Apartheid did not die -- as seen from South Africa

Anna Weekes, Press Officer of the South African Municipal Workers Union, looks at the reaction in South Africa to the screening of John Pilger's new documentary. She writes for LLB in a personal capacity.

Pilger's film, Apartheid did not die, screened simultaneously in South Africa and Britain, has created a furore in South Africa that has yet to die down. Its screening prompted howls of outrage from the middle and ruling classes in South Africa. In the fortnight following the show every newspaper columnist gave their perspective. Most white columnists denounced Pilger as a revolution monger and a fringe lunatic.

The documentary's analysis, focusing on "post-liberation disillusionment" and "sado-monetarism" was supported by many letters to the press from ordinary South African workers. Terry Crawford-Browne wrote to the Mail & Guardian (M&G) newspaper from Cape Town: "Sadly, Pilger's analysis is spot on.... The spectacle of South Africa peddling weapons to Saudi Arabia and China is revolting. Armscor was symptomatic of the old South Africa's defiance of international judgements that apartheid is a crime against humanity. Human rights is the one issue on which South Africa could have influenced the world way beyond our economic significance. That opportunity has been thrown away."

Another reader, Tebollo Pitso, observed that "Pilger is correct to observe that those who benefited from the inhuman labour migration and hostel system hide behind the wall of reconciliation to avoid atoning for years of exploitation of the poor."

Opposition to Pilger came in the form of Allister Sparks, head of news and current affairs at the SABC. He screened a disclaimer before the film stating that the contents were not the viewpoints of the SABC and allowed a debate afterwards to pick the show apart.

It is impossible to ask most of the population what they thought of the show. Millions don't yet have electricity or running water, never mind a television. A quick scan of the letters appearing in the press in the weeks after the show reveal that, in all probability, the show that shocked the middle and ruling classes came and went without so much as creating a murmur in most townships.

An M&G reader, Dianne Salters, sums it up by saying "Pilger's views are not nearly as unique or controversial as Sparks has tried to make out. There are growing numbers of critics of the .....ANC government, not least of whom are from its own ranks."

What Pilger said was nothing new to South African workers. Most continue to live at the very brunt of poverty and unemployment (many workers support more than seven other family members), but they debate these issues regularly and with vigour at union meetings. There is a growing sense of outrage that old comrades seem to be shying away from the issue of poverty, which remains to workers and the unemployed as much a human rights abuse now as ever before.

As Phil Mtimkulu, head of political sciences at the University of South Africa, asked in response to outrage from the white middle class, "If you travel 50km in any direction out of Johannesburg you will come face to face with poverty. Strikes and protests against low salaries and wages have also not stopped. Haven't you seen people struggling to make a living? Or is it because I live in a black township and have relatives in the rural areas where I see poverty first-hand?"

Pilger was not exposing anything that South Africans don't see every day with their own eyes. The N2 road to Cape Town International Airport is but one of many public places that is lined with frequently flooded and fire-ravaged shack settlements overflowing with uncollected refuse. The mainstream Sowetan newspaper's front-page story just after the show told of an entire community whose water has been cut, where children suffering from diarrhoea have been forced for the past month to spend their days in long queues to collect contaminated water leaking from an old pipe instead of attending school.

Here in South Africa, it is not the press or any TV show that tells us that inequalities are as glaring as ever. We come across these things on a daily basis. For example, "advantaged" (white) suburbs across the country have the same number of municipal workers as ever using advanced equipment to remove refuse from large bins on wheels (bags supplied). In most previously disadvantaged areas, (black townships) a skeleton workforce is lucky if they have the use of a few, ancient compactors to remove refuse from whatever the community could package it up in (no bins on wheels or bags supplied here). Over 12 million people are without running water. 80% of crime affects people in the townships. These are facts that show there has been very little meaningful redistribution of existing resources, and that the battle of the ordinary person and the worker remains a harsh one.

In the end, Brandon Edmonds, another M&G reader, who wrote that whites "have a trite belief that they can continue to be exempt from the facts of South Africa", summed up what Pilger was saying in Apartheid Did Not Die. This choice to lead a blinkered lifestyle has now unfortunately spread to many high powered ANC leaders. If Pilger managed to remove the blinkers from these languid eyes for even a few weeks, his show made a meaningful and beneficial impact on South Africa.

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