Abstract

This article becomes a means to analyse the South African film Mapantsula (1988) and the regulatory state practices governing its dissemination in late-apartheid. The article is used to argue that this film and the South African case is instructive, suggesting that—and this is not necessarily a characteristic of neoliberalism—relatively peaceful transition means that there is an interstitial period where the regulatory disposition of the outgoing regime shapes the regulatory disposition of the regime that follows. This raises questions about whether or not real transformation is possible in film regulation but also other regulatory state practices when the remnants of regulatory state practices like the practices of the white supremacist apartheid state have survived as the old governors got to keep their heads even when they lost their jobs.