A man for all seasons
Sue de Groot met Ian Roberts to talk about ‘Die Windpomp’ — but they talk about lots of other stuff instead
ACTOR. Writer. Director. Musician. Sailor. Cook. Linguist. Mystic. “In order to survive, a South African actor must be a Portuguese market garden,” says Ian Roberts.
Not every market garden has a voice that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up though, which is what Roberts’s haunting rendition of Suikerbos does. His band, the Radio Kalahari Orkes (aka RKO), has made South Africans of all ages and races fall in love with a type of boeremusiek which, says Roberts, “is not even slightly mainstream”.
Also in the band is Rian Malan, who adapted songs by Davie de Lange for RKO album Die Nagloper. “Davie de Lange was born in 1905 and was dead and buried at the age of 42,” says Roberts, “but what a wealth of lyrics he left. He ripped off American ragtime and was banned by the SABC. No one had invented such music before him, and no one would have done it after, except Rian rediscovered it and buckled it to kwela. It was the first time De Lange’s music had been played since 1947. Now the strange thing is that he was born in Stockenstrom, just 15km from where I was born.”
Roberts grew up on a citrus farm in the foothills of the Katberg mountains near Fort Beaufort. His grandfather, who came from sturdy Welsh stock, survived the Great Depression in the 1930s by keeping bees. “Cadbury’s in PE would run out of sugar, and my grandfather would send them wagonloads of honey.”
He dabs his eyes as he tells the story of shooting a TV show in the Katberg. “We were holding auditions and this old man came along, very traditional, with the meerkat tail on his belt. He spoke to me in Xhosa and he said: ‘I’m not here to audition. I want to know if your grandfather was Daniel Roberts.’ I said he was, and the old man said: ‘I ran the honey farm for him. I came to tell you your grandfather was a great man.’ Sjoe. You have never heard such quiet on a film set.”
His father, he says, was equally impressive. “Llewellyn McDonald Roberts. What a gent. He wouldn’t ask questions unless they were necessary. I’d come home from boarding school and the next day, without me having to even beg, a guy would arrive on a tractor with a trailer. He’d drop me and my friends — all Xhosa speakers — in the bush and we would camp for three weeks, hunting hasies and dassies and birds. I couldn’t kill a bird now, I love them too much, but that is where I learnt to cook.”
His cooking skills have been useful during hard times. “My children can tell you what recipes I invented when we had no money. I make an excellent risotto with Glenryck sardines in tomato sauce.”
Roberts has been acting professionally since 1979 and has made all sorts of films. “Some are good and some are so bad they make me want to puke,” he says. He is pleased with Die Windpomp, which hits local cinemas this week.
“I had made a decision not to do another low-budget movie, but I read the script and liked it, so I broke that vow and took a chance on a first-time director. We didn’t get paid a lot but we were treated well and given our own caravans to rest in. It is unusual for actors in SA to feel pampered like that.”
As an actor, he says he is sometimes driven to argue with the director, but when roles are reversed he tries to be the sort of director who listens. In Everyman’s Taxi, a spoof on the music industry, he was everything. “I worked with people who had never acted before. We messed around and I had fun even while being in charge of it all.”
Roberts lives in Joburg but keeps his beloved MacGregor yacht at Kenton-on-Sea, where he is making a film with partner Barbara Jeanne Snell. “It started as a crazy idea for a cooking show,” he says, “but it has turned into the story of a dream in which I sail my boat up the river to eat with the ghosts of Portuguese sailors. It’s a mad, fictitious thing, but based on historical truth.”
Also in their sights is a drama about rhino poaching, focusing on dispossessed people paid to do the killing. “I like women’s eyes,” Roberts says of his collaboration with Snell. “I like the way they see things, the unmanliness of their interpretation. We have no budget but we can shoot on very little. We do things in total guerilla style. On the Eastern Cape film it’s just us and Mad Norman, who we have trained to be a cameraman. Down there they call him Abnorman.”
He has been in the business for 35 years but when he speaks of his plans you can see the boy from Fort Beaufort about to have an adventure. “Barbara Jeanne and I are like babies with a toy when we have a new script. We spent quite a lot on Everyman’s Taxi and only got some of it back, but we keep going.”
He pauses, blue eyes distant, and says in a perfect American accent: “There might be more money for actors in the US, but I don’t want to be an American.” Returning to his own voice, he says forcefully: “I want to compete with the Americans in drama. The stories are here, and we must tell them.” LS
RKO will play at 1pm on April 27 in the Voortrekker Monument Nature Reserve, Pretoria. Tickets R120 at the gate. For the full lineup, go to www.parkacoustics.co.za.