John Green on his involvement in filming assignments in South Africa in the 1970s to help bring the abhorrent practices of the apartheid regime to world attention
The heroic exploits of the London Recruits, who entered South Africa incognito to distribute leaflets on behalf of the ANC has been given belatedly but most deservedly wide publicity through the book by Ken Keable and the film of the same name made about their exploits.
What is still scarcely acknowledged today is the significant contribution made by countries in the socialist bloc, particularly the Soviet Union and the GDR in the struggle to end apartheid. I was able to play a very small part in that struggle.
Under the auspices of GDR television, comrades from West Germany and Britain collaborated on filming assignments in South Africa over several years to help bring the abhorrent practices of the apartheid regime to world attention. They were sent on several assignments by GDR television to document what was happening on the ground in South Africa and in Namibia (then under South African rule). The resultant documentaries now lie gathering dust in German archives.
It shouldn’t be forgotten, that throughout the apartheid period, the South African regime was given tacit if not overt support in the West, including West Germany. Only the socialist countries gave full support to the anti-apartheid struggle.
Through these films, we wanted to show what the apartheid system meant in practice, how it divided people on the basis of race and ruined lives, and how the white minority regime oppressed and exploited the black majority on a daily basis, using Nazi-inspired racial laws and brute force. We also wanted to show how resistance to this oppression was growing among the black population, allied with a few progressive white citizens.
The film we made on Namibia was used by the then UN High Commissioner for Namibia, and later Nobel peace prize winner, Sean McBride, to show the world what was taking place and how SWAPO was waging a justified liberation struggle. No other TV company had addressed the illegal occupation of Namibia.
In1948, the ruling National Party was elected to power in South Africa and had assumed control and imposed apartheid on Namibia, then known as South West Africa. During the 20th century, uprisings and demands for political representation resulted in the UN assuming direct responsibility over the territory in 1966, but South Africa maintained de facto rule until 1973, when the UN recognized the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) as the official representative of the Namibian people.
I and my colleagues filmed in Southern Africa on several occasions, first in 1970 as well as in occupied Mozambique and white-ruled Southern Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then called. We filmed in Namibia in 1974, when we documented the resistance movement spearheaded by SWAPO. We also filmed in Mozambique during its bitter war with the South African financed Renamo terrorist organization, and again in Rhodesia, during the last days of Ian Smith’s regime during its bitter battles with the guerrilla liberation forces of ZANU and ZAPU. We were in South Africa again in 1983 during the rising resistance of the indigenous population and the emergence of the United Democratic Front, after the brutal suppression of the ANC. Before embarking on our assignments, we liaised closely with the ANC and SWAPO offices in London and were given safe contacts inside the country.
We had to travel under the guise of tourists, although the mountain of luggage we took, containing numerous cans of film stock, tape, a 16mm camera and tape recorder, clearly indicated that we were not tourists. If questioned, we said we were there to film the wildlife and making a travel film for TV. In those days, though, the regime was so cocksure of itself, that almost any white visitor was deemed to be beyond suspicion, so customs checks were cursory.
Inside the country, of course, police surveillance was ubiquitous, but again was largely preoccupied with logging black infringements, not white behaviour. What made filming very difficult, though, was that whites were forbidden from entering black townships without special permission and any white person talking with a black person immediately raised suspicion unless it was clearly in a master-servant situation.
In was not long during our stay before the police became suspicious of our movements. Someone from the regime, pretending to be a representative of Visa card, rang up our office in London to check whether we were who we said we were.
For our following assignment in South Africa, I was obliged to change my name and obtain a new passport, as our first film had been shown on GDR TV and had been duly noted by the South African regime.
It was illegal to film prison buildings, but we were able to obtain good shots from the top floor of our hotel in Johannesburg and in Pretoria, here we filmed the prison out of the car; we had hung curtains in the back windows to prevent anyone looking in and seeing us with a camera. With the help of activists in the UDF, we also managed to enter the docks where boats took family members of political prisoners to Robben Island on the rare visits that were allowed. We just swept past the black sentry, without stopping, as if we had permission; he was reticent to create a fuss as the car contained only whites. We were also able to film the Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, located on a hill in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai where Mandela was held after his release from Robben Island. Needless to say, if we had been caught filming, it could have cost us dear.
I detail here just one very moving incident during our filming, to give a flavour of our work. In 1983, we were working closely with trade unionists, members of Cosatu, in East London where we had been interviewing some leading figures. We were unable to meet them in Mdantsane where they lived. Mdantsane was a large black township situated several kilometers outside East London. In July, at the time we were there, there was a bus boycott on – workers were boycotting the white-owned bus companies because of an imposed 11% fare rise, obliging workers to walk or take trains, but the latter were now even more overcrowded than beforehand.
We wished to film the daily journey which most African workers had to take from their townships to their workplaces. As the township was located 15km outside East London most of the workers had to take buses to get to work.
Although state repression in in the area had already left several dead, dozens wounded and hundreds in detention, the highly politicised workers conducted their struggle with confidence, courage and a high degree of unity and cohesion.
The local trade union leaders had told us to come to the train station at dawn, when we would be able to film the workers departing for work.
It was forbidden for whites to enter the black townships, but the station was located just outside. We got up at the crack of dawn and drove to the outskirts of the township, parking our car some distance away, and carried our film equipment to the station. The sun had hardly risen and there were still stars twinkling in the grey sky, but from all around, like lines of worker ants, workers were already streaming towards the station.
We joined one of the groups and went with them onto the already over-crowded platform, where we were met by one of our trade union friends. This was a ‘blacks only’ area, so we were the only whites to be seen and thus easily recognised. The workers, though, just ignored us. That is something every black person in South Africa learns very quickly: don’t get involved in white affairs, just ignore what they are doing.
The platform was densely packed, and we could barely move but everyone made space for us. When the train pulled in, there was a sudden push to get on board. The carriages were soon crammed. Those who could not get inside hung on to door handles or railings on the outside of the train.
While we began filming, our trade union colleagues were moving up and down the platform talking to the people, telling them that we were foreign journalists covering their struggle. Within minutes a wave of beautiful choral singing came towards us like a tidal wave along the platform. Everyone waiting as well as those already inside the train carriages began singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, the song that became the ANC anthem. Those in the carriages gave clenched fist salutes on upraised arms poking out of the windows as those uplifting words and that defiant, rousing melody rose in volume as if from a massed cathedral choir. As the train pulled away from the station, the singing continued, fading slowly into the distance. This whole scene sent a tingling down my back and brought tears to my eyes. Impossible to describe. It was hardly credible that this singing was spontaneous. How could such a random mass of people sing in perfect unison without rehearsal? It certainly conveyed the fact that they were united and undefeatable.
We were thrilled at the images we had captured and made a quick getaway back to the car with our precious footage safely packed in our bag. But some informer must have seen us and tipped off the police. When we left our hotel the next morning on another filming assignment, we were met in the car park by a plain clothes officer of the security service. He politely introduced himself, showed his officer ID and asked us what we were doing in South Africa. We mumbled something about seeing the sites and photographing the wildlife. He remained straight-faced and simply told us to be careful what we did and then went back to his car. This was a subtle warning that we had been tagged and from now on would have to watch every step we took. The reader can imagine what would have happened if a ‘communist’ TV crew had been exposed, working illegally in South Africa.
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Photo: Crossroads Squatters Camp near Cape Town, 1982/UN Photo/x/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
