Kevin Turnbull

AFST 200-Dr. Lamont King

November 14, 2017

Sugar Cane Alley: Comparing and Contrasting the 1984 film with Real Rhodesian

Mines

In twentieth century Martinique, slavery was abolished. People were no longer sold

or treated as property. However, this doesnt mean that all forms of colonial exploitation

had ceased to exist. There was still a vast socioeconomic dichotomy between the plantation

owners and their field workers. In Sugar Cane Alley, largely a work of fiction, we see this in

the plantation that Jose works on. However for more real life applications, one can look to

Van Onselens analysis of the Southern Rhodesian mines that existed around the same time

as the film takes place.

To Jose, living on the plantation in Martinique would have been much like living on a

sugar plantation not too many years before. Though slavery would have technically been

illegal, abolition was a way of life that many people struggled to adapt to, including those

who once were or would have been slaves. Take, for instance, Joses grandmothers

insistence that he get an education. By him seeking an education, she hoped that he would

avoid working in the fields like the other children. In a time where a childs fate was

decided by his school exams, Jose also understood the importance of doing well in school.

Besides his grandmother, a great influence in Joses early life is Mr. Mdeouze. Mr.

Mdeouze is a father figure to Jose, and is largely responsible for teaching him about Africa

and its impact on them as descendants of slaves. Unlike the formal classroom education

that Joses grandmother desires for him, Mdeouze provides the kind of education that was
mostly around during slavery. In other words, he was teaching Jose about life in Africa,

older traditions, and other things that the white man might deem inappropriate for the

classroom. This is an extremely important part of Joses upbringing, because it keeps him

grounded in his roots as an African while he pursues an education that is largely catered to

white people. While in school, Jose learns standard things like reading, writing, and

arithmetic. But while hes with Mdeouze, he learns about his own personal history, and

develops much of his cultural identity as an African.

The film introduces some more nuances and tension with characters like Leopold, a

mulatto boy that Jose befriends at school. Though their friendship growing up is certainly a

major influence in Joses life, one particular example I found most indicative of the symbolic

significance of Leopolds character was his attempt to expose the plantation bosses for

cheating their workers. As a mixed-race, illegitimate child, Leopold was by no stretch of the

imagination white. However, his pale skin made him a bit of an outsider in the African

communities as well. In situations where such a stark black and white exists, anyone caught

in the middle of that faces an interesting conundrum; do they try to elevate themselves to

acceptance by their white friends/relatives, or do they identify with their black

friends/relatives and fight for a better sense of equality? Any sort of psychological

conjecture into this divide would far exceed the scope of this paper and this class, but I

found it admirable that Leopold took the much harder path of fighting in solidarity with the

other black workers. As I mentioned previously, slavery was a difficult institution to totally

eradicate once it was abolished. For landowners, usually white, to be cheating their

workers, usually black, of wages was a common occurrence in the years following.

Leopolds boldness and ability to stand up to these landowners, despite the consequences
he knows hell face, speaks to his character and his identity as an African. He already has an

advantage over the other workers who have darker skin, but he doesnt abandon them in

hope of safety with the white man.

Now, lets shift focus to Southern Rhodesia, around this same 20th century time

period. Unlike the plantation in the film, the mines in this country were real, and the

struggles that the workers in them faced were just as real. Specifically related to education,

Van Onselen at one point says The limited education which workers received in the

compounds wastolerated by the mining companies more as a means to manipulate the

labour market than as an end valuable in itself. Basically, what hes saying is that

education was used as a point of leverage that allowed the mining companies to exploit the

poor workers for their maximum value. We see this in the film, when the plantation

sponsors very partial scholarships to very few kids to attend school in the capitol, while the

rest must move to work in the fields. Parents, or grandparents in Joses case, will sacrifice

anything they can to try to get their children into school, and the mine bosses know this. By

encouraging the workers to send their children into school with the slim hope of receiving

an education, they are guaranteed to have a steady influx of new workers in the kids who

fail to meet the high expectations for scholarship. If the bosses actually cared about the well

being of the kids, they would pay enough wages to allow them to receive an education

without the economic assistance of the company. This was obviously not the case, and was

not the case in Southern Rhodesia either. Mine workers would often sacrifice other aspects

of their lives in order to acquire reading materials in order to educate themselves. Though

mine companies took advantage of this desire for education when they were struggling to

find labor, as soon as labor began to become a more accessible commodity, the fate of their
attached schools or educational assistance programs became grim. They werent

disbanded, but the mine companies paid far less attention to them than they used to.

To apply these concepts to the film, lets look again at Jose. His grandmother made

many sacrifices to make sure that Jose had the best chances possible to get into school.

Even when he wins a partial scholarship, she moves to the capitol with him and works

manual labor in order to supplement his tuition. She works herself so hard that after Jose is

granted a full scholarship, she soon dies from the exhaustion of her life of laboring. In a

place that had outlawed slavery, the plantation owners were still dramatically taking

advantage of their black workers. Even in the end when Jose returns to the capitol, he tells

the stories of his Grandmother, Mr. Mdeouze, and their life on the plantation. Even when

education is no longer the only avenue for Jose to pursue, he chooses to honor his prior

mentors and continues to receive his education, and also educate others about his

experiences on the plantation.