ANDREW WORSDALE reports on Ties of Blood, a new TV documentary
NIGHT after night television viewers are subjected to a barrage of material about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So why make a 40-minute documentary about the guilt and violence of the past? Ties of Blood, which flights on SABC3 at 8.15pm on December 16 (a day redolent with differing symbolic associations for South Africans), is not the usual tearjerking reportage.
Commissioned by SABC3’s Christa Joubert, produced by Mark Newman of Phakati Films, written by ex-Mail & Guardian journalist Philip Van Niekerk and directed by Brenda Goldblatt; the documentary is a refreshingly unsentimental take on the process of reconciliation.
Earlier this week I watched a first cut of the film while Goldblatt, Van Niekerk and editor Christine Hodges rushed to meet their deadline. Despite the pressure, they seemed happy about the documentary.
Said Goldblatt: “It’s not a conventional piece about who’s right or wrong. If you’re going to deal with reconciliation things aren’t all hunky dory. People are not that willing to forgive. We struggled with the subject and tried to come up with an approach that’s honest and fresh.”
Initially intended as an exposure of different families subjected to the rigours of apartheid, the documentary took on a new shape as filming progressed; the result is a work that doesn’t shy from the horrors of the past. Also, it mercifully avoids an idealistic Simunye type of togetherness; instead it is a rather sad and realistic reflection of what our nation has done to itself.
Appropriately enough, the programme begins at Blood River, where, as Goldblatt says, “we can trace all our warrior traditions to, even Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) was founded on December 16, 1961.” The Afrikaner nation’s reverence for what was originally known as the Dingaan’s Day should never be underestimated. Says Constand Viljoen in the film: “It will forever be a symbol for the Afrikaner people and if you allow Blood River to be taken away from the Afrikaner people then we will disintegrate.”
The film-makers found humble farmer Johannes Nkosi near the historical site of bloody conflict. At the end of the film Nkosi remarks, “I wake up very, very happy every morning!” He bears no bitterness about the past and has only hope for the future.
Another of the documentary’s strengths is the way it exposes how difficult healing the scars of the past can be. Wilhelm Verwoerd, Stellenbosch University philosophy lecturer, Hendrik’s grandson and one of the film’s most interesting interviewees says: “Sometimes I don’t even want to use the word reconciliation because I think it becomes cheap. I think people just use it too easily … we’ll have to deal with these issues, so that helps me not to believe inthe sort of quick fix, microwave picture of reconciliation.” Scriptwriter van Niekerk agrees: “Reconciliation can’t be forced, it can’t be done by committee and that’s what the film says.”
I asked Goldblatt if the film wasn’t guilty of Afrikaner-bashing? “Not at all,” she replied. “We’re trying to air the sense of despair and the Afrikaners do have a sense of being bashed right now. They’ve been attacked psychologically.”
The documentary remains distinctly non- judgmental — even in its profile of murderers Paul Van Vuuren and Jacques Hechter who’ve applied for amnesty for killing 43 people. Says Hechter on camera: “I have no right to ask to be forgiven. If I get amnesty it is purely out of the forgiving consciousness of the people of South Africa. It is not a right.”
Van Vuuren feels differently and firmly believes he did nothing wrong. At the time, he asserts, they were fighting a legitimate war. This point is, ironically enough, underscored by ex- MK cadre Thula Bophela: “We shouldn’t maybe get too moral about acts of war; war is not moral. Like when you are in a plane and you have to bomb a city, the bombs can fall on a hospital.”
Shot on Betacam by Peter Baker, the documentary is a mix of talking heads, archival footage and elegiac imagery. “The style,” says Goldblatt, “is almost photographic. We tried to allow things to happen within the frame.”
Ties of Blood is an important film that doesn’t use its issues as a soap-box or news- room piece, it refuses to kowtow to the conventional idea of a rainbow nation and peels off a layer to look at the deeper issues haunting the country.
Ties of Blood is on SABC3 at 8.15pm on December 16