Making a good movie about the South African problem must be almost as difficult as solving it, which is to say very nearly impossible. Apartheid is a horrible thing and, clearly, must go. But how to end it and what the consequences might be is neither easy nor pleasant to contemplate. An equitable, nonviolent solution would be lovely, but if and when the shoe, or hobnailed boot, is on the other foot, the bloody kicking can be expected to flare up with renewed vigor.
The South African government has, to be sure, lately made some concessions— minuscule and of only nominal help. From my safely distant vantage point, I can sympathize with both parties. The blacks, having seen colonialism bite the dust in surrounding countries, must feel ready to burst the repressive dams; the Afrikaners, however, having inherited the land from generations of ancestors who, in many cases, wrested from the wilderness bounties the blacks could not or would not claim, can hardly feel eager to give away large—how large?— parts of it. And though the brutal and stupid repression they have practiced cannot be condoned, one can understand the lengths to which an outnumbered ruling class would go to keep a justly aggrieved and justifiably unruly underclass in check. It is an ugly, intractable situation, and that something very much like it can be found in several other parts of the world does not make it more tolerable or less tragic.
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