The Good Terrorist

Channel 4 (1 x 60 mins)

Winner of 2017 RTS Northern Ireland Best Documentary award

If your father had killed someone and injured dozens, how would you feel? Could you still be proud of him? In the early 1960s John Harris blazed a trail as a prominent and peaceful anti-apartheid activist. He even helped to get South Africa barred from the Olympics.

But in July 1964 everything changed. Harris placed a bomb in Johannesburg station, hoping to deal Apartheid a crushing blow. Instead, he horrified South Africa, killing a 77yr old woman and severely burning her young granddaughter.
Harris was hanged eight months later.

John's son David was just ten months old when his father was hanged, the only white man executed for crimes against Apartheid. So what drove a non-violent, liberal activist to give up all he held dear and plant a bomb in Johannesburg station?


A co-production with Borough Productions