About Play/Film

Nothing But the Truth is film that was adapted from the play by the same name written by John Kani and Zakes Mda. Starring John Kani as Sipho Makhaya, Motshabi Tyelele as Thando Makhaya and Rosie Motene as Mandisa Makhaya. Set in post apartheid South Africa, Nothing But the Truth at its core deals with topics of injustices, forgiveness and resentment. Viewers first meet the protagonist, Sipho Makhaya and quickly learn of his brother’s death, Themba Makhaya. While preparing his bother’s funeral and simultaneously waiting for a Job promotion, Sipho reaches a breaking point when he receives bad news that shatter his world.

Forgiveness is something that is advocated for more than accountability, we usually advice, and sometimes force, the victims in conflicts to forgive rather than tell the oppressor to take accountability and change their ways. This is something South Africans are well too familiar with, especially the South Africans who lived through apartheid and welcomed democracy with open hearts, hoping for an alternative life from the oppressive one they live under the rule of Apartheid.

The film deals with the topic of forgiveness both in a two dimensional as well as ironic way, viewers see this through the character, Thando, Sipho’s daughter who works as an interpreter at Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC was set up under the Promotion of Nation Unity and Reconstruction Act. Under the TRC, Amnesty could be granted to individuals who had applied for amnesty, and who had fully disclosed the truth. This was seen as a compromise to ensure that perpetrators could not simply erase evidence of human rights atrocities, and the country could fully understand its dark history, and move forward. The Irony lies within the fact that while Thando lost her brother, Luvuyo Makhaya, in the hands of police brutality under apartheid, she now works under a commission that is granting amnesty to people who committed such crimes to others.

Mandisa, Sipho’s niece and Themba’s daughter is outraged when she attends one of the hearings as per Thando’s request. This reaction from Mandisa can exemplify how many South Africans felt at these hearings, which to be honest, was a raw deal because, “Racial prejudice and violence did not suddenly disappear in 1994, but instead continue to play out through out this period of political transformation, standing as an obstacle to substantive equality and inclusive citizenship.” And Forgiving a group of people of crimes that not only hurt South Africans as a collective, but deeply scared individuals with trauma and grief is not something that the government can solely decide on, especially if the perpetrators acted deliberately, this was not an oopsie, it was years and years of racial oppression by people who stood to gain from such.

The Climax of the film comes after Sipho does not get the job post of chief librarian at the Library he works at, which he was really hoping for, viewers share this disappointment as this was anticipated from the beginning of the film as we see Sipho talk hopefully about it with his daughter and colleagues as well. This, of course shatters him and as a result, he breaks his sobriety and in his drunken state, goes on a rant. It is during this rant that viewers learn how Sipho’s life has been unfair, inwardly, with the preferential treatment given to his little brother Themba by his parents and outwardly as a black South African, which fellow black South Africans can relate to when he talks about how he did everything right, everything that was meant to assure him success as a black man in democratic South Africa.

Everything right being that, he voted in 1994 and again in 1999, but still, things were not in his favour. In anticipation of the 1994 elections, many South Africans voted, relying on the promises made by the ANC. In her essay, ‘Battling to normalise freedom’, Pumla Dineo Gqola talks about how the ANC’s campaign for the 1994 elections included posters of Mandela surrounded by children of different races and how this image ignored the many problems that South Africans faced and still face, she said, ” many of us will vote for the revolutionary Mandela because of the very past and present of white supremacist wounding that the poster avoids. Our memory will exceed to the call to aspiration. We will take the imaginative leap that we are well trained in biographically, and that has been a crucial part of being black in the world, transmitted across generations, enabling us to survive slavery, genocide, conquest and now, at last, apartheid” Regardless of the poster being a deliberate political campaign to show a multicultural South Africa and how from that point on, citizens should forgive and forget, showing “the rainbow nation” if you may, it also symbolizes how during the transitional period in South Africa, many things were swept under the rug and not dealt with. This, then resulted in the detriment of the non white population of South Africa and as we see today, their descendants too.

Set in 2000, fresh out of apartheid, the film shows the inward resentment that Sipho held for his brother and now at his death, having to abandon that resentment and forgive him, as well as outwardly, something shared among South Africans, the forced forgiveness of his child’s murderer and the resentment he had to hide because his government had decided for him that he has to forgive. The film by John Kani was a brilliant way to explore the concept of forgiveness in the South African post apartheid atmosphere where most South Africans were realising that they forgave but benefited nothing from that forgiveness, not even the many promises their government had made.