The Showmax documentary Brasse Vannie Kaap tells the story of the 1990s hip hop group from Cape Town who rapped in what is known as Afrikaaps. Picture: Supplied
Although some believe Afrikaans is a dying language, there are signs that this is not the case.
In her documentary of hip-hop group Brasse Vannie Kaap, director Lauren Scholtz explored how coloured people in the Cape took the language and made it theirs.
“As it’s discussed in the documentary, [it] made people feel comfortable and proud to embrace that language of theirs and not make it feel like it’s second-class or dumbed down or anything like that,” Scholtz told The Citizen.
“It is more than just the white man’s lingo, we were able to take it and make it our own in a time when we were oppressed.”
The Showmax documentary Brasse Vannie Kaap tells the story of the 1990s hip hop group from Cape Town who rapped in what is known as Afrikaaps.
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Also referred to as ‘Kaaps’, Afrikaaps is a language created in settler colonial South Africa; some have argue that Afrikaaps predates the arrival of the Dutch.
“It’s also about taking ownership of the language because it’s a dialect of Afrikaans that people of colour took upon themselves to make their own and I think that’s very important,” Scholtz told The Citizen.
“While it may be seen as the oppressor’s language in South Africa, what Cape Town coloured people did with it by taking it and making it their own I think is very special and very important thing that the group did.”
Brasse Vannie Kaap (BVK) is a hip-hop group from the Cape Flats in Cape Town. The group’s original members are Deon Daniels (Ready D), the late Ashley Titus (Mr Fat), Roger Heunis (Hamma) and Enver Pietersen (DJ E20).
Bboys Cheeze, Baby-L and Levi joined the group soon after they started to perform live. DJ Azuhl [real name Ricardo Nunes] joined the group later.
The documentary pays tribute to the group’s impact. Scholtz said the initial idea was to tell the story of the group’s founding member, DJ Ready D.
“When I put the Ready D concept together I realised it was need to be a docu-series and of course it was a slightly higher end concept and the budget would be really big,” shared the first-time filmmaker.
There was a music channel that considered picking up the Ready D documentary but that deal fell through due to said channel’s management changes.
Scholtz’s brother in-law, BVK member DJ Azuhl, was sharing the group’s old footage on social media when the idea to rather tell the group’s story came about.
“I saw all the people responding on Facebook and the response was quit emotional and it struck a spark in me.”
She quickly worked on the doccie prompted by the Silwerskermfees rules which dictate that a person granted funding for a film should show it at the following Silwerskermfees festival the year after securing the funds.
“By the time I actually got the money, the budget and the go ahead, I basically had eight months to do this whole thing and it was intense,” she said.
Scholtz founder of Dala Films and has spent 15 years producing television commercials. A few years ago, she swapped production work for screenwriting, starting out as a storyliner on the kykNET telenovelas Arendsvlei, Diepe Waters and.
Brasse Vannie Kaap is her debut feature documentary.
Scholtz first pitched the idea for the film at Silwerskerm 2023. “When you are making a film and pitching around a concept, it’s also important to understand audiences and also who you are pitching to in terms of commissioning,” she said.
“When I saw that KykNet had an open call for pitches for the Silwerskermfees, it also made me realise that it was a good fit because KykNet is an Afrikaans channel.”
A lot of the archived footage in the documentary were sourced from KykNet because the clique performed at a lot of Afrikaans festivals.
There are interviews with the likes of David Isaacs and Oscar Petersen of Joe Barber fame to Karen Zoid, Kurt Darren, Francois van Coke and Valiant Swart.
Because of BVK’s size and how it was managed, which saw some dancers and contributors to the group coming and going, this made tracking those individuals a challenge for Scholtz and her team.
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There was a bit of a disservice in the documentary because of the paucity of Hamma’s voice, who left the group in 2001. The artist initially sat down with Scholtz but later asked for it to be excluded from the film.
“That was very disappointing because as a documentary filmmaker you try to be objective as possible and we all know true objectivity does not exist but you still strive for it,” the director said.
“I wanted his views to balance things out. I wanted him to bring a sort of different angle to challenge us as viewers.
“Because he pulled out I wasn’t able to offer that in the film.” When asked to speak about the interaction with Hamma and the sense she got during the interview, Scholtz was cagey.
“To avoid any beef myself, I’m going to say nothing,” she said giggling.
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A common thread in the film is the presence of frontman Mr Fat. The colourful performer passed away in 2007 at the tender age of 36.
“Every single person that I interviewed went on and on about how amazing Mr Fat was. There’s so much more I could’ve put in of people [speaking of him]. What really struck me was it was all kind of people from different backgrounds, races saying phemonenal stuff about Mr Fat and you could see it wasn’t lip service.”
“I realised he must’ve had this enigmatic personality that’s so rare. He seemed like he was a one in a lifetime kind of person.”
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