TELEVISION: Hazel Friedman
‘HOW can one forget or forgive when the distrust lies so deep?” This is one of the many questions posed by Beauty (Mama) Mkhize, one of the central protagonists in award- winning producer Barbara Volscher’s Chronicles of Change, a documentary series to be screened weekly on SABC3 from March 18.
Divided into five parts examining social transformation through the diaries of five South Africans, Chronicles of Change’s subjects include an Afrikaans teacher from a conservative background, who becomes the housemaster at a black hostel; the issue of affirmative action; the shadowy world of young muggers; and the achievements of an activist- turned policewoman.
Sounds disturbingly like a variation on Ghetto Diaries or Ordinary People. But apart from certain similarities in format and theme, Chronicles of Change succeeds in providing another, equally resonant, perspective on a country that has yet to be exorcised of its past demons.
The struggle to forgive is the thematic fulcrum of Mama Mkhize, the story of a rural woman whose husband, Driefontein community leader Saul Mkhize, was murdered by a policemen in 1983, at a meeting to resist the forced removal of the community.
The diary begins: “More lives have been lost over land than any other struggle”, and proceeds to document the intertwined sagas of the Driefontein land battle and Mkhize’s grief over her husband’s death, leading to her subsequent role as a community activist and officer of the Mpumalanga Parliament.
Exquisitely filmed against a perennial golden backdrop, Chronicles of Change infuses its protagonists with an irridescent, almost iconic quality. At times the camera focuses on the more sentimental aspects of the story at the expense of its narrative flow. But the issues are unavoidably emotional, and to reduce their layers to a single thread would be to oversimplify them.
Chronicles of Change is essential viewing, at a time when emotions are running high over the truth commission and ongoing controversy over land restitution. But as the story of Mama Mkhize demonstrates, commissions and courts, while helping to redress the injustices of the past, can never completely erase them.
Chronicles of Change is on SABC3 every Monday at 9.40pm