ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will discuss the role of documentary film as political communication in post-apartheid South Africa. I want to look at how this genre has been used to reframe official or dominant narratives of contemporary political events and social issues. The internationally best-known example is Rehad Desai’s Emmy Award-winning documentary Miners Shot Down (2014), which decisively contributed to change South African public discourse on the Marikana massacre. I argue that contemporary South African documentary films have produced a decolonial counterpoint to official discourse by exposing “the pitfalls of national consciousness”. Miners Shot Down provides an extraordinary example of how documentary film can be used to destabilise and challenge the narratives that legitimise the power of postcolonial elites.
