When Joe Slovo, a white man, was heading up the military terrorist wing of the African National Congress (ANC), he said to his daughter that, when this is all over, if you want to tell the story, tell the story of Patrick Chamusso, for he is a real live-wire. With Catch a Fire (2006), Shawn Slovo has provided a script which combines the story of Patrick Chamusso’s life and the fight to end apartheid in South Africa. It is 1980, and Chamusso (Derek Luke) is keeping his head down, working hard at the oil refinery, loving his children, and coaching the young boy’s soccer team when he is wrongly accused of bombing the refinery. Col. Nic Vos (Tim Robbins), head of the white regime’s anti-terrorist squad, has Chamusso tortured repeatedly, and then has his wife tortured as well. When released, the formerly apolitical Chamusso disappears to join the armed resistance, and he later actually attempts to bomb the factory. Freedom fighter or terrorist? Numerous American viewers dislike this movie because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Why? As far as I know, the US did nothing to support apartheid in South Africa. There is no explicit reference to the United States. I cannot even detect a subtext referring (note the word) to the US. The movie does, however, deal with issues relevant to Americans. For example, the relationship between torturing people and breeding terrorists. As another example, the efforts of a white minority for a military victory over a non-white majority. Viewers who claim the movie is attacking America are projecting their complex guilt onto the movie. This projection doesn’t have to involve the US military torturing Iraqis or invading countries, for some viewers disliked the movie because it reminded them of segregation in the US half a century ago. This reminds me of the American fellow I glimpsed in the trailer to Why We Fight: “When did we become such a puny nation that we can’t admit our mistakes and get on with fixing them!?” The strength of the movie is the point of view and the characterization. We actually see life from a black African’s point of view, and the guy is complex. Far from being saintly, Chamusso initially keeps his head down in the face of obvious racial injustice, and thus looks both a sly climber and a social coward as well as a friend who will help his fellow blacks out of tight spots. While Chamusso loves his family, he continues an old affair with the woman who bore his son. Later, when he joins the ANC terrorists, it is with some misgivings: He is reluctant to shout that he is prepared to die, and he chaffs under the waiting. His Afrikaans opponent, Col. Vos, is also a complex character. He routinely has people tortured, but when he sees what his men did to Chamusso, he is genuinely put off, and he calls for a doctor. Vos is tired, going through the motions in what he knows is ultimately a losing cause. Yet when he is closing in on a terrorist/freedom fighter, he is full of energy. He too has a family with two daughters, and it is pathetic that he teaches them to fire pistols. One of his daughters refuses, yet it is she who winds up using a gun in self-defence. Although Vos is despicable, he is more than that. The weakness of the movie is that it tells the “wrong” story. This leads to charges that the movie pounds home points that we already know, that it shows nothing remarkable. Maybe I would be better to say it tells the “easy” story—wrongly accused and sorely abused black man turns terrorist to free more than 20 million of his people from the fascist oppression of an elite of 3 million whites. The very last minutes of the movie give us a look at what I think would have been the “right” and “difficult” story to tell. After apartheid and its regime have been overthrown, Chamusso (Derek Luke) stalks up behind Vos and says in a voice-over that he could snap the neck of this man who ruined so many lives, but during the second 5 years of his 10 years in prison (with Nelson Mandela and others), he found it in his heart to forgive. Suddenly, the movie shifts from the actor to the real Chamusso outside his house in the hills of eastern South Africa. He has remarried and started a home for five dozen children orphaned by AIDS. He and the actor are having a great time on the soccer pitch as the credits role. We need to know not that racism is bad but how Chamusso overcame his rightful bitterness and anger, how he fought off the effects of apartheid long after it had been officially ended, and how he rebuilt his happiness and wound up doing so much social good.
Jim Bell