Rehad Desai
2021Miners Shot Down
Rehad Desai
In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.
Miners Shot Down
How to Steal a Country
Rehad Desai
A group of investigative journalists discover corruption involving the President of South Africa and his friends, the Guptas. Up against powerful elites, a pernicious disinformation campaign is mounted against the integrity of the newsroom. Then one day, two young men working in an IT company find the evidence that lays bare the entire modus operandi behind the capture of the South African state by private individuals and the politicians in their pockets.
How to Steal a Country
Everything Must Fall
Rehad Desai
An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that burst onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education. The story is told by four student leaders at Wits University and their Vice Chancellor, Adam Habib, a left-wing, former anti-apartheid student activist. When Habib’s efforts to contain the protest fail, he brings 1000 police on to campus. There are dire consequences for the young leaders. By blending dramatic unfolding action with a multi-protagonist narrative, much of the drama lies in the internal struggles the activists have around the weight of leadership. Threaded through the film is a pulse of anticipation, shared across the generational divide, that somehow these youth have reached breaking point and won’t back down until they achieve the kind of social transformation that previous generations had long given up on.
Everything Must Fall
The Giant is Falling
Rehad Desai
Jacob Zuma, Julius Malema
The film documents the key political issues in recent years in South Africa that have marked the demise of the African National Congress (ANC). These include the Marikana massacre in August 2012, whereby 34 striking miners were gunned down by the ANC government's police force. Rehad Desai documented this historic event in his 2013 film MINERS SHOT DOWN. He refers to the incident once again in his latest film and shows how the ANC is undermining its close connections to the trade unions it set up as a freedom movement under Nelson Mandela, and how students have also turned on the party to protest against tuition fees under the motto #FeesMustFall. The film's compelling footage unmasks the cynical despotism of corrupt president Jacob Zuma, who is chiefly responsible for the ANC's demise and its catastrophic losses at the most recent elections. It also introduces opposition movements that are challenging his now-untenable position.
The Giant is Falling
Bhambatha: War of the Heads 1906
Rehad Desai
Young King Bhambata leads the fight against an unfair local tax within the Natal Colony. This documentary focuses on the unfair conditions that lead Bhambatha and his people to fight back followed by the violent and the immoderate British reaction.
Bhambatha: War of the Heads 1906
