From Selma to Soweto: Connie Field documentary chapter screened at Foundation

On 20 August 2014 the US Embassy, in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, screened From Selma to Soweto, an episode of the documentary series Have You Heard from Johannesburg, produced by Connie Field in 2010.

The screening took place at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.

Foundation Chief Executive Sello Hatang welcomed guests and spoke about the evident parallel between the struggles for freedom encountered in the north and the south – in America and in South Africa.

“It is important that those who responded to the call and fought against prejudice in South Africa are acknowledged,” he said.

“From Selma to Soweto is a reminder of our responsibility to those who lost their lives in the struggle, to whom we owe our gratitude for freedom. It is a reminder that we need to serve in their honour.”

The America/South Africa connection

From Selma to Soweto highlights how the United States became a key battleground in the anti-apartheid movement, with African-Americans leading the charge to change US policy toward the apartheid regime.

The episode follows the movement to get colleges, city councils and states to divest their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa – a grassroots civil undertaking that finally leads to sanctions against the apartheid state.

“President Obama has told students of his first steps into student life in 1981, where he protested against apartheid South Africa,” said Melissa Ford, Country Public Affairs Officer at the US Embassy in Pretoria.

“This year South Africa’s celebration of 20 years of democracy coincides with 50 years since the passing of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964. In South Africa and in the US, civil movements forced those in power to address grievous wrongs and helped ensure that all citizens have a voice,” she said.

Dr Deborah Robinson is a senior programme manager for projects in social justice. In 1985 she initiated the South African political prisoner bracelet programme, to build ties between individuals in the US and prisoners serving life sentences in apartheid South Africa.

Speaking about the political tipping point of the anti-apartheid movement in the US, Dr Robinson cited 21 November (the Thanksgiving holiday) 1984 as the date when the average American began to become socially involved in South Africa’s struggle for freedom.

“That evening four American, prominent anti-apartheid activists – the Executive Director TransAfrica, Randall Robinson, Commissioner of the US Commission on Civil Rights Dr Mary Frances Berry, Congressman Walter Fauntroy and Georgetown University professor of law Eleanor Holmes Norton – called for a meeting with the SA Ambassador to the US at the SA Embassy in Washington DC.

“The meeting ended in a much-publicised protest and sit-in, resulting in the arrest of three of the four on Thanksgiving,” she said.

The protests (and resultant arrests) at the SA embassy feature in From Selma to Soweto, and highlight how ordinary Americans took it upon themselves to protest South Africa’s plight. The protests represent the longest-running act of civil disobedience recorded in US history, with over 4 000 people arrested.

“I watched the entire Have You Heard from Johannesburg documentary and enjoyed it thoroughly,” said Verne Harris, Director of Research and Archive at the Foundation.

“It serves to acknowledge the work of activists across the globe who did wonderful work in supporting the anti-apartheid movement back home.”

“The film deals with three major movements outside of South Africa that had an impact on apartheid – the global sports boycott, economic boycotts and political isolation of the apartheid state. It covers 12 countries and follows the interplay between anti-apartheid movements across the globe that took shape mostly during Mr Mandela’s time in prison,” said Connie Field, director and producer of Have You Heard from Johannesburg.

“The film highlights the role Oliver Tambo played in moving South Africa towards democracy. He was a skilled negotiator and anti-apartheid organiser, who worked tirelessly in exile to keep upping the ante in the struggle for South Africa’s liberation.

“He had an inherent skill (one perhaps gained from his native Pondoland, where elders negotiate in much the same way) that enabled him to persuade others to think of ideas as their own, when it fact it was him who initially suggested (them),” she said.

“In order to grow Mr Tambo’s legacy, we will be distributing some 1 000 copies of the series to local high schools, with thanks to the US State Department,” she added.

To find out more about the documentary and where it is available for purchase, please visit http://www.clarityfilms.org/haveyouheardfromjohannesburg

Notes to Editors

Film synopsis

Long one of South Africa's most important and powerful allies, the United States becomes a key battleground in the anti-apartheid movement as African-Americans lead the charge to change the government’s policy toward the apartheid regime. Strengthened through years of grassroots organising during the civil rights movement, black leaders and their allies take on US foreign policy on South Africa, directing campaigns in corporate boardrooms, universities, embassies, and finally in the US Congress itself, where a stunning victory is won against the formidable opposition of President Ronald Reagan. African-Americans alter US foreign policy for the first time in history, and the US – once the backbone of support for apartheid South Africa as its ally in the Cold War – finally imposes sanctions on Pretoria. European sanctions follow, and with them, the political isolation of the apartheid regime.

Producer/director

Connie Field is an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated director who has made a number of high-profile documentaries that have been shown all over the world. Her work includes Have You Heard From Johannesburg, a seven-part series on the global movement that ended apartheid in South Africa which received a prime-time Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking; the Academy Award-nominated Freedom on My Mind, a history of Freedom Summer and the civil rights movement in Mississippi; the feminist classic The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter; Salud, a story featuring the international work of Cuban doctors that won the Henry Hampton Award from the Council on Foundations; and Al Helm, Martin Luther King in Palestine, which won the Justice Matters Award at the DC International Film Festival. Her awards are numerous, including the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, British Academy Award Nominee, Best Series, and Best Feature Documentary from numerous festivals, as well as having her films listed as the "Best Doc of the Year" or "One of the 10 Best Films of the Year" by a number of film critics. Her work has been broadcast in over 30 countries, including Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain, on BBC World and in the US. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.