Despite a dearth of locally made feature films in the past year, the South African film industry is being buoyed by comparatively low production costs that attract foreign films and commercials. And the glitter-dust from Tsotsi’s Oscar win last year and <i>U-Carmen eKhayelitsha</i>’s Golden Bear for best film at the 2005 Berlinale casts a hip glow on the film industry.
”This is my life,” says John Deweer, nodding at the fishing rod in his hands. ”This is my food, my clothes, it gives me everything. We got no time for stealing; we just try and fish to live.” Sitting on North Beach, surrounded by the conspicuous consumption of the Durban Beach Festival, it is apparent that the ”everything” Deweer’s rod gives him is not very much.
The lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s song, Badlands, resonated in KwaZulu-Natal recently when it was disclosed that 11 amakhosi had made applications to the Nhlapo Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims to be declared kings with a similar status as Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini. The commission was appointed in 2004 by President Thabo Mbeki.
Three weeks of violent clashes between street vendors and police have revealed divisions between trader organisations and the hypocrisy of the Informal Traders’ Management Board, which has been instrumental in calling for a boycott of proposed permit rates increases.
An urgent revamp and strengthening of the powers of the South African Geographical Names Council and its provincial committees may be the tonic for divisive municipal street renaming processes. In Durban, the process has been marred by violent protest, political bickering and a DA legal challenge to the eThekwini municipality.
An award-winning Brazilian film focusing on misogyny and child abuse – due to be screened at the Durban International Film Festival – was banned this week by the Film and Publications Board, which ruled that it contained scenes that amounted to ”child pornography”. Directed by Claudio Assis, Bog of Beasts, which won the Best Film award wat the Brasilia Film Festival in 2006.
ANC delegates from KwaZulu-Natal will go to the party’s national policy conference at Gallagher Estate on June 27 armed with a clutch of resolutions seeking, among other things, greater state control of the media and the abolition of the position of ANC national chairperson. Other resolutions reflect disenchantment with government deployees and sympathy for ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Niren Tolsi looks some of the documentary films to be featured at this year’s Durban International Film Festival.
Like the African National Congress’s (ANC) national general council two years ago, the party’s national policy conference in two weeks’ time looks set to be an explosive affair. In the run-up to the summit some ANC provinces and regions are making an early bid to eliminate President Thabo Mbeki from the leadership race.
The South African Democratic Teachers Association’s KwaZulu-Natal secretary, Sipho ”KK” Nkosi, ordered members to ”close down all public and private schools and all nine FET [Further Education and Training] colleges”, when he addressed marchers outside Durban’s City Hall recently. This was despite assurances by Sadtu’s national general secretary, Thulas Nxesi, that closing private schools is not union policy.