MK: Mandela’s Secret Army

Osvalde Lewat’s eye-opening documentary showcases the forgotten history of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress’s armed revolutionary wing, the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). While internationally known and recast as a pacifist and statesman, Mandela was, as one subject notes, foremost “a freedom fighter, as ready to pick up arms as put down arms . . . [for him] to be portrayed as a pacifist is to appropriate our history and place it in a colonial mentality.” Archival footage showcases the brutality of the apartheid era and its crackdowns against dissidents, while interviews with surviving, now-elderly veterans of the group showcase a battle for freedom—and justice—that still continues.