'Goodbye Bafana', filmanalyse

Goodbye Bafana The film takes place in South Africa 1968, where the black people were under apartheid. The film is about James Gregory who is a prison guard. He grew up in town called Transkei where his best friend was a black boy named Bafana. In a young age Gregory learned to speak Xhosa which made him the perfect guard for Nelson Mandela and his inmates on Robben Island. In the beginning of the film Mr. Gregory is a sworn racist who thinks black people are the source to all evil in South Africa. All he wants to do is make life more difficult for Mandela and the other colored prisoners. One day James overhears a conversation between Mandela and his wife Winnie. He chooses to inform his boss about their son who has gotten a driver license and a car as well. Later on the information results in Mandela’s son’s death. Afterwards Gregory reads the freedom charter, which he has always thought was about the black people wanted to take over South Africa and destroy the white. From that point Gregory, gradually starts to change his vision about the apartheid system. However it’s not without consequences. When the citizens of the island began to find out about Gregory’s unexpectedly switch of position, they weren’t happy. His wife’s salon didn’t have any costumers any longer and people were talking behind their bag. Shortly after, James got an offer to be transmitted of the Island to work at another prison. But the hate followed the family and eventually their son Brent got killed in a car “accident” as well. At that point Nelson Mandela and James Gregory had met again, but this time it was as two friends and not a prison guarder and his prisoner. Step by step the conditions got more and more improved and finally after many years of struggling Mandela got released in 1990.