Interrogating whiteness - a review**

Rehad Desai’s The Heart of Whiteness is a documentary with a grand narrative that aims to interrogate the racist mindsets of a few small white/Afrikaner communities in a post-apartheid South Africa. We journey with Desai from a gated community in Johannesburg to Standerton and finally to Orania. The recurring question throughout the documentary is, “who is allowed in?” This brings to the surface the theme of racial exclusion and we get this from the response of an Afrikaner interviewee who alludes to how the presence of black people in their community would only be accepted on the grounds of white employer – black employee.

South Africa is largely characterised by its racially unjust history and Desai incorporates elements that remind us of this in this documentary. The way in which he does this is by first creating a setting where there is a conversation about race in certain South African spaces and then by making use of archive footage from 1960, 1970, 1990 of past events around this issue that made news. This archive footage is strategically placed throughout the 48 minute duration of the documentary – it is used to introduce either a new geographical location or a new angle to the story.

As one would expect, Rehad Desai does not always have pleasant encounters with the people he interviews (all white). He has a very direct way of asking questions and we see an unsavoury reaction to one of these questions during his time in Standerton, where he mentions how he felt it may have been necessary to stop filming at that moment. This brings to light the question of ethics – how appropriate and ethical is it to film certain environments that are not generally welcoming of media as well as what is the next step for a journalist or any other media personnel when potential subjects suddenly feel offended or threatened by the questions posed? Desai stopped filming in that moment of the furore, but still used the footage in his final documentary edit. This is often the case when faced with these kinds of catch-22s – filming will be stopped in the heat of the heat of the moment, but the footage is usually kept and used. He also mentions once or twice that he has been let into white spaces even though he is a man of colour, but one can’t help but think that the only reason this is so is that he is firstly, entering these spaces with a camera crew and secondly, the fact that Indian and coloured South Africans don’t bare the brunt of racism as harshly as black South Africans – something that could have also been addressed in the documentary (even briefly so). It really is an ethically ambiguous situation, but given the nature of the documentary, a somewhat expected ethical dilemma.

Rehad Desai made a good choice of establishing shots, giving the viewer a sense of place every time he travels to a different place as well as the time lapses and long shots of the road ahead that also give us a sense of travel. There is an especially impressive establishing shot of the lit up churches and their crucifixes as he arrives in Standerton, indicating to us that a lot of the population’s beliefs are rooted in religious dogma. These are the uncensored, jarring beliefs and racist opinions that Desai decided to keep for the final edit to probably create more pressing conversations about the matter. I’d say the only lacking things in this documentary are the opinions of black South Africans just to give us a peek into how those who are prejudiced against retort.