South Africa
21 April 1975
In ‘South Africa’ we see a return to the ‘issues’ episodes of the Goodies’ early run—‘Give Police a Chance’, ‘Pollution’, ‘Women’s Lib’—but in a more pointed, more refined form. Comedy has always proven a medium well suited to making serious points,[1] and this week the lads go full-on political in taking aim at apartheid, South Africa’s formalised system of racial segregation. The result is a confrontational, no-holds-barred satire in which White South Africa is exposed as unambiguously, untenably racist and wrong… a verdict that is to be applauded, though its juxtaposition still sits a little uneasily. To elucidate:
The Goodies are hired by the South African authorities—represented in the person of Philip Madoc playing an unnamed tourist agent / customs officer—to produce a propaganda film promoting South Africa as a country to which to emigrate. Madoc’s character is apartheid to his core: segregated piano keys; white sunglass lenses; a brutal aversion to any black taint in his all-white worldview.[2] Implied, then, in his instructions to the Goodies is that he wants White immigrants to South Africa (as historically was the norm). Tim, however, seizes upon the word ‘immigrant’ from his own parochially British perspective where immigrants were predominantly Black. Thus, he comes up with a film encouraging all the African people who’d emigrated to England to emigrate a second time – to South Africa. Given the UK’s own endemic racism (in the 1970s), it’s perhaps little surprise that many Black people are won over; but when they reach South Africa and experience its unadulterated, palpably inflicted, ‘proper’ racism, they turn straight about and head back home to England, taking all the Black South Africans with them!
When Tim, Bill and Graeme arrive, the South African authorities have just been granted their ideal: an all-White South Africa. But of course, apartheid is more insidious than that. As the lads soon discover when experiencing the White South African lifestyle sans servants, the point was never segregation per se but rather the formalising of a class system (based on race). One could argue, in fact, that there was little difference between South Africa’s legislated apartheid and England’s class-conscious social hierarchy (both being predicated on the circumstances of one’s birth). And this is the brilliant thrust of the Goodies’ lampoon. Denied its Black underclass, the South African government introduces a new form of segregation—apart-height—dividing the population into big-uns and little-uns (pejoratively, ‘jockeys’). In one fell swoop, the Super Chaps expand their overt criticism of South African racism to include a more veiled dig at the British equivalent. Bill, the socially inferior ‘commoner’, becomes the mandated ‘short stuff’ houseboy, and in the space of one scene goes from a space of privilege (a lower class Englishman still outranking non-Englishmen) to one of denigration and repression. Tim and Graeme, being more of the upper class (and historically more likely to don blackface and engage in black-and-white minstrel impersonations), switch seamlessly from one elitist system to the other, unperturbed so long as they remain at the top![3]
What has always set the Goodies’ comedy apart from that of other performers is a willingness to take aim at themselves. Indeed, from the moment they crafted personas carrying their own real-life names, the Super Chaps pursued a determined policy of sending themselves up first, and only then turning their attention to other targets. The upshot of this is a warts-and-all humour that, ipso facto, is nigh incapable of punching down. Yes, the Goodies was made in a time of casual racism. Yes, the fictional Goodies are themselves somewhat racist (as well as sexist, classist, indulgingly heteronormative). But when they identify something ‘wrong’ in society—these flawed characters with their childlike, cartoon logic, who do anything, anytime, and make a mess of it every time; who make us laugh by sending up their own shortcomings—when they turn their comedy against a wrong that needs fixing, viewers cannot help but sit up and take notice…
Viva, then, ‘South Africa’, a masterfully funny episode with searing, serious intent—a definite highpoint!
Jacob Edwards, 21 April 2025
Tweets:
[1] Thus ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’.
[2] South African Tourist Board – Through Door and Turn White
[3] Even when the lads return to England and find that Whites are now at the bottom of the social hierarchy, their reaction is not ideological but rather one of shrugging self-interest: they break out the boot polish and begin Blacking up, sneaking their way into the new elite.
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