"Together we have travelled a long road to be where we are today. This has been a road of struggle against colonial and apartheid oppression…” Thabo Mbeki
A Dry White Season,(1989)by Andre Brink
In the Book, A Dry White Season, The story is being narrated by the narrator (not Ben Like in the Movie). And it begins with the death of Ben Du Toit, a 53- year-old white Afrikaner man killed on the road by a hit-and-run driver( No driver identified) .The hit and run barely makes the news and only covers a few lines on the fourth page of the evening newspaper. The person retelling the story is not Ben, but an old college friend of Ben whom he trusted. They had only met two weeks before his death. Ben was acting strange , and the narrator thought that Ben may need a vacation. But during their meeting, Ben asked him to hold on to a pile of “papers and stuff”. On these papers he had “written it all down,” he had told the narrator; “they’ve taken it all from me. Nearly everything. Not much left. But they won’t get that. You hear me? If they get that there would have been no sense at all” (p. 13). Then slowly the narrator tells the story.
In my opinion, this opening should have been how the movie began. I believe it pulls the audience in and provides a valid reason to support and believe in this cause: Ben gave his life, so it must be true. I think it would have been better than hearing and watching as Ben lived it.
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