21 Up South Africa: Mandela's Children

by Angus Gibson, Director
First Run/Icarus Films, An ITV Production, Brooklyn, NY, 2007
DVD, 69 mins., col.
Sales: $298; rental, $125
Distributor’s website: http://www.frif.com.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University


The most difficult place I'd ever traveled was South Africa for a conference in Johannesburg in 2001. The conference was rewarding, all people we met were friendly, and the various parts of the city we visited had their own vibrancy. Yet there was such a fear of crime that the white family who invited us to stay with them kept a prison-like steel door locked at night between the bedrooms and the rest of the house (including the bathroom!). And at a holiday dinner, one unhappily unmarried daughter drunkenly announced how her younger sister's boyfriend was--a fact obvious to all, since he was in attendance--black.

I thought of those edgy people as I watched snippets of the lives of 11 young South Africans who are black, white, "mixed race", from different urban and rural parts of the country, and from backgrounds ranging from rich to poor. They were first filmed as seven year olds in 1992, two years before apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela was elected president. They were filmed again at age 14 in 1999, and finally as 21-year-old young adults in 2006. The viewer catches glimpses of the official ending and then slow ebbing of the Apartheid policies and customs that kept races and ethnicities apart, as well as the toll taken in Africa by AIDS.

The first interviewee is a white fellow from the countryside, a devoted rugby player who realizes that all-white teams' days are numbered, lowering his professional chances. He spouts knee-jerk racism at age seven, which he discounts at age 14. He hopes to own his own hunting preserve, where paying guests bring down a springbok. The second subject is seen as a child in a Soweto squatters camp with her grandmother, during a time of violent power struggle with the Inkatha faction. At seven first says she'll be a schoolmistress, "then a policeman so I can shoot you". She also says blacks are ugly, whites are beautiful. At 14, she lives in a two-room house with mother and other grandma, and at 21 sadly unemployed, unmarried, keeping house and taking care of her aunt's children. The third is a boy in a black township near a rich white neighborhood. At 21 he mostly speaks English, points out proudly his family's indoor toilet, TV, fridge, yet has been unemployed since leaving school.

The fourth subject is an exuberant Indian child in Durban, who at age seven says her parents "buy me everything, spoil me with too much". Then the family suffers a reversal of fortune, for when she was eight her father's business declined and he took ill and died soon after. The family--mother and daughters--now live in a gated community, to which they moved after a couple of break-ins, among other Indians. As a child, she mimed and danced for the camera to "I'm Too Sexy" with another "colored" neighborhood friend. At 21, she attends Bhangra dance clubs amongst other fun- (and mate-) seeking young Indians.

The next subject is interviewed in Cape Town, the son of a top black footballer. He says he was bored among Cape Town whites, so was sent to a very expensive school in Johannesburg where he made connections that have served him as a young adult. At age 21 he is now working with white friends in a business climate that encourages or requires black empowerment. The sixth interviewee was first shown as a folksinging pet-loving Jewish girl child, who is seen at 21 at work in the film industry and as a club DJ but confesses paranoia as a result of heavy cocaine use. This reviewer could not help but be reminded of people he met there.

The seventh interviewee is a white girl who marries her boyhood sweetheart--we see them together at age seven--yet has another child whom she has decided to leave with her own mother. The last few kids speed by, and this may be because we don't have their young adult voices to anchor them in our minds; the documentary carries a dedication at the end, to Bonita, Linda and Shane, three participants who died of AIDS. The disease claims 1,000 a day in Africa, and we get glimpses of its impact here. A daughter of a Zulu chief, proudly brandishing a spear and hide shield at seven, is dead at 19. Another boy died at 19, another at 20. One "colored" girl speaks of her deceased friend, as well as of her own school experience in the changing racial climate.

Recently South Africa was in the news again, for riots against refugees from other countries like Zimbabwe; the sad events remind us all that the nation remains a magnet to Africans in more difficult circumstances. Angus Gibson’s 21 Up South Africa: Mandela's Children ends on an optimistic note, anticipating interviews to be held with these subjects at 28. Despite the unhappy circumstances that so trim it, a documentary focus on only eight young adults, who are establishing themselves in their mercurial post-revolutionary society, will probably prove an even better production.