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Who shot first? The uprising of Hangberg
October 27, 2010

“Who shot first?” That’s the pivotal question in Dylan Valley and Aryan Kaganof’s The uprising of Hangberg , screened last night at Labia on Orange.

The documentary presents overwhelming evidence that metro police used unwarranted force when they arrived in Hangberg on Tuesday, 21 September, to demolish informal houses built on a fire break.

The film uses a series of interviews to argue that the police violated standard procedure by aiming at people’s heads. A number of bystanders lost an eye as a result of rubber bullets. One of them describes to the camera how they aimed at his face at close range.

The impression I got from the media a month ago was quite different. I knew that clashes between the police and Hangberg residents took place but it seemed to me that the law was sorting out a group of troublemakers. To get an impression of how the same event can be portrayed in different accounts, compare this article with this one.

It’s an issue of objectivity and it’s hard deciding from whose side to see it. Valley and Kaganof portray the police as the aggressors while most of the news articles I read portrayed the protestors as the guilty party. This series of photographs on news24 is more sympathetic to the police. Notice for instance how the caption for image 11 states that “the policed fire[d] rubber bullets in retaliation”. The Uprising of Hangberg shows that residents retaliated with rocks after being shot at.

At one stage in the documentary, they slow down footage taken moments before the police started firing. We see people walking down the hill to meet the police. They do not appear hostile and they are not throwing rocks. The footage cuts then, for some reason, to seconds later. The police are firing rubber bullets and residents are running in different directions. It’s not clear whether the editor removed the in-between footage because it weakened the “police shot first” argument, or whether it was lost because the camera wasn’t recording.

What does seem clear though is that the police arrived with a hostile attitude. The documentary shows a series of witnesses that say the police used abusive language. A pregnant girl is shown crying because a police officer slapped her. A 14 year old boy alleges that police assaulted, detained and threatened him with a firearm aimed at his balls.

The documentary asserts that Helen Zille should be held responsible for the human rights violations that took place in Hangberg. It ends with a call for her to step down as premier of the Western Cape. If more people see “The uprising of Hangberg” it could be a serious blow to her reputation. It could be her Fahrenheit 9/11, though that didn’t stop Bush from getting reelected.

I’ve been a Helen Zille supporter for the last few years, but it’s hard for me to reconcile the events of Hangberg with her image as a champion of justice. An interview shows that she’s taken quite a dismissive stance to the issue. She argues that it’s actually a small group of Rastas causing trouble and preventing peaceful negotiation. When she said this, it reminded me of an angle the apartheid government used to take. They used to say that township protests are caused by a small group of communist agitators that do not reflect the will of the people. We now know that that was propaganda, but it’s an argument that can be quite appealing.

It’s easier for us to dismiss the brutality if we say that they’re just a bunch of Rastas, drug dealers or “zimbabwean style land grabbers”. But the documentary gives reason to believe that it’s not just criminals, but a whole community that is upset. In one scene, the filmmaker proves that residents who lost their eye were falsely labeled as rock-throwing protestors. He shows a newspaper article that erroneously identifies people with eye injuries as rock-throwers in another photograph. The director seeks out the rock-thrower and injured man to show that they are completely different people.

I’m worried, however, about ethnic mobilization in the film. Some of the residents argue that they have a right to live there because they are Khoisan and the land belongs to their forefathers. In the same way that the Afrikaners created the mythology of the Great Trek to claim ownership of the land, one resident says he has a right to live on Hangberg because the mountain resembles the face of his ancestor. I realize that this sort of thinking can inspire people, but I don’t think it’s right way to go.

When residents assert ownership based on an ethnic identity and proudly say that they’ll only leave to the graveyard, it gets dodgy. That type of thinking leads to the type of conflict seen with Israel/Palestine. Hangberg should be an issue of human rights not ethnic rights. The events that took place on 21 September may be investigated and declared a violation of human rights, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Update: For more on the “Khoisan nation” idea, as well as its flaws, read this piece by Patric Tariq Mellet http://cape-slavery-heritage.iblog.co.za/2010/01/02/khoe-and-san-survivalists-and-khoisan-first-nation-revivalists-navigating-the-difference/