first met Richard Ishmail in 1987 in Johannesburg on the Education Support Programme, a service organisation providing learning support for standard 9 and 10 pupils from township schools — in chaos as apartheid was beginning to crumble. Ishmail entered and turned it upside down. With his legendary energy and vision, he declared our subjects too pedestrian — too “Christian National Education”. “We need to be redefining education,” he said. The project moved from Wits campus to the townships and new subjects were introduced: media studies, sex education, communication skills and political studies, in many ways forerunners of the new curriculum we have today, but revolutionary at the time.
Ishmail was born in Kliptown, Johannesburg, in 1963. He seemed not to see colour; not that he did not have an incisive understanding of the politics of race, he just spoke to everyone as an individual.
As quickly as he appeared and injected this inspiration and creative energy into our work, he disappeared. We learned later that he’d gone underground into a highly effective ANC MK unit in the Western Cape and emerged a respected cadre.
Sunday, about 5pm: I pulled up outside Ishmail’s house in Woodstock and the police were there. Vernie Cupido, a dear friend who Ishmail had spoken of, introduced himself. He told of how he found Ishmail in bed as if asleep — then he discovered blood in the bathroom and stab wounds in Ishmail’s stomach. Ishmail lay there under the blankets for hours, alone, with the life force bleeding from his body.
He should not have been alone. Although fiercely independent, Ishmail was never on his own. His charisma meant he always had people travelling with him.
Ishmail’s first venture after his MK unit disbanded in 1992 was as coordinator of the Film Resource Unit (FRU). Established in 1986, the FRU was a community video library established to disseminate banned and anti-apartheid films. Richard made the FRU happen. He plotted a vision for the unit, later implemented by Mike Dearham, which turned the FRU into a powerful NGO distributing African films and running successful audience development programmes that continue across the country and in the SADC region to this day.
At the time, I was coordinator of the yearling Community Video School — later to become the Newtown Film and Television School. Ishmail and I worked closely together, aware of our weighty responsibility in leading and shaping two “new South African” organisations in uncertain but exciting times. We mentored, challenged and supported each other and, in the process, we became close friends.
Sunday, about 6.30pm: The words of poet Keorapetse Kgotsitsile hang heavily on my mind as we sit at Groote Schuur Hospital. “The present is a dangerous place to live.” We try to see Ishmail. “Only family members.” (But we are family.) How do we contact them? No one knows. How is that possible? A number for his sister, Patricia, comes in from Kim Dearham via a friend living in Ireland. We phone Ishmail’s family. They arrive to be at his side.
Through his work at the FRU and later with United International Pictures and Sithengi (the film market he was instrumental in setting up), Richard catalysed many important film industry initiatives and shaped the policy landscape for film that we have today. He was part of the first South African delegation to Fespaco, the biannual pan-African film festival in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso. Through this and other festivals and conferences he attended, meaningful and lasting connections with filmmakers from across Africa, Europe and Latin-America were made. We started seeing the films of the late (Uncle) Lionel Ngakane, Haile Gerima, Gaston Kabore and others legally licensed on home ground for the first time.
After Sithengi, Ishmail opened Off‒Moroka Café in Adderly Street. Another immediate hit. It was quickly frequented by artists, parliamentarians and all sorts. Ishmail’s infectious creativity extended to the menu — he invented and tested all the recipes himself using only local ingredients. There was the Neeoooly Seawth Efriken and the home-made ANC Cocktail: mint liqueur, orange juice and black sambuca.
Last year, he became chief executive of the Big Issue and was the brain behind last year’s Homeless Soccer World Cup.
Wednesday, Jozi, about midnight: I wake up with a hangover. I have been dreaming that Rich and I were having one of our whiskeyed creative arguments. I am angry with him, just as I was when he once said, “I am going to die young.” I remember, too, he sometimes expressed regret that he did not stop to start a family.
Wednesday, Cape Town: The decision is taken to unplug the life support machine, but Ishmail dies on his own before they can do so, just after his family arrived — his final statement of independence.
Shine on my dear, dear friend, my mentor, my colleague, my brother. Your legacy lives on!
Richard Ishmail was born on March 1 1963 and died on January 9 2007
Dorothy Brislin is the executive officer of distribution for the Film Resource Unit