End of the Dialogue
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END OF THE DIALOGUE is a landmark film that was one of the first to reveal the full horrors of apartheid to the world. Made in 1970, the film is valuable not only as a record of apartheid, but as a record of how people's understanding of South Africa was then changing. Produced by a small group of black South African exiles and film students based in London, it caused an uproar when it was originally released. More than 30 years after the images and facts still shock.
At that time, white South Africans enjoyed the world's second highest standard of living, while in some parts of the country black life expectancy was 34 years, with 50 percent of black children dying before their fifth birthday. 87 percent of the country's land was reserved for whites, with the least desirable tracts set aside for black self-sufficiency.
The film features stark visual contrasts between the prep schools, military parades and rugby matches of the white minority, and the bare classrooms, torn clothes and back-breaking working conditions of the blacks who make their lives of luxury possible.
A powerful contemporaneous record of the apartheid years, watching END OF THE DIALOGUE today, one can't help but be struck by how remarkable South Africa's transition to democracy has been.
'Powerful and distressing... A remarkable film...the anti-apartheid impact of the film is immense... [The] most successful act of clandestine subversion against apartheid for years.'-Observer (London)
'It is a grim catalogue, but irrefutably accurate, set out without slant or emotion; as in Resnais' Night and Fog, it is the absence of emotion which generates it... technique used with shattering effect. An eloquent, angry testament to what apartheid means for the people who are obliged to live with it.'-Monthly Film Bulletin
'Agonizingly well done...ammunition to be used in the fight for more freedom and equality.'-Daily Mirror (South Africa)
'Rightly and righteously angry...passion flooded the film, drummed on the sound track...full of menace...cold black anger with statistics at its fingertips...'-The Guardian
'END OF THE DIALOGUE documents with hard objectivity the workings of apartheid. It should be seen: it is so inconceivable, that we so easily put out of our minds how one race can exploit another, not only without ordinary humanity, but also without any foresight for the future that must one day come.'-Financial Times (London)
Citation
Main credits
Caccia, Antonia (Director)
Caccia, Antonia (Producer)
Other credits
Music by Barton Midwood.
Distributor subjects
Africa; Civil Rights; Economics; History (World); Human Rights; Politics; Racism; South AfricaKeywords
End of the Dialogue
[00:00:37.92] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:02:02.42] South Africa has a population of 3 million white, 15 million blacks, one million coloreds, and half a million Asiatics. Blacks have no vote. There are no blacks in Parliament and no blacks in the Armed Forces.
[00:02:20.08] South Africa mines more than 50 minerals and is the world's greatest producer of diamonds, chrome, platinum, and antimony. It is from this solid base of economic, political, and military strength that three million whites exercise and maintain exclusive power in South Africa.
[00:02:38.28] South Africa's sunshine and wide open spaces and its high standard of living for whites, second only to the standard of living in the United States, are a boon to tourism.
[00:02:49.49] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:03:11.44] [CHEERING]
[00:03:18.43] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:04:58.16] [MUSIC CHANGES]
[00:05:34.56] This is a black township adjoining Johannesburg. The day has begun at four in the morning when the blacks started on the 15 mile journey into Johannesburg to do their chores as domestic servants, factory workers, drivers, messenger, street sweepers, and clerical workers. Under the Group Areas Act, it is illegal for different racial groups to live in the same area. 600,000 blacks live here.
[00:06:03.61] During the day, Soweto is almost completely deserted except for children. The parents only come back about eight or nine in the evening. Most mothers are doing domestic work, which includes taking care of white children during the day. This has made black parents almost strangers to their own children.
[00:06:24.04] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:06:46.31] 50% of the black children born in South Africa die before the age of five. Of those who survive, the majority are two years retarded in their growth. They are victims of malnutrition; trachoma, which leads to blindness; and [INAUDIBLE], the most serious deficiency disease. Death comes at an early age here. The average life expectancy for blacks is 34 years.
[00:07:14.83] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:07:58.87] Some of these slums were condemned as long ago as the early '30s as being unfit for human habitation, but they linger on with their pollution and poverty. Sanitation is still primitive. In some places, a boho latrine is open four hours a day.
[00:08:19.03] It requires a minimum of 20 pounds a month for a family of four to live here. The average earnings of a man/wife team is 16 pounds per month. Sometimes the 4 pounds difference is made up by the earnings of children who go out to work in the city as messengers and newspaper boys.
[00:08:42.85] [CHATTER AND TRAFFIC NOISE]
[00:09:21.55] Some children earn a few pennies in the marketplace. They carry baskets for the white madam. These few pennies often have to suffice for the bus or train fare back to the township.
[00:09:36.02] [SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC]
[00:10:09.53] There is free education for all children, except for blacks. 92% of those who attend school, are forced to leave by the time they're 13 years old. More than 15% never go to school at all. On education, the government spends 73 pounds on every white child per year and 7 pounds on every black child per year. There are about 60 black pupils per teacher. The black teacher earns less than half a white teacher with the same qualifications.
[00:10:47.19] There is free school feeding for all children except for blacks. The school feeding scheme was extended to cover black children in the late '40s. After a brief run, the scheme was dropped because members of Parliament complained that too many black children flocked to school, not to learn but just to eat a mug of soup and a slice of bread.
[00:11:11.57] The late Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, said that, "Education must train and teach people in accordance with the opportunities in life." In terms of the government's plan for South Africa, he said, "There's no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor."
[00:11:32.54] This is the library of a back high school. The blacks must pay for their own books. For whites, conditions are different.
[00:11:44.79] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:12:59.83] This is the servants' quarters in the same house. The woman's wages are 4 pounds a month. This man is here illegally. He's not allowed to live with his wife as this is a white area. Only the wife is permitted to live here as a domestic servant to serve the needs of her white employers. Police conduct periodic searches in the suburbs to sniff out those husbands who have slipped into the white backyards for the night with their wives. Arrest means a fine of 5 pounds and/or a term of imprisonment. The late
[00:13:39.26] Dr. Verwoerd once said black children must never be allowed to look on the green pastures where they will never graze.
[00:13:58.80] [SOUNDS OF TENNIS BEING PLAYED]
[00:14:38.22] [SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC]
[00:15:05.75] There are hardly any restaurants in Johannesburg, with its one million inhabitants, where blacks can be served. As a result, most blacks spend their lunch hour sitting on the sidewalk eating, resting, or just whiling away the time. Park benches are for whites only. No blacks are allowed to sit inside the parks.
[00:15:30.95] [SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC]
[00:17:39.72] The pass laws are the most effective form of controlling the movement of the blacks and are the basis of the cheap labor system which operates in South Africa. Every black person over the age of 16 must carry a passbook showing work status, tribal origin, police record, and tax receipt. It must be produced on demand. Failure to produce it constitutes a crime. That means one has to carry the passbook on one's person 24 hours a day.
[00:18:09.55] When traveling to another area, every black person has to report his or her presence to the authorities within 72 hours of arrival. The effect of this is that no black person can travel, work, marry, withdraw his or her savings, and in fact even get buried unless his passbook is in order.
[00:18:29.01] In Johannesburg, with a black population of about 600,000, an average of 1,000 blacks are arrested every day. Those convicted are mostly sold as convict labor to the farmers for periods ranging up to six months.
[00:18:43.91] There is no minimum wage law for unskilled labor. Employers exploit the fact that work seekers are given only 14 days to look for work. They therefore offer the lowest wage possible-- knowing full well that faced with the alternative of endorsement out of an urban area or a low wage, the black man is forced to accept the low wage.
[00:19:04.88] [SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC]
[00:19:16.85] [WORKERS SINGING]
[00:21:06.44] All blacks are temporary sojourners in the urban areas. They are not there as of right. They are there as long as they are needed to serve the needs of the white men. The blacks dare not linger long in the city after work. There is a curfew for blacks in all urban areas which starts between 9 and 11 at night and lasts until 6 the following morning. During the curfew period, all blacks are liable to arrest unless they carry a special pass from an employer, stating the reason for their presence in the white area. Therefore at the end of the day, they must make their long way back to the black township.
[00:21:43.56] [CHATTER AND SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC]
[00:22:16.02] The townships are 15 to 30 miles outside the white cities and are usually surrounded by fences.
[00:22:22.49] [SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC]
[00:22:37.96] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:23:29.85] [MUSIC CHANGES]
[00:24:16.26] [MUSIC CHANGES]
[00:24:36.26] The Group Areas Act has, in the past, forced blacks and Indians out of their homes which have been newly classified as areas for whites only. Here in Cape Town it is happening today to the colored population.
[00:24:48.73] [SOUNDS OF SHOVELS DIGGING]
[00:25:01.56] In District Six the government has expropriated 1,746 homes and resold them at a profit of about 3 and 1/2 million pounds.
[00:25:10.86] [SOUNDS OF TRAFFIC AND CHATTER]
[00:25:26.73] [SOUND OF WAVES]
[00:25:56.06] Devon is a flourishing center for white tourism. It is also the center of the Indian population. The families of these Indian girls work for the sugar estates. Theirs is a life contract. Often if only one member of the family leaves his work, the entire family is evicted from the land. The Group Areas Act has forced Indians to leave there former homes. They call this place Tin Town.
[00:26:36.90] [CHATTER]
[00:26:47.38] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:28:03.73] [MUSIC CHANGES]
[00:28:37.66] [MUSIC CHANGES]
[00:29:39.03] [GUNSHOT]
[00:29:44.02] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:29:59.99] [SOUND OF ENGINES RUMBLING]
[00:30:13.38] These families are workers on the white man's farm. The wages are paid partly in kind-- half a bag of corn-- and partly in cash-- 15 shillings per month. For payment, the children are allowed to pick the damaged food for themselves. These are the fruits-- pawpaws, mangoes, and oranges-- which make the after-dinner deserts of the Western world. The wages are so bad that most men are forced to take industrial jobs in the cities and on the mines. Therefore those left on the farm are mostly old men, women, and children. These families live as squatters on the white farm and have to pay a squatter's tax.
[00:31:07.13] [SINGING]
[00:32:13.24] [SOUNDS OF A FURNACE]
[00:32:24.65] South Africa produces over 73% of the gold supply of the so-called free world. In 1965, output was 373 million pounds. The sweat of black South African miners-- including that of blacks from as far afield as Angola, Mozambique, Malawi, and Southwest Africa-- ensures that the high standard of living of the white South Africans and the Western world. Suffocating 3,000 feet underground to dig gold in the Transvaal for 5 pounds a month, they are the key to the stability of the major currencies of the Western world.
[00:33:14.39] [SOUNDS OF DRILLING AND CHATTER]
[00:33:34.05] These men are being trained to be bossboys. As bossboys, each one will be in charge of 10 black miners. The miners contracts are for periods of 12 to 18 months and renewable until such time as the ravages of consumption and typhus make them unproductive for the gold mines. As migrant labor, they have no contact with their wives or with any woman whatsoever for periods of up to 12 months. Here in these quarters, 36 men share one room. Their bunks are made of concrete.
[00:34:22.76] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:34:28.73] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:34:35.21] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:34:41.68] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:34:48.16] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:34:54.63] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:35:01.10] [DRUM ROLL]
[00:35:04.66] This is Langa, a black township just outside Cape Town. 17,000 men live here without their families. These men work in the factories in the docks around Cape Town. Their families were sent away because they were considered superfluous, the dependents of breadwinners
[00:35:32.09] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:36:32.46] More hostels, which will house only black workers who are not permitted to live with their families, are being built in Soweto with the purpose of getting rid of the superfluous family dependents. Most superfluous persons are transported to the homelands. This is done to make black workers a transient labor force.
[00:36:55.06] 87% of South Africa's land area is reserved for whites. The remaining 13% is designated as black homelands, Bantustans, or reserves. Even this 13% has not yet been made available by the government. Here, the black population is supposed to live off the land.
[00:37:19.47] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:39:43.18] [JET ENGINE]
[00:39:48.19] The might of white South Africa is preserved with these weapons supplied by the Western world. Here is a French Super Frelon helicopter and a Mirage fighter jet. The British Buccaneer, a low-flying ground attack aircraft highly effective for use against [INAUDIBLE]. The Impala, manufactured in South Africa on license from Italy, equipped with British Rolls-Royce engines.
[00:40:35.85] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:40:49.79] [MUSIC CHANGES]
[00:41:39.16] South Africa denies that she holds any political prisoners except for Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, president of the banned Pan Africanist Congress. Sobukwe has spent nine years in prison, six of them on Robben Island where he was held without trial. He is now under house arrest. The record shows, however, that there are many other political prisoners. Nelson Mandela, serving life imprisonment. Walter Sisulu, serving life imprisonment. Abram Fischer, serving life imprisonment. Ahmed Kathrada, serving life imprisonment.
[00:42:17.25] Over 10,000 are now in prison for political crimes, while unknown numbers languish in secret detention without trial in South African prisons. Many have died while under police interrogation. Scores have already been hanged.
[00:42:33.42] Bekapantsi Vulindlela, sentenced to death. Sadunge Vulindlela, sentenced to death. Patsalo Xhogo, sentenced to death. Mtalatala Xhoga, sentenced to death. Mxolisi Damane, sentenced to death. Light Magoikani, sentenced to death. Bawukazi Magoikani, sentenced to death. Fenzile Jaxa, sentenced to death. Lennox Madikane, sentenced to death. Jonathan Sigwagwa, sentenced to death. Johannes Notyawe, sentenced to death. Fanele Matikinca, sentenced to death. Thembekile Nyovu, sentenced to death. Tembeni Swelindawo, sentenced--
[00:43:27.07] [MUSIC PLAYING]
