Resistance documentaries in post-apartheid South Africa: Dear Mandela (Kell and Nizza, 2012) and Miners Shot Down (Desai, 2014)

Abstract

During apartheid, a documentary film movement emerged, capturing ordinary people taking on the oppressive government and the exploitative capitalist industry. People were shown at work and in their communities organizing strikes, protesting against repression, and being subjected to violence. This grassroots film movement, which has been described as a cinema of resistance, served as a tool to educate viewers, document violence and inequality, and mobilize support against the apartheid regime. Two decades after the end of apartheid, a similar set of resistance films has begun to emerge – with the difference that these films are holding the democratically elected government accountable. These documentaries give voice to the disenfranchised masses for whom the multiracial democracy has not brought substantial change. The African National Congress-led government has sanctioned actions echoing those that occurred under apartheid, including forced removals and the massacre of protestors.Two films, Dear Mandela (Kell and Nizza, 2012) and Miners Shot Down (Desai, 2014), capture this and are indicative of a new wave of resistance documentaries.

Documentary film politics and the politics of documentary film

“…In an article entitled "Resistance documentaries in post-apartheid South Africa: Dear Mandela (Kell & Nizza, 2012) and Miners Shot Down )", Moyer- Duncan (2019), drawing on Tomaselli (1987), Steenveld (1992), Unwin and Belton (1992) and Maingard (1995), points at a comparison between the anti-apartheid films "protesting against conditions and being subjected to violence by the apartheid regime" (48) and the two films she selected for her study, both made approximately two decades after the transition to a democratic country. She expands on the films, contrasting those that were hastily-produced, often under clandestine conditions, such as Come Back Africa (1959), Let My People Go (1961) and Last Grave at Dimbaza (1974), with later films such as Mayfair (1984), Compelling Vision (1987 and Fruits of Defiance (1994), before mentioning the conditions under which contemporary resistance films are made.…”

“…She expands on the films, contrasting those that were hastily-produced, often under clandestine conditions, such as Come Back Africa (1959), Let My People Go (1961) and Last Grave at Dimbaza (1974), with later films such as Mayfair (1984), Compelling Vision (1987 and Fruits of Defiance (1994), before mentioning the conditions under which contemporary resistance films are made. Moyer-Duncan (2019) states that such films are no longer made in secret, and that the makers have more money available to produce the films. She points to another important shift, in that the earlier narratives were mostly produced from a white liberal perspective, using stereotypical apartheid imagery and a narration delivered by a strong white English voice which also, according to Maingard (1995), enforced the representation of "all black South Africans as victims and all white South Africans as oppressors 1 ".…”