‘London Recruits’ Tells the True Story of International Anti-Apartheid Solidarity

Main and the film’s producer, Jacintha de Nobrega, had met in 2018 during a KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission event in London. Main had already filmed a trailer and he sold the idea to de Nobrega, who then jumped aboard.

The nature of the story necessitated that the film be an international co-production. According to de Nobrega, one of the beneficial aspects of such an arrangement was the financing. “Traditionally, I couldn't access that kind of money. I found foreign currency, and so you get more production value for the money that you're bringing in. Our [South African] productions, you know, it's all in Rands, it's very limited,” she says, adding that working with producers across different countries was another benefit.

The film is based on a book by the same name, edited by Ken Keable, who got in contact with some of the volunteers — young communists, Trotskyists and independent socialists who originated from the U.K, Netherlands, U.S. and other countries.

Main, who also wrote the film’s script, says that, “The narrative of the film is something we crafted from the material we gathered. Sometimes you had amusing mismatches; one guy was convinced from the memory that it was raining that day, and another guy [would say that] it was the hottest day of the year. Memories had become percolated through their life and just changed slightly. We weren't doing investigative stuff. We were trying to show what they remembered.”

Main knew that he wanted to make a drama-type film out of a documentary narrative. “Everything you hear is eyewitness testimony, but we're trying to be with the characters as stuff happens. So no character in the film knows the big picture, they just know what they know at that moment.”

The film hops seamlessly between dramatized and real-life events. Main says that he wanted to find a reconstruction that immersed viewers in the action. He applied the skills that he had obtained from his earlier work making television documentaries with youth groups to achieve the intended effect.

“The way people use a camera without any training, that sort of makes it feel real. And for me, there was a kind of journey back to that with this film, because we were using a lot of [Super 8 camera footage], which was sourced from original collections,” says Main.

Former South African intelligence minister, Ronnie Kasrils, who appears in the film, spoke about how the Sharpeville massacre made him decide to take a stand and fight against oppression, and again about how the underground movement in South Africa had been undermined by the fascist state. The massacre occurred on March 21, 1960, in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa. It involved police officers opening fire on a crowd of Black protesters who were demonstrating against the Pass Laws, which restricted the movement of Black South Africans. “We were at our weakest point ever,” Kasrils said.

It became necessary to rebuild the underground resistance movement. The recruits proved useful to that strategy because their skin color posed no threat to the then-government. Kasrils got sent off to London at the end of 1965 after receiving military training in the USSR. There, he worked with Joe Slovo, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo and Jack Hodgson. “I was the fourth member of this secret command unit,” revealed Kasrils.

The plan was to issue leaflets that would be dispersed in majority Black hotspots in South Africa. The aim was to inform people that the ANC was still alive, and the fight against an oppressive regime was still being waged, albeit in far off lands. “Freedom will come; we will never give in,” was the message. Kasrils registered as a student at the London School of Economics, and this granted him access to potential recruits.

De Nobrega adds that Main was resolute about the film premiering in South Africa, saying it was a matter of basic respect. London Recruits won Best Documentary when it was shown at the Joburg Film Festival this year. The film will also be screening at the upcoming Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival happening this month in Johannesburg on June 25 and Cape Town on June 27.

For Main, “There's a kind of apartheid in the festival world. A lot of the big festivals only want it if it's a world premiere. So we all have to bring them our finest first cuts from the trees. And if they find someone's taken a little bite out of it already, then it's sent away no matter what it is.” He believes this system, “Could do with a shakedown because what it means is that all the films being made all over the world have to funnel through these tiny little gateways.”

De Nobrega says that she has enjoyed how the film has been received by people who have seen it.

“What I find with audiences is they tell you how they feel, how the movie made them feel,” she said. “To me, that's really different to just saying, ‘Oh, that was good.’ They tend to tell you, ‘This made me feel a certain way.’ ‘I felt spiritual,’ was what I got. I've never heard a film get explained in that way.”