Common Purpose, A (ATOM Study Guide)

In the late 1980s, during the most violent period of the apartheid regime, twenty-five men and women were rounded up in Paballelo, a black township bordering the town of Upington in South Africa, to stand trial for the murder of a black policeman. Upington – a small town near the border of South Africa and Namibia, known as a stronghold of Afrikaner nationalism – was besieged by a three-year legal trial, which culminated in fourteen of the twenty-five accused being sentenced to death, in the assassination of Namibian barrister and human rights advocate Anton Lubowski, and in the exile of the young, white lawyer Andrea Durbach, who represented the twenty-five.

A Common Purpose tells the story of how the trial irrevocably changed the lives of the accused and their legal team as South Africa began its transition to a post-apartheid state. The film is structured around the return to South Africa of lawyer Andrea Durbach, a Sydney resident since 1989 and currently Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of NSW Faculty of Law. The film traces her reunion with her clients and their families eighteen years after the landmark trial and explores the impact of the trial on their lives in the new South Africa.

Curriculum relevance
This documentary would be an excellent resource for middle and senior-secondary, and tertiary students studying:

• Politics and Society
• History
• Legal Studies
• Values Education
• Religion and Society (and related subjects)
• English
• Civics and Citizenship
• Social Movements

For students studying at tertiary level, this film would be a valuable resource for students of:

• Law
• History
• Political Science
• International Studies
• Psychology
• Media Studies
• Anthropology