Piracy as counter-hegemony: a Cape Flats case study

Abstract

Despite several attempts by the Antipiracy Foundation in South Africa, piracy and counterfeiting
of movies on DVD is still widespread. This paper explores piracy in Hanover Park, a Cape Flats
township, as an expression of a politics of resistance to racism and racial disadvantage, but more
specifically as a routine social practice deeply embedded within the lived reality of community
members. The research questions were guided by a desire to explore qualitatively the processes
by which consumers in this low-income neighbourhood practise and understand their purchase
and consumption of pirated goods, particularly films on DVD. The study found that the consumers of Hanover Park engage in a complicated process of bricolage, often recontextualising what they view to communicate new meanings, appropriating
African-American and gang films as a form of political cultural resistance. Because of group and
familial viewing practices, social networks are solidified and piracy often becomes a form of political
bricolage against a perception of racial and class marginalisation. We find that both the ‘reworking’
of community and expression of resistance unfortunately seem to occur primarily in the arena of
leisure, where the practice of piracy is routinised as an integral part of the lived experiences of
community members. ‘Globality’ is experienced through a preference for Hollywood and Bollywood
blockbusters; and a media-saturated globalised national context meets the unequal purchasing
power and economic constraints of the local context, while resulting in little moral concern over the
practice of piracy, which lends a political dimension to everyday practice.