Les Meurtres de Cradock

"Cradock Four" represents a dive into the atrocious affair of the murder of four young freedom fighters, Matthieu Goniwe and his companions, who had challenged the Apartheid system. Late on the winter night of 27 June 1985, South African Security Forces set up a roadblock near Port Elizabeth. Four activists, including their leader, Matthieu Goniwe, a popular teacher from the small South African town of Cradock, were in the ambushed car. They had been secretly targeted for assassination by the Apartheid's Generals. The policemen abducted Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli and murdered them in cold blood. To blur tracks they mutilated and set fire to their bodies. The burnt remains of the "Cradock Four", as they came to be known, were later found near the Port Elizabeth suburb of Bluewater Bay. The murders became one of Apartheid"s murkiest and controversial episode. The film will allow the viewer to perceive the oppressive climate of the somber racist regime. It will show how it broke the freedom and the dreams, then the life of these four young men. We shall look at both inquiries into the murders (in 1989 and 1992), as well as into the investigations of the Commission of the Truth and Reconciliation, which ended only in the amnesty of the killers... By using interviews with the police, the army and archive materials, we will approach the ideals which led Matthieu and his friends to support the Movement of Nationalist Liberation, then forbidden, and the African National Congress (ANC). Matthew was organising the underground structures of the ANC's armed wing, the "Spear of the Nation" and his master plan (the G-Plan) would later, at the price of his life, contribute to the demise of Apartheid.