Cry Freedom

Map of South Africa

coopers6 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:32:34 +0000

Ethnocentrism

coopers6 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:33:18 +0000

Merriam-Webster Definition: Ethnocentrism is characterized by or based on the attitude that one’s own group is superior.

The idea of ethnocentric superiority between of whites over blacks began as early as 1788 when Dutch colonizers began setting up laws and regulations separating the different racial groups. In 1948, apartheid was introduced when the national party, comprised of white supremacists, put into place regulations to “ensure the survival of the white race”. The National Party put into place a number of roadblocks for native Africans.

A couple of the roadblocks included the Mixed Marriage Act which banned marriage between Europeans and Non-Europeans while the Registration Act required people to carry around racial identification cards at all times. Anyone who was caught without racial identification was either fined or imprisoned. They portray this in the movie several times when the police ask for Donald Woods’ maidservant’s identification and when Biko is caught outside of his designated banning area. The white settlers used ethnocentrism as a way of controlling the South African majority.

Cry Freedom shows a pretty accurate portrayal of how white colonists used ethnocentrism to rule South Africa. Some of the clips, explained further on, use different media effects theories to direct the audience’s train of thought about apartheid in South Africa. The director and producers of the film push heavily into ethnocentric ideologies that the white’s used to control the majority.

In one scene journalist Donald Woods meets anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko for the first time. Biko explains that because Woods has the advantages of a good job, house, education and car; white liberals like Woods shouldn’t be telling Native Africans how to react to apartheid and it’s disadvantages. Woods responds by asking Biko how he would act if he had all the same advantages and the whites were the ones in the Native Africans’ position.

During Biko’s fight against apartheid, he was quoted by The Boston Globe saying “so as a prelude whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior.”

This clip in the movie is an accurate portrayal of who Biko was and what Biko was fighting for from the beginning.

This beginning part of the film is also a good example of the agenda setting media effects theory. The clip causes you to think about why “the whites” have advantages that “the blacks” do not. It just shows how the whites during this time used ethnocentrism to gain an advantage over the black majority.

Later in the film, it uses agenda setting once again to cause the viewer to think about how ethnocentrism works. Biko has taken Woods to one of the only hospitals that are run only by native Africans. Biko invites Woods to visit a black township were approximately 70% of South Africans lived. (In the film, this percentage was given by Biko as 90%). Most of the jobs native Africans could have were dangerous, paid almost nothing compared to the jobs whites could have, and dealt with menial house work in “the white mans’” homes. It’s meant to cause the reader to think about what was going on. Even though native Africans made up the majority of the population, the small portion of whites that occupied South Africa controlled it through telling everyone else what they could and could not do.

In the township, Woods gets to see first hand how native Africans live. The cultivation media effects theory is used in this seen to capture the audiences’ attention about the conditions in South Africa. Whites believed they were better than blacks and used the ethnocentric idea to push native Africans into reservations and onto land that could rarely be cultivated for food. Biko explains no matter what you do “you begin to feel there is something not quite right about yourself, about your humanity. Something to do with your blackness.”

During the time of apartheid “no matter how dumb or smart a white child is,” he is born into the white man’s world and has all the privileges of that. On the other hand “the black child, smart or dumb you are born into this and smart or dumb you’ll die in it.”

Native Africans don’t have a chance to be any better because the white man says they can’t be any better based on the color of their skin.

In 1978, Biko wrote in his book “I Write What I Like” that “merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.”

The movie shows how Biko not only fought for equality and black conciousness, but the idea that blacks shouldn’t see themselves as inferior to whites. In the movie and in real life, Biko was a man who wanted blacks to realize they are just as good as any other human beings on this planet.

Time and again Biko states that whites think that their skin color gives them an advantage, but then asks why skin color really makes a difference between people. While Biko stands court to testify (this scene is one of Woods’ flashbacks of Biko) the judge asks Biko why he uses a phrase like “Black is beautiful.”

Biko explains how black is used as a negative connotation and because of that, those that have dark skin think that it’s bad. If you use words to put down a person, they will feel the weight of those words and won’t strive for anything more of themselves.

Once again in “I Write What I Like,” Biko states that “Being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.”

This is a perfect example of how ethnocentrism works. Biko is describing how being brought up to believe you are inferior or superior, that attitude permeates how you live your life.

In the end, the movie’s portrayal of ethnocentrism and Biko’s own statements in society have shown how ones own ideas on superiority and inferiority can control another’s way of life. The movie shows how whites beliefs on their superiority caused blacks to believe their dark skin color made them inferior. This ideology lead to the ability whites had to control the majority.

If you look at what South Africa went through during and before the times of apartheid, it reflects much of what happened during the United State’s civil rights movement. Native Africans went through same struggle for independence, freedom, and opportunity that African-Americans had to go through. Even though the United States’ involvement wasn’t really mentioned in the film, the similarities between the anti-apartheid movement and civil rights movement show how ethnocentrism has been used in more than one case. The movie doesn’t touch on this recurring idea of ethnocentrism because it wanted to focus on apartheid and the fight to remove it. However it is still important to see how South Africa isn’t the only country that has had to deal with one group believing they were superior to another.

In the end, ethnocentrism in the movie was the recurring theme that Steve Biko wanted to get rid of. The movie used what Biko said in his time alive and active in the anti-apartheid movement to portray what South Africa was going through during that time.

I thought the “Get Fuzzy” cartoon by Darby Conley would be an appropriate way to close. He makes a good point on how ethnocentrism works.

The Soweto Uprising: June 16, 1976

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:56:47 +0000

The disturbances lasted three days, from June 16-18.

This photograph, taken by African journalist Sam Nzima, shows a young boy, Hector Pieterson, who was shot by police early in the demonstration. The photo became emblematic of the day’s events and was reproduced in the movie at 2:23:37.

In South Africa today, the event is celebrated each year as “Youth Day.”

The photo shows how Attenborough used all available sources when he made the film to tell the story according to true events. However, the film claims that over 700 people died during the Soweto uprisings. It’s possible to forgive the film makers for overestimating the number dead because of information available to them at the time and their obvious interest in making the number as high as possible in order to further the tragic limits of the story.

Current sources say that number is probably too high, and in fact at least 200 but no more than 600 kids were killed during the next three days.

The movie certainly was closer in its estimation than that of the South African Security Police, who after the first day’s slaughter, claimed that only 23 kids were killed after they attacked police.

But, in reading about the conflict, I think the movie portrays the situation a little too simply.

During the actual event, the student protesters were peaceful and well organized, but international journalists verified afterward (from sources on both sides of the conflict), that some students began throwing rocks at the police when they found their path blocked by military vehicles.

Faced with thousands of chanting kids, some of whom were acting violently, you can imagine the police were anxious and a little afraid for their safety.

According to most accounts, students stopped at what is now called Hector Pieterson square and faced off with Security Police. The police threw a tear gas canister into the crowd of children, and in the ensuing chaos, one officer fired his handgun into the crowd. Black journalists could not believe what they were seeing. Immediately, other officers followed with indiscriminate shooting, opening fire on the children.

After the initial wave of killings, the students quickly became violent, burning official government property and in at least two cases, pulling white officials outside and stoning them to death.

From the 2007 Hector Pieterson Research Project in Soweto:

“One of the victims, a white anti-apartheid sociologist named Dr. Melville Edelstein, worked closely with many youth from Soweto. Earlier on the fateful morning, he greeted students as they past his house on Mputhi Street.

However, once news of Hector Pieterson’s death filtered through the ranks, happiness turned to anger and Dr. Edelstein was murdered for being a white man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ironically, Dr Edelstein had warned that the hostility of township youth should be taken as a serious threat to peace in Soweto. In his thesis, written five years prior to the events of June 16, “What Young Africans Think” (1971), 73 percent of the youth interviewed listed inadequate political rights among major grievances.”

Though the movie does show the students burning and rioting, it portrays the security police as brutally beating the schoolchildren, juxtaposed with a heart-wrenching soundtrack.

Nothing is ever that simple.

For a detailed account of the Soweto Uprising, visit the awesome South Africa History Online Web site at: http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/june16/day1.htm

What the movie left out: Marital Infidelity

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:53:29 +0000

The movie starts telling Biko’s story at about 1975, just after the opening of Biko’s model project, the Zanempilo Clinic. The clinic was supposed to be the manifestation of Biko’s “Black Consciousness Movement,” which advocated that the oppressed black people begin to look within their own culture for answers to their problems instead of trying to negotiate with racist whites who hadn’t listened to the past 75 years of non-violent protests by previous black leaders.

The movie is telling a story, so it makes sense to begin right in the thick of the action, when Biko’s years of work is starting to come to fruition. But the movie doesn’t tell much about Biko’s personal life, including the sad love affair between he and Dr. Mumphale Ramphele, the black doctor who worked at the non-profit clinic.

From an interview Ramphele did with the Dallas Morning News after Biko’s death:

“As she became more involved in the BCM, she also fell in love with Steve Biko. However, she married an old boyfriend on a holiday break from school. Her marriage was a mistake and ended barely a year later. It was too late for her and Biko though. In light of her own marriage, he, in turn, married another. Still their affair continued and in May of 1974, she bore his child, a girl named Lerato, which means “love.” Tragically the baby died at two months.”

Comparisons to what really happened…

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:51:23 +0000

The movie “Cry Freedom” was extremely true to real-life events, beginning with the actors:

Steve Biko actually looked like Denzel Washington, who said he went to a dentist to have the caps taken off his front teeth in order to imitate Biko’s gap-toothed smile.
Doctor Mamphela Ramphele looks very much like the actress in the movie, played byJosette Simon.
Donald Woods looks very much like Kevin Kline.

The director, Sir Richard Attenborough, demanded authenticity in the film’s making. Literally thousands of native African actors were used making the film, and hundreds of applicants were interviewed for Biko’s part. It was with great reluctance that the director finally chose Denzel Washington. Attenborough had wanted an African to play Biko.

Attenborough directed the historical epic Gandhi in 1982, which is interesting because Gandhi actually made a trip to South Africa as a young man in 1893, and experienced there the discrimination that would later inform his struggle in India.

Christianity

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:47:39 +0000

There were Catholics who opposed Apartheid, calling it anti-Christian. There were also black priests. The movie doesn’t give more than a passing nod to the religious situation in South Africa, but the fact is that Apartheid was a political and an economic policy. Christianity allowed it to happen, condoned it with its paternalistic view of blacks and its dismissal of traditional beliefs and customs, but the actual practice of segregation was nominally not the church’s idea.

Most church leaders believed in social parity, even it wasn’t carried out in practice.

The capitalist underpinnings of Dutch South Africa

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:46:04 +0000

On a commission for the Dutch-East India Trading company the merchant Jan van Riebeeck anchored in a picturesque bay at the foot of the Table Mountain on April 6, 1652. The value of the bay for transporting valuable minerals out of Africa was not lost on the merchant, who founded Cape Town shortly thereafter.

England purchased the entire Cape Colony from the Dutch Boers in 1814, for 6 million English pounds. Most Boers moved northward, pushing more tribes from their homelands and causing brutal wars. The Boers were successful in colonizing the Transvaal and began employing English and African miners to extract gold after the discovery of huge reserves in the Transvaal in 1886.

In Pretoria, which is mentioned in the movie as the administrative capitol of South Africa, blacks and whites had been living together in a segregated society, even though blacks lived next door to whites. In the 1950s, hundreds of thousands of black South Africans were forcefully moved out of Pretoria and into a slum 30 km. away which became known as Wintervelt.

The black underclass had little choice but to work for Dutch and English mining interests, slaving like beasts for just dollars each month. Blacks died by the thousands in the gold and diamond mines.

The movie mentions these conditions briefly in two scenes featured on the DVD submitted with the project materials.

Donald Woods: Liberal businessman

The movie isn’t able to show it, but as the youngest editor in the history of the Daily Dispatch newspaper, Donald Woods was an excellent businessman. In Woods’ book, “Asking for Trouble,” he details his quick rise from young journalist working the entry level cops and crime beats on Fleet Street in London. He was quickly recruited to move back to his homeland to be groomed for the editorship of the Daily Mail. At 34 years of age he took over the paper, and within 2 years he increased the circulation of the paper from 18,500 readers to 33,000.

The fact is, Woods was a good businessman. He may have been a bleeding-heart liberal, but he was deeply invested in the South African system.

This may be all the more reason to applaud his decision to take a stand against the establishment, because he had very much to lose.

As a journalist, however, the controversy certainly furthered his career. Mr. Woods gained much notoriety because of his anti-apartheid stance as editor of the paper, and his relationship with Biko allowed him unequaled access into the Black Consciousness Movement, which other papers did not have. The film “Cry Freedom” touches briefly on Woods’ reasons for befriending Biko and becoming an outspoken critic of Apartheid in the scene where his wife, Wendy, accuses him of wanting to move forward with his cause only because he wants to see his name in print.

Hurray for Attenborough for showing a human side to Woods, who admitted in his book, “Asking For Trouble” that there was a selfish side to his protest work.

A lesser director would have left Woods a selfless and bland idealist, who would risk his and his family’s life and livelihood only because he saw inequity in the world.

This is never true in real life.

Woods the savvy businessman AND idealist

In the movie, Woods is seen giving jobs to black journalists. This actually happened. At one point, Woods decided that the best people to cover the anti-Apartheid movement would be blacks themselves, and he brought on several black writers and directed that they be taught how to use cameras. The Daily Dispatch was the first South African newspaper to do this, but in his book, Woods asserts that other papers began hiring black journalists shortly thereafter.

The movie shows this in a scene early on in which his assistant managing editor is dumbfounded when he hears Woods’ plan to teach them to use cameras and become beat reporters.

Once again, hurray for the movie for showing a complicated subject as clearly as possible

The Raised Fist

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:43:01 +0000

The meaning: The fist may represent union, as “many weak fingers can come together to create a strong fist”, and is also used to express solidarity, generally with oppressed peoples.

Also known as the Black Power Salute
The raised fist (also closed fist or clenched fist) is a symbol and salute most often used by communists, anarchists, socialists, leftists, pacifists, trade unionists and others in opposition to oppressive regimes. Generally the fist is used as an expression of solidarity or defiance. A salute is a gesture or other action used to display respect. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. … Anarchism is the name of a political philosophy or a group of doctrines and attitudes that are centered on rejection of any form of compulsory government (such as the state)[1] and support its elimination. … Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. … It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Left-Right politics. Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. … A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers…

Black Consciousness

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:37:57 +0000

Definition:

Main Entry: black consciousness²

Part of Speech: n

Definition: a movement of the 1960s after the civil rights movement of the 1950s, involving the cultivation of pride in a cultural identity for black persons

Main Entry: black consciousness¹

Part of Speech: n

Definition: an awareness of and pride in one’s identity as a black person

White Privilege

coopers6 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:31:45 +0000

Definition: an advantage enjoyed by white members of a society beyond the standards given to all members of that society.

White Privilege vs. Racism: Those who enjoy white privilege are not always aware of the added advantages they have over others in their society. However, once they do become aware, they may be labeled as racist, barring their activity in correcting the problem. Those who set up the system under which white privilege thrives and those who allow it to continue can all be considered racists.

Most instances of white privilege in the film are small, passing moments that are just part of the context of the movie and not the focus of it.

The houses the whites live in comparison to the shacks the blacks live in.
Whites using their own nice cars and blacks using poor quality cars, company vehicles, taxis or buses.
The posting of a black police man on New Years Eve.
Biko’s comments on sub-conscious connotations of “black” and “white.”

Oct. 25, 1977, Steve Biko was quoted in the Boston Globe:

“Even today, we are still accused of racism. This is a mistake. We know that all interracial groups in south Africa are relationships in which whites are superior, blacks inferior. So as a prelude whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior.”

Nelson Mandela said the following in a court statement (1962):

“In its proper meaning equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed, a constitution which guarantees democratic rights to all sections of the population, the right to approach the court for protection or relief in the case of the violation of rights guaranteed in the constitution, and the right to take part in the administration of justice as judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, law advisers and similar positions.

In the absence of these safeguards the phrase ‘equality before the law’, in so far as it is intended to apply to us, is meaningless and misleading. All the rights and privileges to which I have referred are monopolized by whites, and we enjoy none of them. The white man makes all the laws, he drags us before his courts and accuses us, and he sits in judgment over us.

It is fit and proper to raise the question sharply, what is this rigid color-bar in the administration of justice? Why is it that in this courtroom I face a white magistrate, am confronted by a white prosecutor, and escorted into the dock by a white orderly? Can anyone honestly and seriously suggest that in this type of atmosphere the scales of justice are evenly balanced?

Why is it that no African in the history of this country has ever had the honour of being tried by his own kith and kin, by his own flesh and blood?

I will tell Your Worship why: the real purpose of this rigid colour-bar is to ensure that the justice dispensed by the courts should conform to the policy of the country, however much that policy might be in conflict with the norms of justice accepted in judiciaries throughout the civilised world.

I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a black man in a white man’s court. This should not be.”

Sources:

Collins, Colin B. “Racism in South Africa.” Social Alternatives. Volume 12, Issue 1 (1993): 27-30.

Knight, Keith. “Ahh…The Power of White Privilege.” November 14, 2006. http://www.kchronicles.com/think/

Orten, James D. “South Africa and Civil Rights: The Author Replies.” Social Work. Volume 43, Issue 1 (1989): 92-93.

Randall, Vernellia. “Defining “White Privilege”.” Race, Racism and The Law. Nov. 2, 2009. University of Dayton School of Law. Nov. 17, 2009