Have You Heard from Johannesburg? Premieres on PBS, January 12, 2012
Can you imagine having a non-identity, legally defined by what you are not? Consider if women were the favored group and anyone who is not a woman is identified as a non-female. Or if we divided the world into adults and non-adults (or children and non-children). Since “nons” are clearly inferior and, therefore, can’t be trusted, perhaps they should be forced to carry identification “passbooks,” and arrested if they are found without them. Conditioned to believe they are inferior, the “nons,” who are not treated as people, should probably be rounded up and separated from the superior group. That was apartheid.
Beginning Thursday, January 12, 2012, Independent Lens (PBS) will premiere a five-part series, Have You Heard from Johannesburg? by filmmaker Connie Field, with the first two programs, Road to Resistance and The New Generation (check local listings for broadcast schedule). The broadcast celebrates the 100th anniversary of the African National Congress.
Road to Resistance traces the history of South African apartheid from its inception following World War II to the beginning of the movement to end the legal discrimination that not only treated Black and Asian South Africans as inferior to Whites, but conditioned them to believe and accept their lower status. Road to Resistance explores the nonviolent campaign of “defiance,” the massacre at Sharpville, the role played by the World Council of Churches, and the increased awareness brought about by Oliver Tambo, Olof Palme, and Bishop Trevor Huddleston.
The New Generation begins in the 1960s when the movement grew and was supported by young activists and many people in the Netherlands, then worldwide. It focuses on the effect Stephen Biko’s murder had on the movement and President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to enlist the United Nations in an arms embargo. It also details how America’s billion dollars in exports to South Africa discouraged further action.
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