Telling the Truth

Angus Gibson, Telling the Truth? (film stills), 2015
Soundtrack with 3 videos
34 min
Researcher: Gail Behrmann
Producer: Harriet Perlman
Editor: Jeremy Briers
Audiovisual systems design: Gavin Olivier
Produced by: The Bomb Shelter
Archive material: SABC, Mark Kaplan
Photographs: Jillian Edelstein; Eli Weinberg Collection: RIM/UWC/Mayibuye Archives;
Drum Archive: Africa Media Online; John Hrusa/Sunday Times: PictureNET Africa;
Henner Frankenfeld: PictureNET Africa; Lebohang Bocibo; Gille de Vlieg: Africa Media
Online; Mtimkhulu family; Ndwandwe family; Jim McLagan: Cape Argus
Courtesy Apartheid Museum
16 April 1996, East London, second day of TRC. Alex Boraine, Singqokwana Ernest
Malgas, Archbishop Emeritus Mpilo Desmond Tutu.
© SABC

Next to Nelson Mandela, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) is arguably the thing that the
world most admires about South Africa’s transition
to democracy. Since the Apartheid Museum in
Johannesburg opened its doors in 2001, it has
reserved a space for an exhibit on the TRC. Telling
the Truth?, commissioned by the museum, occupies
the heart of this space. The installation is viewed
at the end of a journey through the other exhibits
in the museum—which present a chronology of
the rise and fall of apartheid—when the visitor is
both physically and emotionally tired from what
they have looked at. Viewing it is like visiting the
TRC but witnessing only a fragment of the whole.
In this fragment we get a sense of the epic nature
of the undertaking, even though we can ascertain
no beginning, no fixed end and no coherent order
of events.
With a few exceptions, all the images were
recorded during the amnesty hearings of the TRC.
(Amnesty was granted for politically motivated
human rights abuses, provided the perpetrators
confessed to their crimes.) On one screen is a person
testifying. On the other two screens are texts and
images that speak to what we are hearing from
the victim, the perpetrator or those listening to
the testimony. We are watching conversations or
confrontations as though we have entered the room,
as though it were possible to witness the telling,
understand its import, and judge its terrible truth in
the light of history.

Angus Gibson was a founding member of Free Filmmakers, a cooperative
established in 1985 to create a relevant South African
cinema. He joined the Junction Avenue Theatre Company in 1986
to workshop Sophiatown, a play about the destruction by the
apartheid government of a mixed-race suburb in Johannesburg.
With William Kentridge, he directed and edited Freedom Square
and Back of the Moon for BBC Channel 4, and went on to edit
Kentridge’s early films. In 1992 he directed 7 Up South Africa,
documenting the lives and opinions of young South Africans.
This won The Star Tonight Award for Best Feature Documentary.
In 1994, he co-directed with Jo Menell the authorised biography,
Mandela, Son of Africa, Father of a Nation, nominated for an Oscar
and winning the Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award and
the Pare Lorentz Award.
In 1997, he developed and co-directed the award-winning
television youth drama series, Yizo Yizo, with Teboho Mahlatsi. His
other projects include an installation for Hilton Judin’s exhibition,
Blank, on the history of apartheid architecture; 14 Up South Africa,
which won the Avanti Award for Best Feature Documentary; audiovisual
installations for the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg; and
audio-visual elements for the Hector Pieterson Museum. Gibson
was head of development and a director on the last series of Yizo
Yizo, directed four of the Heartlines series, produced Zone 14, and,
with Miguel Salazar, directed La Toma, a feature documentary in
Colombia. He is a producer on the daily television drama Isibaya
and directed 28 Up South Africa in 2013 with Jemma Jupp for
Al Jazeera and ITV (nominated for a BAFTA). He designed Telling
the Truth?, a permanent installation on South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission for the Apartheid Museum. He is a
director of The Bomb Shelter film company, along with Desireé
Markgraaff, Teboho Mahlatsi and Isaac Shongwe