The Guguletu Seven

On 3 March 1986 the elite anti-terrorist South African police force killed seven blacks at a crossroads of a township near Cape Town. The film of the killing was duly presented to the press, and the operation characterised as a huge success of the apartheid campaign against the banned African National Congress. But there were those who cast doubts on the police version of events. Ten years later the killings became the focus of an investigation attached to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was South Africa's way of trying to make amends for all the horrors of apartheid. Filmmaker Lindy Wilson has constructed a compelling narrative around the story of how a young black detective cracked open the story of the Guguletu Seven. It transpires that the police planted their own terrorists in the township, supplied the youngsters with guns - and were waiting to kill them at the right moment. This is "terrorism" organised by the state itself. The film is quite wrenching - the pain it reveals is extraordinary. But it is also a story about South Africa itself, its past, present and probable future.