“Delmas – the passion … the pain” – 2004

The 52 minute documentary on the so-named “Delmas Treason Trial” – the longest running political trial in South African history which took its course from 1985 to 1990. The documentary looks at the people caught up in political events that precipitated the trial and the effects of the trial on the families of activists incarcerated as a result of this final phase of internal resistance to the grand apartheid design.

The Delmas trial – 1985 to 1990 – is the longest running political trial in South Africa’s history and represents the final phase of the internal struggle against apartheid spearheaded by the United Democratic Front [ UDF ].

The UDF was launched internally in South Africa in 1983 as a direct response to the Apartheid government’s planned “new constitution” which was in essence the implementation of the final phase in the grand-Apartheid design – to “legally” exclude the black majority from political participation and citizenship rights in South Africa.

The government’s strategy was to seduce Coloureds, Indians and a limited number of Urban Blacks into a second-tier parliament structure and Black Local Authority arrangement respectively.

This would give them restricted self-governance and would effectively create a controllable “buffer” of complicit Coloureds, Indians and Urban-blacks between the white-minority and the black majority – thus securing white minority privilege.
In exchange the government would press ahead with its Bantustan policy – stripping the black majority of citizenship rights in 86% of South Africa.