Documentary at the Intersection of Testimony and History

Twenty-five years ago, one of the most famous documentary series aired its final chapter. Henry Hampton’s fourteen-part Eyes on the Prize (1987, 1990) became the defining vision of the American civil rights struggle for millions, compiling memories and broadcasts from across the country into a single visual history of the movement. The award-winning documentarian Connie Field provides what is in many ways the international complement to this remarkable series in Have You Heard from Johannesburg (2010). Over seven episodes and nearly nine hours (in its feature-length versions), Field and her crew take audiences around the globe to see how the struggle against South African apartheid motivated solidarity activism across national boundaries. From its song-inspired title to the sheer magnitude of its impressive research, Have You Heard has taken all the steps to occupy a similar position to its American predecessor. For what gave Eyes on the Prize its lasting power was not a pioneering thesis, but rather the combination of human detail, tight narratives, emotional resonance, and arresting visuals that made it an ideal introduction to civil rights in secondary and collegiate classrooms. This formula of merging accessible history with media showmanship, executed with astounding skill and an emphasis on narrative, is precisely what Connie Field has achieved in her monumental documentary.

Have You Heard explores the global antiapartheid movement through seven stories. Each of the hour-plus episodes presents a self-contained arc, and when these episodes are combined the result is an overview of activism, primarily in Europe and the Americas. The first episode explores the origins of apartheid, the founding of the African National Congress (ANC), its departure from nonviolent protest, and its decimation after the Rivonia Trial. There is some discussion of early boycotts in the United States and Europe, but this and the final episode concentrate on domestic South African history, bookending the discussion of foreign solidarity in a way that reproduces the ANC’s exile. Oliver Tambo is featured in the second installment, which follows his extensive travel abroad to build support for his banned party. The need for Westerners to set aside Cold War anticommunism and Christian pacifism in order to support the now militant ANC provides dramatic tension, culminating in Tambo’s successful courting of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme and the World Council of Churches. This sets the stage for future episodes that look thematically at the growth of primarily Western solidarity.

And there is much to discover, with the thematic focus giving the films an opportunity to look closely at what antiapartheid meant to individual nations and activists who adopted it. The third episode provides a fascinating study of the historic linkages between the Netherlands and the Dutch-descended Afrikaners. The internationalization of the Black Consciousness Movement and the Soweto Uprising helped inspire support for the black majority from a population long sympathetic to the minority government. Next, Field and her crew look at the highly successful sport boycott of South Africa. The emphasis here is on the Commonwealth countries of Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, where activists clashed with rugby enthusiasts over tours of the all-white South African Springbok team. This is the first of four “stand alone” episodes available on the DVD set in both television-friendly hour broadcasts and longer self-contained features. The fifth installment, “From Selma to Soweto,” illustrates the connections between American civil rights and apartheid, emphasizing how African Americans in particular drove the popularization of the cause on college campuses and in Washington.¹ “Bottom Line” takes up the divestment and boycott strategies to provide a comparative perspective on U.S., British, and Dutch campaigns against firms doing business with South Africa, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. The final episode argues that international pressure worked with increasing unrest in South Africa to force the end of apartheid, while the decision to adopt Nelson Mandela as the figurehead for global organizing made it logical that he would lead the...