WeeklySA_AdminFLICK: How Drum film’s US financial backers prioritised American gloss over African authenticity.in telling story of SA magazine and Mafuna’s journalist dad Henry Nxumalo…
By Suzette Mafuna
IN CANADA
It was in the early 90’s when a stranger named Zola Maseko called to tell me about a movie he wanted to produce on Henry Nxumalo, and could I give consent. It was the peak of exhilaration and intoxicating euphoria, our formerly exiled brothers and sisters, returnee artists, politicians. former askaris, double agents and infiltrators were coming home tentatively and drip by drip. Brimming with excitement, gratitude and appreciation of such formidable attempt at telling my dad story, I consented, but only after I had sought and gotten the go-ahead from my close and extended family.
I asked for the script, consulted with my younger and only brother – he was my most dependable, and the most impartial, wise and instinctive critique and counsellor ever. We didn’t reject it outright, but agreed it needed some rewrite, revisions, deletions, additions and so on.
For his part, Zola graciously informed me my revised script was not acceptable to the sponsor and he wouldn’t be able to produce the movie without the sponsor.
I missed the launch of the movie Drum because it came out, when I had already moved to Canada, but managed to watch it online. I watched it once and despaired. Only one US reviewer was scathingly critical of the made-in-America African movie (I have copied and saved the review).
Secondly, Drum won Zola an approximately R120-million prize. I believe he was under pressure to feature US artists and crew in order to draw US audiences.
Wikipedia provides the following summary of Drum a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo who worked for Drum magazine, called “the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa”.
“[1] It was director Zola Maseko’s first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, but Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jürgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors”.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2004, and did the rounds of international film festivals before going on general release in South Africa in July 2006. It was released in Europe, but failed to get a distributor for the USA where it went straight to DVD.
The film was generally well received critically. It was awarded Best South African Film at the Durban International Film Festival, and director Maseko gained the top prize at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO).
BBC News writes “The hero of Drum is the fun loving, hard-drinking philanderer, Henry Nxumalo, a magazine reporter. Nxumalo’s enterprising reportage leads him into direct conflict with South Africa’s apartheid machinery with fatal consequences”.
The leading role is taken by African-American actor Taye Diggs. Maseko was awarded the Etalon d’Or de Yennenga or the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, and a cash prize of 10m CFA francs ($20,000) at the end of the week-long film festival”.
One of the most critical reviews was by Francesca Dinglasan of Box Office Magazine. Dinglasan, who gave Drum 2.5 out of 5 stars, was unimpressed by the “unoriginal plotting techniques to convey the story of an investigative journalist attempting to expose racial injustices in a society coming to grips with the newly introduced edicts of apartheid.” Although Diggs’s acting was “engaging”, according to her, the film “depends on just a few too many big-screen cliches and predictable plot turns.” The “richly designed sets and costumes” were not able to overcome the less-than-satisfactory” Drum.
A Cape Town-based advertising “creative” approached me after I had started talking with Wits representatives about giving consent to a Post Humous Doctorate in Literature Award to Henry Nxumalo.
I smelt a rat when the “woke” Capetonian argued that a Soweto street had been named after my father, when my son, Khotso, and I had taken photos of us under the Henry Nxumalo Street sign in Johannesburg city. Goch street, the historic scene of a deadly confrontation between underground insurgents and armed to-the-teeth apartheid police, had been renamed Henry Nxumalo Street.
The creative brother could not have known that my first assignment of a political nature was a significant, sensitive, and intimate interview with the overwhelmingly shocked and bewildered, mother of the brave young warrior, Solomon Mahlangu, who had been executed for his alleged role in the murder of a police officer during a skirmish between police and guerrillas on Goch Street.
How could I be wrong about the location of Henry Nxumalo Street, a national tribute to my dad’s valour, now named after a most courageous and daring young soldier who died for his people to be free, what a poignant and humbling gesture.
Two Black men, one an older journalist who was stabbed brutally for exposing the impact of the country’s racist laws on black people – the other, a young guerilla fighter who was executed for fighting to free his people from bondage. His grieving mom could not believe that the racist regime had waited for her son to turn 21 before carrying out the execution – by law, no executions were allowed of anyone under 21.
“They waited to execute my son after his 21st birthday in imprisonment,” she cried. How could this advertising Capetonian be so ignorant, flippant and ill-equipped to execute such a monumental and crucial task that he was assigned by his advertising employer.
I never heard from him again.
*In this first-part of two articles, Canada-based veteran journalist Suzette Mafuna catalogues her battles to protect and preserve the legacy of her father, journalism extraordinaire Henry Nxumalo, whose character is central in the award-winning film Drum.
