The Jozi Film Festival announced on Sunday, 6 October 2019, that the film ‘Exorcist of apartheid’ by filmmaker Adam Heyns, won the 2019 South African Short Documentary of the Year Award.  The film deals with the role of the late Professor Johan Heyns, then professor of theology at the University of Pretoria, in the 1980s and 1990s - the apartheid years. Heyns was voted out of the governance structures of the Dutch Reformed Church because of his liberal views in 1982, but elected as its leader in 1986, when he lead the church to reject apartheid, against great opposition. The film was also selected for screening at film festivals in The Hague, Rome, Vermont, Windhoek, and Cape Town. It screened at the University of Pretoria’s Johan Heyns Memorial Lecture, presented by Heyns’s former student, Alan Boesak, in 2018.

The film originated two years ago when Adam, the grandson of Johan Heyns, asked his grandmother, Renée, to tell him more about his grandfather. Adam, now 30, was five when his grandfather died. She gave him a box of family videos. The viewer sees the story unfold through the eyes of Adam, back in his studio, as he slots one video after the other into the video machine.

The film opens with Johan Heyns delivering a sermon in front of the imposing Voortrekker Monument in 1988. He is on stage, draped in the old South African flag, during the day of the covenant commemorations, with thousands of the faithful in attendance. Heyns called for a fundamental change of heart in the Afrikaans society. In cutaway shots, Heyns is seen talking about his own journey away from apartheid. This is contrasted with extracts from interviews from the same time conducted with people in traditional Voortrekker dress who blamed Heyns for the loss of Afrikaner identity. Heyns's widow, Renée, recounts how a right wing group in similar dress came to their home during the last days of apartheid and, when inside, laid a curse on Heyns and his house - and how they dismissed this as childish acts.

Heyns was assassinated in the same house on Saturday, 5 November 1994, in all likelihood as right-wing revenge, while playing with his grandchildren. The movie shows the reaction of South Africans, including Nelson Mandela, who visited the family on the day of the funeral, Bishop Tutu, who attended the funeral, and Joe Slovo, who presented a tribute to Heyns in Parliament. The young Adam is seen next to the grave, holding a white flower. The film also shows the reaction of Johan’s widow, Renée, who calls for sympathy for the killer, whom she said must suffer from serious mental disturbances, and not for revenge.

Adam’s father, Christof, a professor in the Faculty of Law at UP, and the executive producer of the film, says he has the greatest admiration for the way in which Adam tells the story of Johan Heyns. ‘He brought a long-forgotten part of our history as a country – and our history as a family - to the fore, in a brilliant way. He takes us along with him as he discovers the past. I was moreover reminded of how skilled my father was in telling stories. I remember being at the Voortrekker Monument on the day when he delivered that sermon, and thinking why does he tell them about Amos, why doesn’t he just say "Go home and stop this apartheid nonsense?"  Reflecting on the movie, I now realise what he was doing: He took the most conservative part of the Bible, the Old Testament, to connect with people who had the same upbringing as him: many of them conservative, from the farm, people whose lives he understood and shared.. He was not only talking to them about Amos, whose calls for reform to his own people were resisted by them; he took on the role of Amos. Such a message connects on a much deeper level than simply telling people they are wrong from a dizzy height. The film leaves me with a sense of hope, that people who find themselves within a a seemingly impossible situation can bring about change, also from the inside. The actions of individuals - and the stories they tell - matter.’

The film can be seen on YouTube.

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