The South African Story
DIRECTED BY BENNY GOOL AND ROGER FRIEDMAN
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has taken on a new role: he’s starring in a television series called The South African Story with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, produced and directed by Oryx Multimedia. The 10-part series tells the story across nine 30-minute episodes, each located, largely, within the borders of one of the country’s nine provinces. A tenth, 60-minute, episode brings the provinces together in a single programme.
The series, filmed between January and April 2010, took Archbishop Tutu to seminal locations across South Africa, from the dizzying heights of God’s Window in Mpumalanga to the banks of the Limpopo River in the far North East. From the top of Table Mountain, to the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and the house where Winnie Mandela was banished in Brandfort in the Free State, to the Cradle of Humankind in Northwest Province.
It is far more than a travel series, though. The South African Story with Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a multi-faceted production, the construct of which covers history, culture, destination and politics. The high definition footage is juxtaposed with the grittiness of original archive material giving it a unique perspective on South Africa, now and then.
As a leading participant in the anti-apartheid struggle, and then as the chairperson of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Tutu has seen and heard more stories than most on his travels through the country.
Much of the country, he says, he hadn’t seen before. “I wasn’t rediscovering; I was discovering. Discovering because many of those are places that you didn’t easily go to. Some were places you couldn’t go…
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