”The first time I met Baby Tshepang, the waterworks just turned on,” says Clifford Bestall, co-producer of a BBC documentary on baby rape slammed by African National Congress MPs — until some saw it this week.
Bestall told parliamentarians what he discovered in making the film during public hearings on child abuse in March, saying the ”government is failing our children”. ANC MPs accused him of dragging South Africa’s image through the mud, ”grabbing pounds”, exploiting children for the titillation of overseas audiences and contributing to the rand’s decline.
That experience left him shaken: even today he says the most difficult part of making the documentary was dealing with Parliament.
Yet after The Dark Heart was shown at Parliament this week, the handful of MPs who turned up to see it were left weak-kneed by what was described as a reality check.
Now there is talk of having the documentary shown to the ANC parliamentary caucus and on national television. Earlier moves, including approaches to Deputy Speaker Baleka Mbete and the Film and Publications Board to block the film, seem forgotten.
Bestall is no stranger to documenting the dark side of South African life. His first film in 1998 dealt with family murders; others have dealt with police suicides and with Mandisi Mpengezi, the sole child protection unit detective in Khayelitsha township, jailed for nine years in 1998 for killing his daughter’s rapist.
Last year Bestall and co-producer Pearlie Joubert produced an award-winning documentary on numbers gangs and a rehabilitation project in Pollsmoor prison.
”One way of dealing with fear — rapists scare me — is to stare it in the face,” Bestall said, explaining his choice of theme. ”We sometimes work for the BBC, but we are South Africans, not guerrilla filmmakers. We film responsibly and accurately.”
The documentary offers no simple reasons for baby rape, but examines the effects of poverty, alcohol abuse, teenage motherhood, family instability, anger in a violence-prone society and the myth that HIV/Aids is cured by sex with a virgin.
”We are not saying it is one thing or another — it can be two or three factors superimposed,” Bestall said. ”What we are trying to do is say to the audience: ‘Think about it.”’
The documentary centres on nine-month-old Baby Tshepang — for whose rape the mother’s ex-boyfriend, David Potse, was jailed for life — and Baby Joko, an eight-month-old snatched from her parents’ bed in Elsies River on the Cape Flats.
None of the children is fully shown on camera and no close relatives are identified by their real names. This is in contrast to some news reports at the time of Baby Joko’s rape.
The SABC’s Special Assignment was initially interested in buying the documentary, but now seems to be changing its mind. It has raised questions about whether 30% of South Africans really believe in the ”virgin-cleansing” myth, as claimed in the film. The figure was based on a presentation to another parliamentary committee at last year’s public hearings on violence against women and children.
On October 1 the BBC, dropping the original title An Evil So Vile, will broadcast The Dark Heart.
The Dark Heart was the title used when the film was shown at the recent South African International Documentary Festival in Cape Town and Johannesburg.