HORROR FOR BELEAGUERED FEMALES

  Surviving John Vorster Square Film

Surviving John Vorster Square Film is a vivid description of how the apartheid security police treated women political detainees. Surviving John Vorster Square is a 120-minute documentary film about the life stories and ordeals of a group of female former political detainees who were held at the notorious John Vorster Square apartheid police office in Johannesburg in the 1970s and 1980s.

It was premiered at the constitutional Hill in Johannesburg this week(Monday). Mmagauta Molefe is a producer of the film which started as self financed and later supported by the National Film and Video Foundation. The narration and testimony account of the participants remains a viewer about an episode when Chekhov was a young aspiring writer. He went to the great Tolstoy for advice. Tolstoy showed him a horse and a cart that passed by his house every morning and asked Chekhov to write about it in such a way that when he read his piece he'd feel he's reading about the cart and horse that he showed him. Chekhov made many attempts which Tolstoy rejected until a final piece which Tolstoy accepted for, he said, it was about the horse and cart that passed by his house every day and no other. 

The eleven cast members in the film; Mmagauta Molefe, Nomakhaya Mafuna Sibongile Mkhabela, Unjinee Poonam, Daphne Koza, Deborah Matshobs, Joyce Dipale Maleshane Mokoena, Pearl Luthuli, Elizabeth Abrahams; are talking about the pain with vividness, specifity and clarity. Molefe broke down in the film as she re-tell her ordeal as how she got miscarriage after a severe torture in the hands of apartheid police.

Dipale shows how she suffered electric shocks on her naked breasts, buttocks and genitals to force information from her about her political activities in the resistance movement. Also, Dipale says she was a target of apartheid death squads in exile. The struggle veterans talk of how the black consciousness philosophy shaped their lifes and their thinking. 

Nakedi Ribane, actress and political activist commented the following after the film: "It is is good that everything thing is coming out raw as it is with apology. A was arrested and tortured at the University of Zululand for my involvement in the politics of black consciousness. The torture chamber and every thing must be depicted in the film." 

Molefe Pheto, veteran black consciousness activist and filmmaker who created the visual storytelling and curated soundtrack of the film hailed the bravery of the women. Pheto said the importance of the film is a black woman and produced it and it is raw, adding that this fact is most welcome.

 

 

BECKONED TO SERVE. By Shehu Shagari

 

"I was determined to carry out that mandate to the best if my ability and strictly in accordance with the spirit of my oath of office without fear or favour. I was fully prepared and equipped for the job since I felt i had developed sufficient  experience in the job and had already learnt my lessons...I felt that...I must put the benefit of my long standing experience in government into practice in order to make the presidential system  of govt that we had chosen for ourselves the success that it deserved to be. I already had behind me some 25 years ( 1958 to 1983) of service as a cabinet member of federal govts, federal state and local govts and now as the first Executive President of Nigeria for four years..."

 

So writes Shehu Shagari in this remarkable world class autobiography - that ideally every Nigerian should read - and learn a lot from. A historical sociological treasure trove.

No doubt the author was much misunderstood during his lifetime especially re his stewardship as Nigeria's first Executive President. He and his party - the NPN were easily re elected but the Nigerian army put the skids in his administration. Thereafter Shagari was incarcerated, put under house arrest for years.

He of course was not happy about this and believes so many people who should have known better trued to run him down, or even betrayed him. As he writes here: "One of the biggest disappointments of my life was the discovery, somewhat belatedly that MOST OF THE PEOPLE I TRUSTED ARE NOT IN FACT WORTHY OF THE TRUST"

It was the Gen Olusegun Obasanjo military regime that handed over power to Shagari and his party. This book shows the author respects Obasanjo a lot but was uneasy about some aspects in regards the ex Head of State.  (Obasanjo himself admitted that he voted for Shagari as President). Here is what Shagari writes in this work:

"Yet for some strange reasons this soldier-statesman (Obasanjo) had developed some kind of deep malevolence for me, despite the very high regard and respect I have always had for him, as was demonstrated by the highest national honour I awarded him and which I still believe he richly deserved..."

Alhaji Shehu Shagari, veritable nationalist and patriot, died in 2018. Great man of Integrity and Peace.