A man and a movie of calibre
The new docudrama Mandela’s Gun is an exciting, refreshing look at the story of our freedom, writes Denis Goldberg
THE GUN given to Nelson Mandela by emperor Haile Selassie was hidden. It is searched for and in the end what is uncovered is a thrilling story of bravery, intrigue, and involvement of people and countries in our historic defeat of apartheid.
The gun in the film is really a symbol of the victory of an idea whose time had come: the end of the direct domination of the people of South Africa, the last bastion of racism by law, and the power of the people of a continent and other countries to achieve that goal.
The film is a docudrama of Nelson Mandela’s trip outside South Africa to seek support for the armed struggle against apartheid.
The re-enactment of scenes from the 1950s and 1960s starkly captures the tension of those times.
The intensification of apartheid repression and resistance – the Sharpeville massacre and the turn to armed struggle and the conflicts about that in our political history – are tersely but effectively told.
We see the emergence of the people’s armed force, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), as an army of liberation composed of South Africans of all races; and Liliesleaf becoming the underground headquarters.
Nelson had gone underground. He kept appearing and disappearing, grabbing headlines.
He was dubbed the Black Pimpernel. He was the one man the security police were determined to capture.
This is a cat-and-mouse story of the way in which he and his comrades kept one step ahead for a long time.
The producers have followed his journey through Africa to Ethiopia and Algeria and other countries. They have with the help of the Liliesleaf Museum uncovered new stories told by still-living participants who met him while he was abroad.
We discover there was an assassination attempt by “imperialist agents” in Ethiopia. His former bodyguard tells how he was bribed to kill Mandela but even though he would have become a rich man, he refused and turned on his handlers.
In Algeria, footage of military training is re-enacted and we learn of the risks he ran in that newly liberated country.
We see the narrow escape from death at the hands of the French former colonial power.
A former Algerian ambassador who was his companion speaks extensively of his time with Mandela. This is material never before seen – a powerful example of international solidarity.
We see also the human side of the struggle: the conflict between family and love and being married to the liberation movement. There are some beautifully realised tender moments, not least when his Ethiopian hostess takes him shopping for clothes for his wife Winnie.
His hostess tells this tender story within the story. Of course those dresses created a security risk by bringing home clothes clearly of a foreign manufacture! But such a human moment!
Finally Nelson returns home and buries his Makarov pistol at Liliesleaf because to carry it would be a dead giveaway if he were arrested. Nelson then travels throughout South Africa to report on his travels and Africa’s potential support for MK.
One such meeting in Durban is reported on by Ronnie Kasrils. We see Nelson with comrades and then the car trip from Durban which leads to his capture by South Africa’s security police at Howick – it’s a dramatic moment but very low key and surprisingly without guns.
The meticulousness of the five years of research and interviews behind the final cut makes me believe this version of events is true.
So the film reminds us that Mandela was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for leaving the country without a passport and was not arrested at Liliesleaf with rest of the MK high command.
He was brought from prison to be No 1 accused in the Rivonia Trial.
But what is new is the interview with Don Rickard, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent who ensured Mandela was captured. There it is out in the open that the cold war conflict between the US and the Soviet Union, Russia, in Rickard’s language, played such an important role in our history.
Rickard says Mandela would have handed South Africa’s mineral treasure chest to the Russians. To stop that (imagined) threat, he had to be stopped.
The CIA had infiltrated our innermost circles in Natal which enabled them to betray him. We “knew” that our democratic aspirations were at that time low on the list of US foreign policy. Now we know that was true.
Way back in the Fifties and Sixties of the past century, we were locked into a world system of oppression and exploitation and we see today we have to be aware of the external influences on our people and our policies.
As a sovereign state, we seek ties with other nations in associations like the AU and in Brics to give us leverage against the old powers that so dominated our lives.
Director John Irvin and the production team have done us a marvellous service.
The interviews with still-living participants from South Africa and other countries are seamlessly integrated into the action.
Retired Judge Moseneke opens the film and we see Tokyo Sexwale, Mac Maharaj, Denis Goldberg and a host of others.
The production team has discovered and recreated aspects of our history we did not know about. And the things we did know about are told with a fresh eye. I want everybody to see this movie. It is stirring. It is inspirational. It is living history. New generations should know how we have come to be where we are today; how much we have changed and how much we still have to change.
I want new generations to know that overcoming the deep-rooted apartheid racism by law, by practice, by brainwashing is no easy task and that it requires dedicated commitment to an ideal of service
New generations should know how we’ve come to be where we are today, how much we’ve changed
and not of self.
I want older generations of leaders to be reminded of what so many fought for, gave their lives for.
Liliesleaf Museum in Rivonia is there as a daily living reminder of those stirring times with its interactive displays and its growing archive of materials relating to those times which led to the end game in the overthrow of apartheid.
It is great that the production team agreed that the interviews conducted for this movie will be passed to the Liliesleaf Museum to strengthen its archives to enable it and others to tell our great story to future generations in authentic and exciting ways.
This is a tangible gift to Liliesleaf and our country.
And by coincidence, the US government has made a substantial grant for the preservation and processing of the archives at Liliesleaf.