A Song of Pride: a Film and a Community
Director’s Statement
In October 2007, Katherine Crawley and I bought a small video camera and two plane tickets bound for Cape Town. We’d heard about this high school choir from Guguletu township, South Africa who were getting ready for a visit to England. Bizarrely, we knew virtually nothing else about them.
The seed had been planted by Jo Metcalf, the director of the Salsibury International Arts Festival here in the UK. She had invited the Fezeka High School Choir to take part in the 2008 festival season on the strength of one performance she had witnessed in Cape Town the year before. She thought the story of their trip would make a good film. We agreed. But did it have the power and substance to be a moving and engaging film? We got on a plane to find out.
For both Katherine and me, this trip also marked the return to a place that had captured our hearts many years before. We had both lived in Africa; she in west Africa, and me in the south. Much of my time had been spent in South Africa, living and travelling. I was young, and I took advantage of everything that country had to offer: beaches, mountains, great food, great wine, safaris and all manner of adventures. But even through my euphoric haze, I could see the divide. I could feel it. Its presence was all around. The day I stopped ignoring it was the day I lost my dear friend Tim to a senseless robbery in Durban that had gone horribly wrong. His death stopped me in my tracks and forced me to think about what’s really going on in South Africa, away from the wine tours, a generation after Nelson Mandela walked free. A generation after ordinary Africans had been released from their prison.
2007, and it was in Guguletu township that we met a man who would help me to understand the task facing black South Africans today. The task of educating children beyond the confines of their segregated history and the residue it has left behind. He is Phume Tsewu. A teacher at Fezeka High School and the conductor of their choir. For more than 12 years he has made it his mission to teach his 77 strong choir everything from Mozart to manners. It was he who we met on our first day in Cape Town, and thanks to his tireless commitment to his kids, his charm, and his spirit, we quickly realised this would be a film about much more than a trip abroad.
For too many years, these communities have been living in a box marked ’victim’. This is a film about people learning beyond the labels they’ve been given and about children reaching above the positions that politicians have put them in.
This is a film about children finding their way out of that box, and the teacher that’s helping them.
The seed had been planted by Jo Metcalf, the director of the Salsibury International Arts Festival here in the UK. She had invited the Fezeka High School Choir to take part in the 2008 festival season on the strength of one performance she had witnessed in Cape Town the year before. She thought the story of their trip would make a good film. We agreed. But did it have the power and substance to be a moving and engaging film? We got on a plane to find out.
For both Katherine and me, this trip also marked the return to a place that had captured our hearts many years before. We had both lived in Africa; she in west Africa, and me in the south. Much of my time had been spent in South Africa, living and travelling. I was young, and I took advantage of everything that country had to offer: beaches, mountains, great food, great wine, safaris and all manner of adventures. But even through my euphoric haze, I could see the divide. I could feel it. Its presence was all around. The day I stopped ignoring it was the day I lost my dear friend Tim to a senseless robbery in Durban that had gone horribly wrong. His death stopped me in my tracks and forced me to think about what’s really going on in South Africa, away from the wine tours, a generation after Nelson Mandela walked free. A generation after ordinary Africans had been released from their prison.
2007, and it was in Guguletu township that we met a man who would help me to understand the task facing black South Africans today. The task of educating children beyond the confines of their segregated history and the residue it has left behind. He is Phume Tsewu. A teacher at Fezeka High School and the conductor of their choir. For more than 12 years he has made it his mission to teach his 77 strong choir everything from Mozart to manners. It was he who we met on our first day in Cape Town, and thanks to his tireless commitment to his kids, his charm, and his spirit, we quickly realised this would be a film about much more than a trip abroad.
For too many years, these communities have been living in a box marked ’victim’. This is a film about people learning beyond the labels they’ve been given and about children reaching above the positions that politicians have put them in.
This is a film about children finding their way out of that box, and the teacher that’s helping them.
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Comment by Sitembiso "Nono" Sojola on February 20, 2009 at 1:26pm -
no better words to describe a man whom i would like to refer as a father,what he touches turns to GOLD and we are the testimons to that.
I don't know how to sing and was never part of the Choir in Fezeka but the music kept me going,not only that Mr Tsewu was my English teacher , and as i write i am filled with joy
I was part of the debating society which was led by him and during that time i became part of the provincial team for the western province along with other great debators of that time (2003),he was patient and always willing to assist us in anyway possible,his command of the english language made me more curious,i wondered what more could i learn and he taught me that there is so much that i could do,so much i could become that as students we had the potential to become what we wished and dreamed to of.
It is quite imperative that we honour teachers such as Mr Tsewu who continuously contribute without limits and borders to the development of young people in our communites, when they are still alive ,many will agree with me when i say he is an inspiration to both the young and the old.
he is full of passion and detemination and he will always be the best teacher i have met.
I would like to wish him well in all his plans and may God be the shining armor and the light so that all of his plans for be fullfilled.
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