While his/her comments seems a little strange, there's nothing there admiring aparthied. I think he's speaking more about the beauty of South Africa, which is not dependent on the politics of its government. Gold in fact takes a cynical attitude towards racism, highlighting the poor facilities extended to black workers as opposed to the white rulers, but it also highlighted the strong spirit of the pan-racial mining community (i.e. everyone comes together when the disaster occurs), and this is represented by two men, one white and one black (Roger Moore and Simon Sabela) go down together into the mine to save the trapped miners.
In the end it is the noble black worker who saves his white boss by sacrificing his own life, but then i suppose this could be interpreted either as patronising, or as typical "the natives goodies always die" Hollywood, but not anti-black as such, since Big King is very brave and shows he is equal, if not superior physically, to Rod Slater during the underground flood sequence.
The scene where King recieves his medal (the gold mining hat) is touching and shows the South African mine owners recognising their workers - they also have a statue of black workers outside the company offices. Such a stance is, I think, representative of the fact that most capitalists in SA were not racists, in fact they wanted more skilled black labourers, with more privalages, but the law would not allow this. Politics was dominated for 40 years by the white union - supported National Party, whilst capitalist politics was limited to the Progressive and Liberal Party, headed by such figures of mine owner Harry Oppenheimer, and enjoyed less support than the NP amongst the white electorate, most of whom felt more theatened by the rise of blacks in the labour markets than oligarchs like Oppenheimer.
"Are you a professional bore, or is it just some kind of hobby?"
reply
share