He’s blown up buildings in the name of justice and partied with Clint Eastwood.
But Patrick Chamusso — the former rebel fighter who inspired the current Hollywood political thriller Catch a Fire — insists he’s an ordinary guy happiest tending to Aids orphans in the dusty hills near South Africa’s Kruger National Park.
”They like me in Hollywood,” said Chamusso with a boisterous laugh, at his modest home in north-eastern South Africa. ”In Los Angeles I was in the Four Seasons eating breakfast by the pool, but that isn’t my life; this is my life here with these kids.”
Once an apolitical father and husband, Chamusso was beaten and tortured after the apartheid government wrongly accused him of sabotage. Incensed by the injustice of white rule, he left his family and became a guerrilla fighter code-named ”Hotstuff”.
But his audacious attempt to blow up a key refinery went wrong and Chamusso was jailed, alongside anti-apartheid heroes Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.
He was released in 1992, when, after beatings, torture and a decade behind bars, a lesser man might have opted for a quiet retirement with a comfortable house and posh car.
Not Chamusso. He moved to an impoverished rural village and spent his special pension on a home for orphans — becoming a hero twice over.
”What’s the point of living an easy life if all the people around you are suffering?” he asked in an interview in his poky office, plastered with pictures of the children he cares for.
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Catch a Fire — written by the daughter of anti-apartheid stalwart Joe Slovo and directed by Phillip Noyce, whose previous films include Patriot Games — has already opened in the United States and premieres in South Africa next week.
Chamusso, who is played by Derek Luke, said he was disappointed when he first met the cast and crew.
”I thought Philip looked like a farmer, not a director, and I didn’t know this guy Derek Luke — I wanted someone like Denzel Washington or Wesley Snipes,” he chuckled. ”Tim Robbins was much too handsome to be the police officer, but when I saw them all in their roles I changed my mind.”
During a trip to the US to promote the film, Chamusso partied with Clint Eastwood and Ricki Lake, ate breakfast with Morgan Freeman and watched baseball with Robbins.
He loved the attention and the glamour, but said his years in jail instilled the importance of serving others, and compares the struggle against HIV — which is ravaging Southern Africa — with the battle against apartheid.
Chamusso (57) and his wife Conney care for 14 children. They found foster homes for another 90 youngsters in the village, who visit their house daily for food, bible classes and to use the shiny bicycles donated by the film’s production company.
He hopes Catch a Fire, which won critical acclaim in the US and was even tipped for an Oscar nomination, will not be dismissed as just another anti-apartheid film.
”It has a message of forgiveness,” said Chamusso, who still sees his torturers in the town near his home. ”If other countries could offer the kind of leadership we produced the whole of Africa, and even the whole world, would be a better place.” — Reuters