to us. And we felt like the baby that we were meant to help raise was going to come to us from wherever. I just felt uncomfortable trying to stipulate things like that.”
He says he thinks it is incredibly dangerous for adoptive parents not to see colour, and he is trying to continually learn and challenge his views.
You have to be aware of how race operates in the world, whether you are raising a child of colour or not – I think that’s important.
Van Vuuren says he is, like all comedians and artists, concerned about his work receiving a backlash for being problematic and controversial.
“But, you know, like I’ve said, I have a responsibility to my daughter to be on the right side of this discussion. I don’t feel like I can remain silent about it.”
He says he has always used work, be it plays he writes for arts festivals, or stand up comedy, as a form of social commentary, and a way to work through his own trauma, be it consciously or subconsciously.
Recently, he says, he has become less radical in the way he approaches discourses on race in South Africa.
A couple of years ago, I was one of those people, shouting at you on Facebook, if you spoke from a right-leaning perspective; I didn’t have much patience for racists and for conservative people.
“What I’m learning as I go is that, like Tumi said, ‘we’re all traumatised’. And I think empathy is the most powerful tool we have at the moment.”
He says his role going forward is, therefore, to use empathy to interact with the people at the centre of the discourse to move the conversation forward.
Empathy, Van Vuuren says, is understanding that, when a black comedian tweeted “f*ck white people in Cape Town” a couple of years ago, it comes from his experience, and is not necessarily an attack on him himself.
“He said that because he’s been subjected to so much racism over the years, that he’s deeply traumatised by it. And he said that in that particular moment, because another one of those things has happened to him once again.
“As soon as I could take myself out of that little bubble, and understand that this is someone who’s in pain, who’s experiencing pain, and is expressing their pain, it just changed my perspective on that. I don’t have to take it that personally.”
Rob van Vuuren. (Photo: Nardus Engelbrecht/Channel24)
And as to whether people can change their views, Van Vuuren says the more he engages from an empathetic view, the more he’s seen change in others and in himself.
From the point of view of myself, it has changed in me not being so defensive about the conversation, and not taking it so personally.
“So, yes, I am pretty optimistic that people can change. I’ve seen it and I’ve met with people who’ve changed their views,” Van Vuuren says.
“So I’ve just got to go forward in love and empathy and understanding, and give my energy to people who are willing to come on that journey with me. And leave the hate behind.”
Gary the Toothfairy’s Apocalypse Variety Show, which Van Vuuren co-wrote, is showing online Saturday evening at 20:15. Buy tickets here.
