The World In Film:
Red Dust
A cultural dialogue of truth-telling and reconciliation

-- Leah Otto Johnson

In pursuance of national unity and reconstruction, post-Apartheid South Africa developed a reconciliation act in 1995—to inspire peace and forgiveness, to bridge a society deeply plagued by racial separatism and oppression.

Red Dust, a fictionalized story based on the events that followed this act, exemplifies South Africa’s world-inspiring commission to disclose and acknowledge past wounds and wrongs in an effort to reconcile their nation.

Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa, signed this Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act on July 19, 1995. In addition to reparation and rehabilitation, the act afforded victims, as well as their families, the platform to expose the Apartheid-era atrocities they suffered, including abduction, torture and murder.

The act granted amnesty for those who committed Apartheid-era atrocities associated with political objective. The prerequisite for amnesty, however, was the full disclosure of all relevant facts related to the gross human rights violations.

To investigate and hear these cases, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), along with three other committees, was established.

Red Dust, adapted from Gillian Slovo’s novel of the same title (2003), tells the story of Alex Mpondo (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dirty Pretty Things), a promising politician fearful to testify in opposition at his torturer’s TRC hearing for amnesty. Under the representation of lawyer Sarah Barcant (Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby), Mpondo reluctantly confronts the painful past he’s buried in order to gain the truth behind his comrade’s disappearance, which occurred around the time of their joint imprisonment and torture some 15 years earlier.

After the Soweto Uprising of 1976—one of the most violent events in South Africa’s history, where brutal police fire injured over 400 demonstrating schoolchildren and killed over 150 more—resistance and liberation movements militarized. Mpondo’s story captures the dark conduct of the South African police state that developed in response.

Slovo, who was raised in Apartheid-era South Africa, derived Red Dust from her own experiences. Her father Joe Slovo, founder of Umkhonto We Sizwe (ANC’s active military wing), was a key negotiator between various resistance and liberation groups and the ruling National Party after Apartheid’s fall. He was responsible for the "sunset clause," which led to the power sharing Government of National Unity (GNU), and served as Minister for Housing in the GNU until his death in 1995.

Slovo’s mother Ruth First, journalist, academic and political activist, was killed in 1982 by a parcel bomb that allegedly originated from military sources within South Africa. A few years before writing Red Dust, Slovo attended the TRC amnesty hearings for her mother’s killers: Jerry Raven, who made the bomb; and Craig Williamson, the police major who ordered the assassination.

"It was very difficult. They—who had been the enemy with a capital E—my mother’s killers who I never expected to know, now seemed very, very familiar," said Slovo.

Though it is widely believed that neither Raven nor Williamson fully disclosed the truth about First’s assassination, the TRC granted them both amnesty.

"Although they didn’t tell the truth," Slovo explained, "I did discover…that the truth, however painful, needs to be faced for healing to begin. The reconciliation that I experienced was with what happened, not with the perpetrators.

"This is the important thing about a TRC: It helps a whole society reconcile itself to its past, without ignoring or denying it."

While Red Dust tells just one fictional story about the TRC, it "represents the tens-of-thousands of cases that the commission heard across South Africa and the healing process of the commission," said producer Anant Singh.

From Asia Pacific to the Americas, South Africa’s model has encouraged countries including Fiji, East Timor and Peru to pursue their own truth and reconciliation commissions, though most without the grant of amnesty.

"We want to learn from the lessons of the past so that we will be able to prevent similar tragedies in the future," said Jose Ramos Horta, foreign minister of the U.N. Transition Administration in East Timor. "At the same time, we wish to open the door of forgiveness and acceptance to those who were caught in the vicious cycle of violence."

As TRC Chair Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated, the events captured in Red Dust reaffirm "that it is possible for enemies to become friends; that it is possible for people who are different in culture, faith and all kinds of ways, to live as one community."

Directed by Tom Hooper (Elizabeth I) with a screenplay by Troy Kennedy-Martin (The Italian Job, 1969). This film has an R-rating for violent images and language. Available on DVD July 25.

To read the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa report, visit http://www.info.gov.za/otherdocs/2003/trc.

Send your film comments and suggestions to ottole@go.metrostate.edu.