A Dry White Season: Historical Background

Historical Background

The final scene of the movie, in which Stanley shoots Capt. Stolz, is the only part of the story that does not ring true historically. That scene does not appear in Andre Brink’s novel on which the movie is based. The novel ends with the hit-and-run death of Ben Du Toit. The idea of a black assassin stalking a member of the Security police was far-fetched when the book was published in 1980. Even so, the authoritarian government banned Brink’s book, because its totalitarian image of South Africa was considered subversive. Nonetheless, the difference in the two endings reflects the immense changes that occurred between the 1970s, when the book was written (1976-1979), and 1989, the year of the film’s release. By then, black resistance had become more common and its triumph more possible.

The 1976 Soweto protests ended 15 years of political passivity among South Africa’s black majority. Pushed by worsening economic conditions in the 1970s (unemployment, housing shortages, inflation) and by the decolonization of independent black nations on the borders of South Africa (Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana), South Africa’s blacks, especially a younger generation, expressed greater militancy against the white-led regime. This new spirit appears in the early scenes of the movie, when young demonstrators urge boycotts of the government-operated beer halls, which provided funds for municipal governments.

As A Dry White Season shows, however, the protests provoked a brutal reaction from the government. Besides attacking demonstrators, the Afrikaner regime attempted to shore up the apartheid system by enforcing “pass” laws that confined most blacks to dispersed rural areas called “homelands.” To allow some blacks to work for whites, the government issued passes permitting “qualified” blacks to enter “prescribed” urban areas. But the designations of “qualified” persons constantly changed, as Ian McKenzie, the lawyer in the movie, explains. When Gordon’s widow, Emily, loses the right to live in her township, she faces deportation to Zululand, even at the loss of her young children.

Such fundamental control over black life--indeed, the very questions of life and death--constituted a totalitarian environment that prompted black resistance. Blacks who fled into the new nations that border South Africa to escape the repression became recruits for the banned African National Congress (ANC) that led the anti-apartheid crusade.

By focusing on a white schoolteacher, A Dry White Season overlooks the importance of changing black consciousness. As a respectable member of the middle class, Ben Du Toit does not question the policies of apartheid. Only when someone he knows personally becomes a victim does he begin to act and then only in the most cautious legalistic ways. It’s his belief in the honesty of the system, not from political motives, that arouses his involvement. When his friend comments that legal injustices occur all the time, a surprised Ben replies, “It’s news to me.”

As the naïve Ben comes to see the evil of the system, so the film intends to awaken the feelings of white audiences during the 1980s. Indeed, the callousness of the Afrikaner state produced strong international opposition. The United Nations Security Council criticized the state-supported violence and supported embargos of military trade. Under President Jimmy Carter, the United States joined the protests against South Africa’s undemocratic laws. Fearing further violence, foreign business shied away from investment, loans, and trade.

By the 1980s, such international reaction, together with fears of further domestic insurrection, moved the government to propose reforms that might deflect criticism abroad and protest at home. New measures extended economic opportunities for blacks, lifted some egregious segregation laws (such as bans of interracial marriage and sexual relations), and eased migration rules. But despite these legislative reforms, black political organizations continued to grow, demanding democratic rights. This resistance won widespread international support, leading to boycotts of South African business. Unable to thwart these democratizing pressures, the ruling Nationalist Party agreed to adopt a new constitutional government. By 1990, the apartheid system was dead.

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