Part 35
There are a growing number of discussions around the world on the subject of authoritarian states. The coronavirus has heightened these debates as elements of Orwell’s book 1984 are starting to manifest themselves. Keeping us in lockdown with all the ramifications of control that this entails, highlights concerns about “Big Brother” governments keeping us under their thumbs to a degree never experienced before.
Focusing on the Apartheid years, there are many examples of authoritarian rule I could comment on, but I shall confine myself to just one incident, which had all the elements of sinister control as well as some moments of pure farce.
I had befriended an Indian photographer Dennis Bughwan, who agreed to finance and film a short story about a young Indian boy working in a restaurant to save up money to buy a present for a young school friend who turned out to be a disabled girl.
While filming in the streets where the Indian restaurant was situated, we were approached by members of the Security Branch of the police. They asked to see a copy of the script, which we gave them, and they seemed satisfied.
A couple of weeks later, a girlfriend and I visited a friend of hers in a house on the edge of the city. It was the last house on a lane that went on for only a couple of hundred yards before it petered out. To the surprise of our hostess, a small Mini-Minor motorcar with four large men drove slowly past, going down the road to nowhere. The lady of the house was worried, saying she was going through a messy divorce and that she thought they were private eyes hired by her husband to spy on her.
When we left a couple of hours later, I was disconcerted to see the same Mini-Minor following some way behind us. For the first time, I wondered if they could be following me and that they suspected I might be making a clandestine political movie instead of the script we had shown them.
Nothing else happened for some weeks and I forgot about it. Our little film entitled 20 Cents by Friday was completed and edited. We sent the edited cutting copy and negative along with the sound track to a London laboratory for completion.
A couple of weeks later, I wanted to visit my parents in Swaziland, a small British Protectorate adjoining South Africa. The girl I was seeing at the time happened to also have her parents in the tiny country. I did not have a car but she offered to drive me there. We set off intending to spend the night in Ermelo, a small town near Swaziland. I had hoped that the girl would share a hotel room with me but she had other ideas. She was a former student at Loretta Convent in the town and firmly announced that that was where she would be sleeping.
I settled into a room in the hotel, went down for dinner and was afterwards reading a book in bed when there came a tap on the door. It was 10 o’clock at night. I cautiously opened the door and was confronted by a Major and a Captain in the Security Branch. I tried not to freak out and invited them into my room.
The major showed me a search warrant to allow them to inspect my luggage and any papers I had with me. I asked them why, and the Major replied that I had recently made a film (pronounced “fillum” by many South Africans) and did I have a copy that I was intending to take out of the country? I told him no, but they proceeded to go through my suitcase, and then the Major opened my briefcase. I had brought a number of short stories and film treatments with me to show my parents. Most were innocuous but two would have shocked these servants of the Apartheid regime. Inevitably he chose to read one of the two entitled “Meneer God and Oom Jannie” (Mr.God and Uncle Jannie).
In a cold sweat, I kept chatting to him fervently hoping he would not read the punchline. The story told of Oom Jannie, an Afrikaans sheep farmer and government supporter, who was praying for rain. All the neighbouring farms had had rain and he asked God what he was doing wrong to deserve it. After some dialogue about how he very seldom beat his laborers and fed them well, etc., Jannie becomes more and more agitated and implored God to reveal Himself to him. He was very uncomfortable speaking into the sky and seeing nothing, not even clouds. In the last line of the story, God reaches out his ebony hand to shake Jannie’s hand!
This would have been blasphemous and a terrifying idea to the Apartheid boys, that God could possibly be a black man. I figured it was jail for me for sure with some beatings along the way.
Two things saved my quivering white skin. The Major could not concentrate with me talking all the time and put the story down commenting, “Ag man, why don’t you write nice love stories. This blerry tale makes no sense!”
The other salvation came from the young police Captain who suddenly said to me, “Hey I know you, didn’t you play rugby for Walvis Bay a few years ago?” I agreed and we realised that we had played for the same team. That was the clincher. He told the Major in no uncertain terms that I was an “OK Ou (chap)” and a fine rugby player. Rugby amongst the Afrikaners trumps politics and comes second to religion.
The Major said that everything was fine but they did need to search the car I had travelled in. By now, emboldened by my newfound status as a rugby player, I got angry and said that there was no way I was prepared to wake up a girl’s convent at nearly 11 p.m. at night. I think even the Major felt unhappy about that. I said that if they wanted to search the car they could do so before 6 a.m. the next morning when the girl would pick me up to travel to Swaziland.
They complained that it was far too early for them. I should just go and remember to rather write nice love stories.
About ten miles before the border, there was a South African Police station. As we approached, two cops stepped into the road and stopped the car. I had told the girl about my adventures the night before and we had laughed about it. I wasn’t surprised that they had phoned ahead to the cops, who now searched the car and both of our luggage. Ironically, the girl had a camera and film stock in the bottom of her suitcase but the cops never even found it.
I also had a secret laugh because the film was already in England. If it had been subversive, the cuckoo had flown the nest!
The only repercussion from the entire saga was that the girl’s father lost his temper and told her never to see me again, as I was clearly a political troublemaker. So, I had to find my own way back to Durban.
ExoBrain will be an enormous bastion against any threats of authoritarianism. With full security protection, it will be an instrument of truth upholding our Human Rights which like Saint George will put the dragon of fake news to the sword!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.