This is the story of an ambush. At 5 am on 3rd March 1986, police surrounded Crossroads in Guguletu, Cape Town, as ‘terrorists’ planned to attack the 7.25 am police bus. However, the bus safely passes, the terrorists are sighted and, in as many minutes, seven young men lie dead. Ten years later, the tale…
Aimed at Black people, this film is an indication of the way its authors saw the intended audience. lies in the patronising metaphors used. The film is pregnant with fear of the arrival of Blacks in urban areas. The fantasy which informs the film soon reveals itself overtly: ‘Sometimes it may not even be necessary…
John Citizen, white and Afrikaans, is introduced to a panoply of State aparatuses at his disposal – the departments of Water, Pensions, Works, Labour, even SAA. The ideas, like the music, are brutally spliced, the lack of subtlety is revealing. In describing the work of Native Affairs the voice-over is at its most euphemistic. Mrs…
The Furiosus explores the tortured story of Dimitri Tsafendas, assassin of Hendrik Verwoerd. Declared by a judge to be a madman—‘a Furiosus’ in Roman law—Tsafendas spent 28 years on death row. Produced as if giving evidence before the TRC, the director becomes the attorney in the trial that never was, arguing that Tsafendas had raged…