Matthew Krouse Down the tube
`On February 11, 1990, the eyes of the world fixed on a prison in Cape Town,” begins the narration of Mandela: The First Accused, referring to the release of the man who was once the world’s most famous political prisoner.
“The man behind the name remained a mystery,” it continues. “Who had he become in the long years away? Could he live up to all the expectations? The last steps of his walk to freedom had begun.”
It’s a documentary proposing to be the latest and greatest look at Nelson Mandela. A last glimpse at the daddy of daddies before his long walk takes him back to the village in Qunu from whence he came. Watching it, no South African who has been conscious through the last decade will be able to retain a safe distance – it’s a real tug at the heart strings.
“My Lord, I am the first accused,” Mandela said at the Rivonia trial, just before his shatteringly famous conclusion that he had fought all forms of domination and was prepared to die for his ideals. It is this self- accusation that gives part one – to be shown on SABC3 at 9pm on June 20 – of the two-hour long documentary its theme.
Somehow in the life of Mandela there is always a special synergy at play. While he landed in the dock as the first accused, in his early life he gained the nickname Rolihlahla meaning “a shaker of trees” (that is, troublemaker). Friends, admirers and fellow freedom fighters tell well-worn anecdotes that have achieved almost mythical status. More than just the story of one man, it seems the documentary was a moment for the elderly people who’ve encountered him to express in what manner his stardust had been sprinkled on their lives.
Watching it, one feels quite sorry for them, the ageing activist community (who really don’t need one’s sympathy because, in life, they’ve achieved what they set out to do). Somehow, though, what started as a proverbial “movement of the people” seems to have been reduced to the story of just one man.
A man who started out serving tea in a law firm and who, way back in the 1950s, predicted that he would be the first president of a united South Africa.
In form, the two-part documentary hinges its narrative on the testimony of some 40 talking heads. Early on, one begins to despair. This is needless though, because this is one of the rare instances in which an abundance of first-hand accounts functions well.
Everyone seems to be represented, from Chief Anderson Joy of Mandela’s clan to former head of intelligence Niel Barnard. The only one absent, as other critics have observed, is Winnie Mandela, who obviously didn’t give the project her blessing. Yet she is there in colour, in black and white, in berets and in braids. Fascinatingly, at the wedding her father said their marriage would be “no bed of roses”, and that seems to have set the pace for her life.
Veteran of over 50 documentaries, director Clifford Bestall has made a work that everyone should record for generations to come. There’ll only be one Mandela – and this documentary is a fitting tribute, as our quaint status as his children finally comes to its end.