Last night (16th April) was the world premiere of the documentary “1994 The Bloody Miracle”. The event was appropriately held at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton and the documentary later aired on eNCA at 19:30.
The documentary is beautiful but like our country and it’s history it is filled with contradictions,and it is how you handle or accept those contradictions that determine your relationship to the material. Let's dig in.
The sales pitch of 1994 The Bloody Miracle is that it looks into the last year of apartheid, the bloody conflict that came with the birth of the new dawn of SA and how the momentous 1994 elections almost never happened.
Directed by the Meg Rickards and the Dutchman Bert Haitsma ,who is also responsible for some stunning camera work as the Director of Photography. There are many things that work for the sales pitch - and against it.
Let’s start with what works ... the photography and editing is stunning. There’s some beautiful aerial and drone shots in this documentary that are amazing. Not just in “wow that looks pretty” only way, but in the technical brilliance of their execution.
Some of the shots almost give an other-wordly feel to our country whilst some help you move into the hostel and navigate your way around, just brilliant. Catherine Meyburgh, yes she of Yizo-Yizo fame, is a master in letting the edits be unobtrusive, letting emotions and speakers have their impact without feeling rushed nor the archives take away the impact of the interviews.
Hats off to Boondogle, the production company that worked with Sabido for trekking down the foot soldiers on both sides of the conflict and to hear their first hand account of the matter.
People like Daluxolo “Mayhem” Luthuli , who was sent by the ANC to infiltrate the IFP and then became an IFP warlord only to defect back to the ANC when the killing got too much, have harrowing truths to say which, predictably, the leaders do not own up to.
Some stuff is well known within black communities, especially those who lived through the 90’s. The third force element, collusion between the apartheid forces and IFP, the right wing threats.
Then there’s some newish info that comes out like the planned kidnapping of the ANC leadership that involved Jonas Savimbi (of Angola), SA military intelligence and Afrikaaner right wingers. Then there’s the possible ANC collaboration with state apparatus in the violence too.
So there are some interesting interviewees with right wingers, warlords and fallen heroes such as Jacob Zuma and company. Yet there’s a tension at the heart of the documentary, which comes from the fact that you have a white South African telling a story about SA’s recent history. I felt that she and her co-director failed to take the white perspective out of their view within this documentary.
Let me elaborate. There are many occasions in the documentary where white suffering and death is given more credence and prominence than necessary. Like the young girl who talks about her AWB father and the Saint James Church massacre is given way too much screen time.
The Afrikaaner right wing is somehow humanized more and we get more of a perspective from those characters and their anguish … it's actually quite telling that the film ends with Constand Viljoen walking down a farm in the new South Africa. A documentary talking about one of SA’s bloodiest chapters ends on a white man somehow fitting in well in the new South Africa!?
Whilst Boipatong is hardly touched on, nor the plight of many of those who lived through the 90’s who lost families, limbs and are still waiting for their share of the promised joys of freedom continue outside the scope of the film.
At the screening there was a poignant moment when a mama, who's partly deaf now, spoke about how she lost a son to the struggle and how her other son was shot by the army and is now blind. She was beaten by the army, hence her partial deafness, yet in this new South Africa no reparations have not been made to people like her who live and suffer today due to the injustices that occurred through the apartheid state.
Letlapa Mphahlele, of the PAC, who was also at the screening, touched on the point of how the freedom struggle movements were branded as terrorist and the documentary does not own up to the fact that the apartheid state used terrorism against the black population and freedom struggle.
I believe these are things that white South Africa are still struggling to come to terms with and there are moments of blatant manipulation whereby the film makers want us to feel sorry and identify with white victimhood at the expense of the greater context of what is happening. The treatment of the Bop uprising is just a case in point for me.
Alas, although 1994 The Bloody Miracle is very insightful, it may be shot beautifully and with some wonderful interviews, 20 years into democracy it just goes to show we still struggle to be honest with our own history, perceptions of the history and the many truths that exist.
The truth is out there but alas it is also mediated by the author or creator of the artwork. Although the guys tried to make 1994 The Bloody Miracle a balanced and insightful take on recent history, the scales are still unequally tipped towards a white revisionist view of this history and for me that is a problem.
Rating ***
*junk **almost bearable ***now we cooking ****almost perfect *****classic ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++