SOUTH AFRICA AT 20: THE FREEDOM TOUR
MINERS SHOT DOWN + Q&A
FREE ENTRY, BOOK ONLINE: bit.ly/minersshotdownfilm
Director: Rehad Desai
South Africa, 2014, 86 mins.
Documentary
Venue: The Yusuf Hamied Theatre (Christ’s College Cambridge)
The South African Tour has selected Miners Shot Down, the only documentary that has managed to gather the footage of the massacre of mineworkers in Marikana, killed by the police while peacefully protesting for their rights in August 2012. Marikana is one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines. When mineworkers stood up for better wages, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. The film follows the strike from day one. What emerges is collusion at the top, spiralling violence and the country’s first post-colonial massacre. South Africa will never be the same again.
We are delighted to welcome Alice Meyer to host a Q&A following the screening, as part of ‘South Africa at 20: The Freedom Tour’. Meyer is a South African Gates PhD candidate of English at the University of Cambridge who has presented the paper ‘The Case of Marikana: poetry and protest in post-apartheid South Africa’.
