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.
The resilience and fecundity of women...heart warming
ReplyDelete'Security forces', State Depts or whatever you call them - they are quite ruthless in most countries, including modern Africa. The things they sometimes do are obnoxious and repulsive ... ordinary people do not know the terrible things they often do, but that is the sad reality
ReplyDeleteTrauma for the Struggle Veterans. Pity a lot of the victims over the decades would be 'unknowns'
ReplyDeleteOutstanding storytelling by brave struggle veterans. And telling as it is without modification it a determination to show the pain the felt in the hands of security personnels, those who should be protecting public at large not certain race. The pain that these veterans felt and went through it was unbearable but they have made it through though they still feel that pain even today. Kudos.
ReplyDeleteSombre production, sombre topic, sombre protagonists
ReplyDeleteSecurity personnel - right now we see what they have done to Sunday Igboho, they stormed his place and even killed people there, with the power of the state behind them
ReplyDeleteQuite disturbing and distressing. The plight of such women is harrowing to say the least
ReplyDelete