93 minutes / Color
Closed Captioned
Release: 2020
Copyright: 2019
“It's been almost 10 years of unabated looting.” — Investigative journalist Thanduxolo Jika
HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY opens like a classic thriller, with investigative journalists meeting anonymous whistleblowers in a parking garage. There, they receive a hard drive filled with hundreds of thousands of explosive files and emails implicating Jacob Zuma’s South African government in a massive corruption scandal.
Director Rehad Desai (Everything Must Fall, Miners Shot Down) chronicles how the three Gupta brothers, once small-scale peddlers, cultivated relationships with Zuma and other ANC figures, and parlayed them into massive profits. The brothers were involved in everything from a US$100 billion nuclear deal with Russia, to graft at the state-owned railway and power companies. Tens of millions were stolen from money earmarked for rural development and funneled into a lavish Gupta family wedding. Journalists investigating this corruption were targets of a disinformation campaign accusing them of being neo-colonialists supporting white monopoly power.
Eventually, the journalists are vindicated, and a state inquiry is called into “state capture”—a massive corruption scheme involving the Guptas, Zuma and his government, and international finance and consulting firms.
HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY serves as a warning on how multinational companies and ruthless entrepreneurs can co-opt democracies for their own profit.
“This is a devastating reminder of greed, complicity and the outright theft of a nation’s resources.” —City Press
Select Accolades
The history of gold mining and capitalism in South Africa; and of the disease and poverty which persists to this day.
Catherine Meyburgh & Richard Pakleppa | 2019 | 98 minutes | Color | English | English subtitles | Closed Captioned
A galvanizing examination of the fight for free college education that burst onto the South African political landscape and quickly escalated into a violent national movement.
Rehad Desai | 2019 | 85 minutes | Color | English | Closed Captioned
A sweeping look at the big political events of recent years that signify the end of an era in South Africa.
Rehad Desai and Jabulani Mzozo | 2017 | 77 minutes | Color | English | English subtitles | Closed Captioned
Whistleblowers, former prisoners and an investigative journalist paint a shocking picture of South Africa’s first privatized prison.
Ilse and Femke van Velzen | 2020 | 84 minutes | Color | English | English subtitles
