Drum (2004 film)

Drum is a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, who worked for the popular Drum magazine, called the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa. It was director Zola Masekos first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a sixpart television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, though Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jrgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors.

The story is based on real events and real people and is set in the mid1950s freehold township of Sophiatown, Johannesburg one of the few areas in South Africa where blacks could own property and drink alcoholic beverages. Drum begins with the central character, sportswriter Henry Nxumalo, reporting on a boxing match with Nelson Mandela. Nxumalo leaves his wife Florence at home while going out into his communitys night life and has an affair with a female singer. He works for Drum magazine, which was the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa. The magazine was financed by whites and had a multiracial staff it was popular among the black community. Drums British editor, Jim Bailey Jason Flemyng, asks Nxumalo to write on the township crime scene, and Nxumalo, while at first unwilling, finally agrees. While on the job, he encounters Slim Zola, a gang leader, that he had previously met in illegal township drinking places, and witnesses him kill a man in Sophiatown.Initially Nxumalo stays away from political articles, but eventually writes about more than entertainment after his wife and Mandela encourage him. When a young man goes missing at a Boer farm and is feared enslaved, Nxumalo decides to investigate undercover. He gets employment as a labourer at the farm, where he is treated like a slave and nearly killed. He becomes a celebrity when his story is published, further reinforced by getting himself in prison and reporting about its conditions. Nxumalo decides that his destiny is to be a muckracker and, with the help of the German photographer Jrgen Schadeberg Gabriel Mann, ventures on more risky investigations. ........

Source: Wikipedia