Documentary filmmaker David Forbes shares a personal and intimate portrait of activist and widow of Cradock Four activist Matthew Goniwe and her life of love, loss and fortitude, inextricably interwoven with South Africa’s history of repression, violence, resistance and betrayal.
Nyameka Goniwe, who died in Cradock on 29 August 2020 at the age of 69, was a difficult person to interview. She was quiet and humble, soft-spoken and almost hesitant, as if choosing every word carefully. Her integrity stood taller than the monument to her husband and three others on the hill above Cradock’s Lingelihle township, her last home.
It was intimidating. She oozed moral authority and seriousness. It was only much later that I realised how soft and kind she really was, so generous and warm behind her dignified courteousness.
What she told me was a genuine, old-fashioned love story, the story of the relationship between herself and her husband, the activist Matthew Goniwe, which was tragically cut short by his assassination by apartheid security forces in 1985.
I first contacted Nyami in 2003. I had wanted to make a documentary film on the four anti-apartheid activists known as the Cradock Four for a long time,…
Click here to Book Accommodation in Cradock, Graaf Reinett, Hofmeyer or surrounds.
Article source: https://allafrica.com/stories/202009080840.html