Africa Film WebMeeting

Message from: Steve Smith (SteveSmith@XC.Org)
About: FW: Anti-Apartheid films

Tue, 15 Sep 1998 09:57:15 -0400

  • Next message: Michelle Flowers: "Gloria Rolando"
    Xposted from H-AFRLITCINE@H-NET.MSU.EDU
    X Posted from H-NET List for African History <H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
    Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998
    From: David Coplan, University of the Witwatersrand
    <031DAVID@muse.wits.ac.za>

    Interesting how quickly just about everyone I know of here stopped =
    showing
    those "struggle films". The ANC government aired a great deal of =
    "suffering
    victims" footage over the SATV up until 1997, Not so much as an =
    exercise in
    "lest we forget" but perhaps to remind people of the burdens they =
    carried
    into government. This began to fall away as the Truth and =
    Reconciliation
    Commission hearings and reports gained momentum, but while the TRC was, =
    on
    balance an admirable success, one important respect in which they =
    failed
    from the point of view of the Comission itself was that virtually no =
    white
    people ever watched them. Now there's just the clips from the =
    remaining
    amnesty hearings on the =BD hour nightly news, and that's how we learn =
    that
    Craig Williamson callously murdered Ruth First (Slovo). Otherwise we =
    have
    altogether shifted to the present rather than the past sufferings of =
    our
    long-suffering people, and the roots of these conditions in the =
    apartheid
    past are very seldom publicly mentioned anymore. Thanks to Michigan =
    State
    for keeping the nostalgia of a by-gone moral certainty available on =
    video.
    Perhaps one day our children will look at them.

    ---
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