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| Nelson Mandela & Fidel Castro |
Vashna Jagarnath, The Con
Living in Grahamstown, a small settler town that began its
life as a fort on the colonial frontier, is often hard work.
On most days it seems that the spirit of John Graham, the
British soldier sent to drive the Xhosa across the Fish River in 1811, would
feel more at home in this town today than that of Makhanda Nxele, who, seven
years later in 1818, led an attack on the colonial fort.
But here and there daily life throws up sometimes surprising
moments of inspiration. And every now and then we are richly indulged by visits
from remarkable people.
In recent years Tariq Ali, Jacques Depelchin, Lewis Gordon,
Silvia Federici, Nomboniso Gasa, John Holloway, Achille Mbembe, VY Mudimbe and
Raymond Suttner have all shared their gifts and strength with us.
February 26 2014 was another red letter day in this ugly
little town. The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), the School
of Journalism and Media Studies, and the International Office collectively
hosted the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Estela Bravo.
Three of her documentaries were screened and discussed in a
single day. Bravo (84) handled this punishing schedule with aplomb.
Bravo is an American documentary filmmaker who has lived in
both in Latin America and the United States for the past 48 years. Her lifetime
of work documents the human consequences of historical events and has led to
the production of 30 award-winning documentary films.
Bravo’s films have focused on the human effects of conflicts
aimed at achieving social justice throughout Latin America, Africa, the
Caribbean and the United States. She has developed a reputation for
representing the voice of ordinary people through film with great dignity and
eloquence.
It was the dignified representation of the voices of
ordinary people that most impressed a small gathering of students and staff at
a workshop held at the School of Journalism and Media Studies on the morning of
February 26, where the first film of the day, Holy Father and Gloria (1987),
was screened.
This emotionally penetrating documentary captures the visit
of Pope John Paul II to Chile and his meeting with Carmen Gloria Quintana Arancibia,
a young woman who became a symbol of Augusto Pinochet’s repression.
On July 2 1986, Gloria, a young student, along with a young
photographer, Rodrigo Andrés Rojas De Negri, who had recently returned from
living in the US, went on a student protest in the neighbourhood of Los
Nogales, Santiago. Arancibia and De Negri were both attacked and beaten by the
military police and later soaked with petrol and set on fire.
Once the flames had subsided, they, both unconscious, were
wrapped in blankets by the military and dumped outside the city of Santiago.
They were later found and, after several attempts to admit them into hospital
were rebuffed, they finally received treatment.
De Negri died of his burns. His mother, who had fled
Pinochet’s terror by moving to the US, was offered a small consolation; when
she arrived in Santiago, her only consolation was being able to touch the toe
of her badly burnt son before he died.
Arancibia, still critically ill, was moved to a hospital in
Canada. She survived but was badly disfigured from her burns. When the Pope was
to visit Chile in 1987, Arancibia, like many Chileans, sought his blessings and
hoped he would work a revolutionary miracle.
Through tracing the journey of this quietly strong young
woman back to Chile to see the Pope, Bravo was able to capture the turbulence
of a nation living under a ruthless, American-backed dictatorship that set the
agenda for the form capitalist development would take for the next 30 years.
Intentionally or not, the Pope’s visit worked a miracle.
Within just more than a year, Pinochet’s bloody reign of torture and terror,
which had killed 2 000 people and tortured more than 27 000, came to an end.
Bravo’s camera captured the pain and burning spirit of
rebellion of Chileans in the face of savage repression. But she also recorded
the voices of elites supporting Pinochet.
The discussion and questions that followed the screening
showed how deeply the students were moved by Bravo’s ability to disarm her
interviewees, and to retain the true spirit of the moment. It is the humanity
of her subjects that comes across powerfully on celluloid.
The humanity of her subjects was also luminously present in
the second documentary, After the Battle (1991), which was screened later that
afternoon to a huge audience. This documentary, which was first screened on
BBC’s Channel 4, powerfully recounts the stories of Cuban, South African and
Angolan soldiers who participated in the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale in
Angola in 1987.
While the film deals with the political consequences of the
battle, its real strength lies in the interviews Bravo carried out with the
families of soldiers on both sides of this conflict. Bravo’s ability to capture
the consequences of war and political ideology on Cuban and South African
soldiers lays bare the pain, trauma, conflict and humanity of the grieving
families.
Capturing the stories of soldiers and their families on both
sides of the conflict provided us with a far more nuanced and humane insight
into a very painful event of our past than anything allowed by either apartheid
or nationalist history.
Bravo offers a complex story of people caught up in
historical events that, while it eschews the more typical polemics about good
versus evil, doesn’t fail to draw a clear distinction between emancipation and
oppression.
Bravo’s nuanced depiction of this war contrasts the spirit
of the Cuban soldiers and their desire to support a struggle for liberation
with the disillusionment of the soldiers of the South African Defence Force.
The Cuban families, both black and white, of fallen soldiers
really understood what they children had died fighting for. It was a cause they
understood and supported.
The families of the fallen South African soldiers were often
unsure of the reasoning behind the battle and at times were completely unsure
about the apartheid state.
As well as showing us of the way in which apartheid extended
its devastation beyond our borders, the film also reminded us of the importance
of Cuban solidarity in our liberation struggle. This was a form of solidarity
that not only worked to liberate Namibia but also inspired activists locally.
In his introduction at the screening of After the Battle,
Robbie van Niekerk, a professor who was an activist on the Cape Flats in 1987,
recalled how, for him, the “gesture of solidarity on behalf of Cuba was
inestimable and seared into the consciousness of my generation”.
This solidarity reminds us that the Cuban state offered this
region of the world, and its citizens, assistance against oppression without
expecting any reward in return. In this respect, the US, which has wreaked such
devastation in countries like Haiti, Palestine and Iraq in recent years, could
learn a lot about the real meaning of international solidarity from a tiny
neighbouring island just off its coast.
The importance of Cuban solidarity with our struggle was
made clear by a newly free Nelson Mandela in 1990. Whereas After the Battle led
us into the heart of a dark but still redemptive moment in our history, the
third film of the day – and the second of the evening – led us to a celebratory
moment of our history.
Mandela and Fidel (2013, 30 min) recounts the friendship of
Mandela with Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Given the figurative and literal stature of these men, it
would be a difficult task not to paint them as extraordinary figures. But
rather than getting a story of two giants of history, one watches shot after
shot of the touching, lovely and joyful friendship Mandela and Castro shared.
Bravo captures for all the sincerely deep love and respect
both men had for each other.
Their shared moments of unrestricted joy and laughter leave
the viewer feeling delightfully warm.
Once again, like Carmen Gloria Quintana Arancibia, or young
schoolchildren in Chile, or white South African soldiers fighting for
apartheid, Bravo is able to capture the humanity of Mandela and Fidel.
It’s a humanity that is often lost in the cruel machinations
of politics, ideology and nationalism that eviscerate the human cost of
domination.
February 26 was a good day in Grahamstown. Bravo Estela.
