You’re history!

I don’t know if you’ve had the good fortune to listen to your grandparents’ or parents’ stories of their youth, childhood or impressionable events, but may I suggest you make a date to do so asap. As the saying goes, ‘we live in interesting times’, with last year’s riots, natural disasters and business movements. But it would be a crime to forget the history and events from the 20th century that are still creating echoes and murmurs in the world that we’ve witnessed first hand, by those still alive to tell us the most about them.
My own strongest impressions of what was happening in the world when I was at school was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, having a sticker on my school bag that said ‘Coal Not Dole’ (I’m ageing myself with that one), and never buying anything with a ‘Cape’ sticker on it in the supermarket. That meant it was produce from South Africa, a land of apartheid, oppression, Nelson Mandela in prison and incidents that needed investigating by Amnesty International, so we were boycotting their goods. But I couldn’t tell you much more than that.
This remarkable five-part series, written, directed and produced by Connie Field, brings together interviews and footage of ANC (African National Congress) members, church leaders, politicians, events, contemporary testimony, and so much more. It’s the most comprehensive history captured on film of a huge injustice and its space in the global history of the 20th century – and utterly compelling throughout.
There are opening vox pops from 1950’s white South Africans in the street ‘justifying’ the state of affairs. Elder statesmen and women retelling arrests and demonstrations from the 1950s. Members of the international church – I never knew how strongly the church had been involved in trying to bring aid to the ANC’s movement, or that there were actually four states of segregation, not simply the two most well known in South Africa.

“There are vox pops from 1950’s white South Africans ‘justifying’ the state of affairs”

There is a loud lack of contemporary voices arguing for apartheid. We all recognise now that it was a terrible way, enforced in a manner that tore up human rights and decency as well as committed all kinds of atrocities in its name – but the lack of any voice at all does give the impression that everyone must have realised that at the time. What, no repentance and realisation? Quite a massive silent indictment of humankind from Ms Field here if either nobody learned or everybody knew it was wrong but did it anyway – a worry hopefully to be addressed further along in the series.
This aside, I couldn’t recommend this programme enough. The first person testimonies reminds us how recently everything that is being recounted happened. Including Britain’s own relationship with South Africa and how it influenced events, even down to my preference for Spanish clementines over Cape oranges.
By the way, that is something so instilled I still avoid anything with a Cape sticker on it, although South African wine seems to be okay. Apartheid must have ended by the time I was of drinking age.
First person records of the huge events of the 20th century are invaluable. From recipes made of rations to an undeniable fear that the Cuban Missile Crisis really could have taken us into a nuclear war. Get the biscuits in and start gathering those stories. Thanks, Grandpa.
The World Against Apartheid: Have You Heard From Johannesburg?, BBC4, Tuesday 24 January