Not about apartheid

Rating: 8/10 (10 February 2010)

Some people who've seen District 9 conclude that it's an allegory of sorts about apartheid. I certainly haven't had the opportunity to ask the writer or director, but I suspect it's about something else.
For quite a few years now, South Africa has had an influx or economic refugees from Zimbabwe, Congo, and other nearby states. Blacks, almost more than whites, have become very upset, accusing these people of taking away jobs, boosting the crime rate (which is already bad enough), and generally being too culturally "different." There have been calls to isolate them, remove them, etc.
This is the predicament the movie takes off from, I think. People in South Africa must get a real shock of recognition during the scenes where locals attack the aliens, kill them, burn their shanties, etc. It's also interesting to see the portrayal of MNU: the arms makers and dealers and gaggle of mercenaries left over from the apartheid days, coming back in mega-corporate form to haunt the successor, black-majority regime, perhaps even dominate it.
So this isn't an "allegory" about a bygone time. It's a very contemporary, "what kind of a country are we becoming?" film, full of disillusionment at what's happened to the hopefulness of the early post-apartheid days.