The Power Of One - 1992

The Power of One is a 1992 dramatic film based on the 1989 novel of the same name by Bryce Courtenay. Set in South Africa during the '30s and '40s, the film centers on the life of Peter Philip 'P.K.' Kenneth-Keith (Guy Witcher), a young English boy raised during the apartheid era, and his relationship with a German pianist, a black prisoner, and a boxing coach. Directed and edited by John G. Avildsen, the film stars Stephen Dorff, John Gielgud, Morgan Freeman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Daniel Craig in one of his early roles.

Born in 1930 to a recently widowed British-born mother on a farm in rural South Africa, P.K. leads a simple life initially, learning the ways of England from his mother and the ways of Africa from his Zulu nanny (Nomadlozi Kubheka), whose son Tonderai is his best friend. However everything changes for the worse for P.K. when the cattle are struck down by plague, causing his mother to have a nervous breakdown. While his mother is recovering, PK is sent to an Afrikaner boarding school. Being the only English boy, he soon becomes the target of serious bullying: Fellow students claim to hold him responsible for the deaths of thousands of Afrikaners during the Second Anglo-Boer War and vow to punish him accordingly.

PK is victimised by all the boys at the school, but most of all by the older boys, led by a teen known as Jaapie Botha or "The Judge." In one incident, PK is urinated on by Botha and other students, earning the name "Pisskop" (pisshead in Afrikaans) and causing him to wet his bed often to avoid confronting the teens. Later when he goes home to attend his mother's funeral, he tells Nanny about the bedwetting. She arranges for the Zulu medicine man Dabula Manzi to come and cure PK of his bedwetting. Dabula Manzi helps PK to conquer his fears by leading him into the dreamworld (he touches the trunk of a charging elephant, causing it to be docile). PK is given a chicken, which he names Mother Courage, and becomes possibly PK's best friend he'll ever have during his childhood.