By Thubelihle Mathonsi and Ndalo Mbombo
Alette Schoon is a busy person, so our meeting has been postponed twice. Finally, with a notebook full of questions, we walk to her office nervously, mostly because of our excitement. Her grey-walled office is decorated with several pieces of Pop art.
The sun is shining behind her and she welcomes us with a smile, seemingly already filing through the memory tabs in her mind and heart.
“My parents met in the mountains while hiking,” she says, and now one of her beloved hobbies is mountain biking. The two-wheel love was born alongside her in the Cape Mountains and pursued her even when she moved to Gauteng. In the 80s, her first year of university allowed her to enjoy rock climbing as a mountaineering enthusiast. Then, in her second year, she says, “I became more aware of the broader political climate and joined a small political organisation named Students for Democratic Society (SDS).” So began what would develop into an appreciation of the diverse national community she was born into.
While Schoon was part of the SDS, the group planned a trip to a human rights music festival in newly independent Zimbabwe, where the students were met with kindness and warmth.
Later, among many activism events to raise awareness on campus, they successfully invited the well-known anti-apartheid rock music festival Voelvry to perform – resulting in accusations of extremism. “The so-called extremism was because of swearing,” she recalls and laughs at the absurdity. By then, the shebeens in Mamelodi had become her second classroom. This is where she hung out with local activists, who schooled her and many others in politics. She lost her Engineering bursary, and she suspects it was because of her involvement in anti-apartheid activities.
After completing a maths degree, which included a course in coding, she found a job at an NGO in Cape Town called the Community Education Computer Society. This further opened her eyes to confronting her own biases. “I had a lot of really interesting Muslim colleagues. That’s how I became aware of liberal Islam in South Africa.” There is a distant look in her eyes as she recalls commuting with taxis and buses, cruising through the Cape, and experiencing its local lekkers while sharing meals honouring Ramadan as well as random dinner invites.
She became an outreach worker for Sangonet, an organisation that introduced NGOs to the internet making Schoon something of an internet veteran now. These days she supervises students who study the internet and social media. But, at the beginning of the 90s, she would hop in and out of taxis, travelling to different organisations to teach people about the internet, laying the foundations of the new digital era.
The Media Training Forum of the Western Cape, where she was first exposed to filmmaking, was for people creating newspapers, community radio, and videos. One holiday, she volunteered at one of their member organisations, the Community Video Education Trust, investigating the exploitation of seasonal peach harvesters. This would be her first filmmaking project, and she loved it so much that she then decided to study Film & Video at Tshwane University of Technology for two years. She later worked for the Free Filmmakers in Joburg. “I worked with a lot of wonderful people like Teboho Mahlatsi (director of the TV series Yizo Yizo), Harriet Gavshon (producer of Savage Beauty), and Nic Hofmeyr (an award-winning cinematographer) – fantastic people,” she exclaims.
She then joined Kagiso Educational Television, where she worked for many years under the leadership of executive producer Coco Cachalia to tell stories about transforming South Africa and the role of education in social change. She has visited hundreds of places for her filmmaking, and she considers having worked with great people to be what has also inspired her, as well as being able to learn from other people’s stories – such that they shift your perspectives.
Looking back, she fondly remembers just how cool her friends were, with whom she learnt how to jazz dance. “Which was amazing! I don’t think I can do it anymore, though,” she said, laughing.
Schoon has spent the last 20 years teaching documentary filmmaking to students at Rhodes University and trying to share the lessons from her youth. She encourages students to look at the world with fresh eyes, to stand up for what is right and to find beauty and poetry in ordinary people’s lives. “I’m interested in the magic of everyday life and capturing the poetry of ordinary people’s experiences, she says. “Every day, you can go somewhere around the corner and encounter something other people don’t think is magical – but it is.”
Schoon directed and co-wrote with Hleze Kunju the award-winning documentary, Intellectual Giants of Eastern Cape, which is screened at international film festivals.
