United Apart SA – Lockdown Remembered

In March 2020, with just a handful of known infections, South Africa embarked on one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. United Apart SA – Lockdown Remembered is a deep dive into our country’s official lockdown strategy and the effect it has had on society, the economy and our most vulnerable citizens.

Did they go too far? Can a developing economy follow the lockdown models developed for fiscally sound countries? What fault lines did Covid-19 expose? What more could have been done to effect change while fighting a devastating pandemic?

The first documentary from Arena Holdings, United Apart SA – Lockdown Remembered features the likes of Professor Glenda Gray, president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist Professor Salim Abdool Karim, and deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank Rashad Cassid, not to mention Business Day editor Lukanyo Mnyanda, Sowetan editor Nwabisa Makunga and Sunday Times editor S’thembiso Msomi. There’s also footage crowdsourced for the Sunday Times #UnitedApartSA campaign, which urged South Africans to show how they were getting through lockdown by submitting video clips, images, voice notes, or anything else that captured the essence of this extraordinary event.

United Apart is directed by Anton Burggraaf, best known for producing My Kitchen Rules South Africa, and produced by the multi-award-winning Ochre Moving Pictures (Spoorloos, Lioness, Housekeepers).