Witness to Apartheid

Duration: 0:56:00

Year Published: 1986

Creator: California Newsreel

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: Introduces the human rights emergency in South Africa by taking viewers to the black townships and listening to the voices of the victims of apartheid. Interviews a young boy barely able to speak after two weeks of beatings in detention, members of the banned Congress of South African students, and the parents of a teenage boy killed in his school playground by a policeman. Shows some activists still trying to change South Africa non-violently: Mkhuseli Jack, an organizer of a successful black consumer boycott, and "Cheeky" Watson, a white merchant whose home was bombed because he supported the boycott. Archbishop Desmond Tutu serves as guide., In this documentary, Nobel Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, one of the film's witnesses, describes the young generation of Africans now involved in the struggle against apartheid. They are a new breed of children. They believe they are going to die, and the frightening thing is, they actually don't care. The film proceeds through interviews with a brutally-beaten 14-year-old, a doctor who must treat wounded school children in secrecy, and an undertaker who has buried 34 children with multiple bullet wounds in a single year, to footage of mass arrests of children as young as seven.

Complete Record: , In this documentary, Nobel Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, one of the film's witnesses, describes the young generation of Africans now involved in the struggle against apartheid. They are a new breed of children. They believe they are going to die, and the frightening thing is, they actually don't care. The film proceeds through interviews with a brutally-beaten 14-year-old, a doctor who must treat wounded school children in secrecy, and an undertaker who has buried 34 children with multiple bullet wounds in a single year, to footage of mass arrests of children as young as seven. NOTE: Two (or more) records have been merged together to create this data.