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Friday 8 January 2016

FREEDOM DOCUMENTARY ON YOUTUBE

Swaziland – Africa’s last monarchy, the documentary about activist Bheki Dlamini by Danish journalist Tom Heinemann is now available on YouTube.  

The film describes the fight for democracy and socio-economic justice in the tiny sub-Saharan absolute monarchy of Swaziland through the eyes of Dlamini, a leading member of Swaziland’s largest banned political party, the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO).

Dlamini said, ‘The documentary on Swaziland has helped to give a voice to the suffering people of Swaziland who are in a bitter struggle for freedom and democracy. My story, as captured in the documentary, is the story of most activists in Swaziland who are subjected to torture, beatings, arrests and forced exile. The nomination of the documentary is a victory for the people of Swaziland as Mswati’s regime can no longer afford to fool the world that there is no problem in Swaziland.’

In August 2015, the film won the main prize and the prize for best short documentary at the A Film for Peace-festival in Italy as part of Tom Heinemann and Erling Borgen’s series, A Heart That Never Dies. The series has been aired on Danish-, Swedish- and Norwegian national television.

Bheki Dlamini is the President of the Swaziland Youth Congress, the youth wing of PUDEMO. He currently lives in exile at a secret location in South Africa. The Swazi police’s torture of him by way of “severe beatings and suffocation torture” was mentioned in Amnesty International’s 2011 Annual Report.

Tom Heinemann has won the Danish Outstanding Investigative Journalist of the year award twice, and has been runner up for Journalist of the year in Denmark three times. In 2007 he won the Prix Italia in the current affairs selection.

See also 

DOCUMENTARY ON FREEDOM STRUGGLE

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