Fruits of defiance: narrating popular consciousness

Abstract

Fruits ofDefiance is a South African documentary film made in 1989 by two film-makers Brian Tilley and Oliver Schmitz at time of Defiance Campaign that began in August of that year. The Defiance Campaign was launched by Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in face of government's elections for its tricameral parliament, which sought to trade off 'coloured' and Indian support for a semblance of power in National Party government. A massive boycott of election was organised as well as worker stay-aways to protest against election, and supporters of MDM, in numerous mass actions across counhy, demonstrated their defmce of apartheidlawspaticularly inrelationtothegovernment's banningsofidividuals and organisations. These events included protest marches in all major cities of country and brought together largest mass alliance of anti-apartheid protesters across all sectors of South African society thus signalling the existence of a widespread political (Collinge 1989:6). This is political consciousness that Fruits of Defiance represents. It documentstheeventsthat occurredspecifically inManenbergontheCapeFlats, and places these withiithemacro socio-political context. It is an example ofthe many 'anti-apartheid' documentariesthat emergedinthe 1980sfrom withiithe movement of politically conscious documentary film-makers, and developed alongside popular political movements in counhy. This documentary movement was strongly linked to MDM, both in establishment of Film and Allied Workers Organisation (FAWO) in 1988, which aimed to unite and organise anti-apartheid film workers, and in documentary films and videos that were made. The documentary movement was not a homogeneous one, however, as term 'movement' might imply. Rather it had a number of diverse strands and trends as reflected in different film and video production units that were established in 1980s as well as in different styles that