Fools is one of my all-time favourites and I shall just give a short summary of the film as other reviews seem to be rather misleading. Have in mind that this was the first South African film to be directed and written by black South Africans after the fall of apartheid. The film is an adaptation of the short novel of the same name written by Njabulo Ndebele (1983).
Fools, holds a mirror up to the 1997 transitional period of South Africa and addresses many key political issues of the time. Fools is set in the black township of Charterston in the late 1980s in apartheid-era South Africa leading up to the township's school celebration of Dingaan's Day . The film follows the once-respectable-now-disillusioned Zamani, a school teacher who has raped one of his students, Mimi. Mimi's brother Zani comes back from Swaziland where he has graduated from high school and is full of fervour for the black struggle against apartheid. Zani tries to persuade the township people to boycott the celebration of Dingaan's Day because it marks the historical defeat of their (the Zulu) people at the hands of the Boers. The film comes to a climax on Dingaan's Day in a scene which shows a passing Boer's antique colonial car getting hit by a rock thrown by the head teacher of the township's school (Meneer). The stone hits the car accidentally, missing its intended target, Zani, with whom Meneer is enraged because of his incessant protesting against the nationalist, Afrikaner holiday. Suleman constructs a small-scale event reflecting the greater happenings of South Africa as a whole in 1989 in this scene as the white man is seen to be defeated by the black community .
If you can get hold of it you won't regret it!
Fools, holds a mirror up to the 1997 transitional period of South Africa and addresses many key political issues of the time. Fools is set in the black township of Charterston in the late 1980s in apartheid-era South Africa leading up to the township's school celebration of Dingaan's Day . The film follows the once-respectable-now-disillusioned Zamani, a school teacher who has raped one of his students, Mimi. Mimi's brother Zani comes back from Swaziland where he has graduated from high school and is full of fervour for the black struggle against apartheid. Zani tries to persuade the township people to boycott the celebration of Dingaan's Day because it marks the historical defeat of their (the Zulu) people at the hands of the Boers. The film comes to a climax on Dingaan's Day in a scene which shows a passing Boer's antique colonial car getting hit by a rock thrown by the head teacher of the township's school (Meneer). The stone hits the car accidentally, missing its intended target, Zani, with whom Meneer is enraged because of his incessant protesting against the nationalist, Afrikaner holiday. Suleman constructs a small-scale event reflecting the greater happenings of South Africa as a whole in 1989 in this scene as the white man is seen to be defeated by the black community .
If you can get hold of it you won't regret it!