Reverend Michael Scott was born in 1907. He became a priest of the Church of England and worked in Sophiatown during the 1940s. In 1946 he was imprisoned for his stand against the South African government's ‘Ghetto Act’ (restricting Indian land ownership and business in Natal) and his role in the Passive Resistance campaign.

He also lobbied for a free South West Africa (SWA, now Namibia), and was issued with a banning order in 1950, after which he returned to London, where he founded the Africa Bureau.

Scott was a man of varied talents, one of them film-making. Between 1946 and 1948, while working in a Tobruk squatter camp, he travelled to SWA and recorded his experiences in writing as well as on film. He was also responsible for what is described as the first “protest” film made in South Africa. A copy of this work, shot between 1946 and 1952, was discovered in the Smithsonian Film Archives. The purpose of the film, titled Civilisation on Trial, was aimed at gaining international support for Black and Indian people in South Africa and Namibia and was distributed by the Africa Bureau in the early 1950s.

Scott was honoured for his role in the liberation of Namibia and a street in the capital is named after him. In early 1948 he was denied permission by the SWA Administration (still under South African control) and the Municipality of Windhoek to show a 15 minute film about the United Nations (UN) in the Windhoek location called “The People's Charter”. He was on a report-back mission from the UN and his request was disingenuously refused on the grounds that it was contrary to government policy to allow private persons to have talks, or show films, in urban areas without government permission. The South West Africa (SWA) Administration also harassed Scott about his choice of abode near a local farm. When Scott again applied for permission to visit the “native reserves” his request was very reluctantly approved. Members of the local police force followed Scott constantly and interviewed several local people in an attempt to incriminate Scott.

Scott died in 1983.

References

• Joyce, P. (1999). A Concise Dictionary of South African Biography, Cape Town: Francolin.
• www.queensu.ca/sarc/Conferences/1940s/GordonElder.htm

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