Frans Cronje’s epic vision: Transforming Senekal into a thriving town and global filming hub

Senekal, a small town in South Africa’s Free State, became the centre of racial tensions in 2020 following the murder of farm manager Brendin Horner. In response, local leaders formed the Senekal/Mtwabeng Community Forum to encourage dialogue and reconciliation. Among those drawn to the town’s transformation was filmmaker Frans Cronje, brother of former cricketer Hansie Cronje. Leaving Cape Town, Cronje joined efforts to help a team of volunteers to rejuvenate Senekal and he decided to establish a film in the Eastern Free State. In an interview with BizNews, Cronje detailed how the teams started repairing the dilapidated infrastructure in Senekal including the local swimming pool and 5,000 potholes. While the initiative has received widespread support, he said there were ongoing challenges in bridging political divides. Cronje has big plans to establish Senekal as a filming destination. His latest project—a gladiator film set in fifth-century Rome—marks the first step in his broader vision to turn the town into a production hub for Christian-themed films.

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Edited transcript of the interview

Linda van Tilburg (00:00:15)

Frans Cronje is a film director and producer who trying to build a world-class film studio in the small town of Senekal in the eastern Free State. He is also part of a team of volunteers who are rejuvenating the town and region. Hi Frans, thanks for joining us today in the studio.

Cape Town is a well-known destination to shoot films, so why this move to Senekal of of all places?

Frans Cronje (00:00:32)

Yeah, I reckon the next book that I'm going to write's title is going to be What the F are you doing in Senegal? Because that's what everybody is asking. So grew up in the Free State and then in 199191 left the Free State, first to play professional cricket. I was few seasons in England, up north in the Lancashire League and then coached the Border cricket side, played for the Border cricket side for five years in East London and before I then moved to Durban for two years to coach the Natal Dolphins. And then in 99, I realised cricket was not my life, moved to Cape Town and then started my own film production company in 2002. 

So, I was very happily living in Cape Town where it's ideal to film. There's such a vibrance in Cape Town and then about five or six years ago really felt the urge to make my next movie in the rural areas of South Africa. And I figured if I could take my next movie, which is a Gladiator story, by the way, it's a true story, set in the fourth century, the last ever gladiator fight in the Colosseum, with a large budget, if I could take that to a small town and not just make the movie there, but establish a film industry that does not exist in that area, that could have a significant impact on the economy of not just the town but the region.

 Around about the same time my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in Bloemfontein. We spent quite a few weeks travelling up and down and then I realised how broken the Free State had become. The small towns were really, really looking bad under the previous provincial administration and then a young farmer, Brendan Horner, was murdered just outside Senekal and there was two days where the farmers came to Senekal on the first day to protest on the second day to pray and Julius Malema heard about it and he sent busloads full of EFF supporters and there was a huge tension with these masses of EFF supporters, masses of farmers on the other side

There are even stories of farmers lying on the koppie outside Senekal with their hunting rifles with Malema inside. Imagine someone had pulled the trigger and killed Malema there, what chaos that would have been. 

And then...a young or sort of 30-something pastor, John Matuhle, reached out to the white community. He was one of the first guys I knew from the black community to stand up and say, farm murders are wrong. He said, apartheid was wrong. We can never say apartheid was right, but farm murders are just as wrong and he reached out to the farmers, and he then got the leaders to pray together, had a braai together and then instead of violence there was peace, and they formed the Senekal/Mtwabeng Community Forum with the goal to rejuvenate Senekal

When I heard about that I drove through to Senekal. As I drove into town I called my old rugby friend, Toks van der Linde. I played hooker, he played prop when I was still playing for Free State. And I said, Toks, you're the only guy I know that is from Senekal - who should I speak to. He introduced me to Wimpie Hauptfleisch who owns Oranje Print & Package, one of the largest printing companies in South Africa that's based in Senekal, and I became friends with Wimpy. He introduced me to some people and then two months after that I moved to Senekal.

 So, I've been there for four years now and with a two-fold mission. the first part of the mission is rejuvenating the town and we've done a stack of things. We can talk more about that now, but we fixed over five and a half thousand potholes in the first year. A number of different things happened and then sort of in the last year I started transferring my focus to the film side because now four years have gone past. I haven't made a movie there yet.

But we were fortunate enough to purchase the old Sasko Mill and silos, a massive property and with friends I purchased it, we've subdivided it in half. They are using the silo part for sunflower and they've set up a sunflower oil press and this is in a building that had been abandoned for 25 years. So, it's already making a wonderful impact in town and on the other side of the property I've got 10,000 square meters under roof and I'm busy converting that into a film studio.

But to do that obviously you need many, many, many millions of rands. So, I'm in the process now finding the funding for the film studio and for that first gladiator movie and that's kind of where I'm finding myself at the moment. So, right now as I'm speaking, I'm not actually in the beautiful Eastern Free State. I'm in Gauteng Where I've got a number of meetings making progress with the funding but in the process Yeah, so I think that's the shortest possible way I can say what I'm actually doing in the small town of Senekal

Linda van Tilburg (05:44.412)

Can we first talk about what you've done in terms of uplifting the community? So how has that been received and what progress have you made?

Frans Cronje (05:54.198)

Yeah, that's an extremely interesting. Som in terms of how that was received, extremely well in the whole of South Africa. Interestingly enough, less well in Senegal. So, there's a number of people who obviously jumped on board and loved the idea, started doing it, but I think we had maybe even more people against us than for us in the town of Senekal. 

And that has been a very frustrating part of it. Not everybody got on board, and I think it's primarily because there are always political agendas. So, from the ANC side in the beginning, there wasn’t trust. They were scared that we had political agendas. From the right-wing side, and then I'm talking about the white Afrikaans side, I think there was also mistrust asking, what are you trying to do?

I think in many cases it was problematic that I'm also very good friends with black people that's more a conservative part, but not everybody, but there's a strong very conservative part still that really still want to see separate living rather than integrated living and would rather see the country falling completely apart and then somehow I think they can revive apartheid instead of taking hands and working together. 

So, in terms of how it was received, not fully on board. And that's an interesting thing because subsequent to us fixing Senekal and working hard in Senekal, I've met some wonderful people around the country, like people in Kroonstad, Clarence, Frankfurt.

All over the country fixing their towns and they've got the same problem. Unity is the biggest problem. If we could just take hands and stand together, we can really fix our towns very easily because a town is small. I'm actually sitting here in the beautiful area of Midstream in Pretoria It's basically security estates all in one. And because it's all in one, it's beautiful. Everything works. But when you're in a small town, it's actually smaller than Midstream that people are not working together, so we're never really getting there where we want to be. So that's on the how was it received.

What progress have you made now? If I say that we didn't have 100 % unity, you may think we weren't successful, but I think we've been very successful in that the town is now much better than four years ago. So that is, I think, the main goal is that the spiral mustn't go down, the spiral must go up. And I really do think every month, Senekal and the surrounding areas is becoming better. 

So, we started off with a broken window theory that Giuliani used in New York to clean up New York and where he just said every morning they're get up fix the broken windows clean the graffiti because they had this massive problem of corruption, the mafia was in charge they couldn't get rid of the mafia they couldn't get rid of it from the top down. But when they started from the bottom up by cleaning the graffiti fixing the windows and policing petty crime, they police petty crime they actually cleaned up New York from the bottom up and that's a very effective strategy and we started using that. 

We started cleaning the town. We had these town cleanups where on one day we cleaned over 20 tons of rubble from Matwabeng and farmers got involved. So, it was amazing to hear one black man coming up to me and said, I never thought I would see this in my life where a farmer comes to my township and help us to clean up. 

One farmer came there with his own grader, his own diesel. He actually took the day, he spent the whole day driving the grader and cleaning their soccer field so that the kids could play soccer again. And another company brought in their heavy equipment and we took all of that 20 tons of rubble and we took it away. 

The sad part is that rubble is there because the municipality do not take the rubble away from the township areas as efficiently as they do from the town area. We're quite quick to complain in the town areas and we don't realise always the state in which people in the townships have to live and get by. So they start dumping the rubbish in these informal places, many times very close to homes, like in this case and when we removed the rubble, you should have seen the number of rats, this size, just running from it.

We had something similar in Ficksburg, which is part of our municipal region, and there was this beautiful old lady, black lady, who couldn't speak English, but she said this in Sesotho, I know a little bit of Sesotho, so I could understand a bit, but it was translated for me, where she just said, please help us, because I'm so scared of these rats, and they come into my garden, and they eat all of my plants.

So those are the challenges, but we then cleaned and today Senekal is much cleaner than it was. We fixed five and a half thousand potholes, which was really good. It uplifted the town. Sadly, those potholes a month or two down the line are broken again because the railway system in South Africa is pretty much broken down.

So, there are too many heavy trucks in the country and these heavy trucks keep on wrecking the roads and we've had a lot of rain again this season. So, not just the Free State, but the whole country's roads are looking bad because with all of the rain and the big trucks on the roads, the roads are just not making it.  The roads are falling apart. we've got to look at sustainability. So yes, we've changed the town. It's looking much better, but it's not sustainable as a community forum to do the work that the government should be doing. 

But now in our case, the wonderful thing is in the previous election. A new mayor was elected. The ANC is still in charge. It was actually quite a close, 17 ANC councillors and 16 opposition which formed an independent organization before the local election that did really, really well. So many of those councillors are now from that organisation. And we kind of had our own government of national unity or government of local unity way before that term even became part of the country.

 I think for most part the opposition councillors do not see themselves as opposition really in our municipal reason. They work together which is quite nice and I really like our mayor and our municipal manager. If I message them now, they'll reply, and they've been efficient and we don't do clean up as town members anymore now the local government does that so our town is better.

So, I think the effort that we've put in, even though it's been an interesting journey over the four years, has caused our town to be better. And it's inspired other towns that now do something similar. And in many of those towns, they do much better than Senekal which is fantastic. Like the town of Kroonstad, for instance. André van Pletzen and his team, they do amazing work.

So, we're taking hands and we're supporting each other because, as I said, each town have similar problems to keep on encouraging each other because you don't want to lose heart and stop the efforts because it's become difficult. I think after all the main reason I'm there is not because I thought Senekal would be the best place to live. I'm really there because I felt a call from God. I felt God was calling me in that direction. 

I'm not there to please people or for the cheer and the support and I'm there because I feel that's where God wants me to be and that makes it amazing. So. sometimes you wake up and you laugh at Google for instance when I wake up says the traffic is light, it's two minutes to work, take the N5. Senekal is only two minute’s drive from wherever you are. We don't have a Woollies, we don't have Pick and Pay, Shoprite is our highest level of store we can go to, but it's amazing and I don't think I'll ever live in the city again.

I love the rural areas and just one of the highlights we did was the town swimming pool was broken for 33 years. They closed it in 1991 prior to the national elections of 94. And it was just lying there. There was a lot of crime, a lot of drugs. Girls were being raped there. With the help of a local television program and a sponsor we were able to fix the swimming pool. So, now there's no more crime there. That drug lord actually left for Gauteng again, so he's no longer in the Free State. So, it's wonderful that we could clean the swimming pool and we had a town swimming gala for the schools and the sum total of 12 children entered the gala. It was wonderful to have a gala again after 33 years. 

Linda van Tilburg (15:39:00)

Can we get to the film studio? So, what about the logistical problems? You're about, what is it, 150 kilometres from Bloemfontein and quite far from Oliver Tambo international airport. If you want to bring international people to come and shoot there, because I assume it's a lot cheaper. So how do you address that?

Frans Cronje (15:53.12)

So, from the film studio point of view again, if you have to pick the best location for having a film studio, you're not going to pick Senekal. You must probably stick to one of the big cities or close to the big cities. So again, I'm there because I feel called to have it there.

Look, primarily I've been making my own movies. So, I'm not really in the film industry to work on other people's movies or to get Hollywood people to come to South Africa and work on it. That's where Cape Town and Joburg have been very successful, especially Cape Town. I don't think that'll change. I think most Hollywood studios would prefer to film in Cape Town where the infrastructure is there and where they can also enjoy their lives outside of the filming.

That's never been my primary idea. So, we're to be setting up the studio in such a way that it's a self-sustainable studio. We'll have all of the crew necessary in Senekal. We'll have all of the equipment, and the facility is so large that we can film everything indoors and also some of the stuff outdoors. We're planning on having an extended reality volume studio that will be 30 meters by 40 meters by 8 meters high with LED panels all the way around. 

We can literally film Moscow on the one day in New York on the other day inside the studio, which is the latest technology and I'm working with a company in Johannesburg and in London to help us to find the right equipment to put in. Obviously, it's extremely expensive to put in. But once we've got that, we'll be able to get any crew from around the world to come and film in Senekal

Senekal does not have enough accommodation, so we’ll also create a hundred hotel rooms at our facility so that there's enough space for the crew to stay anything from fairly basic to almost five-star when we're filming. And I've been in the Christian film industry for the last 25 years, so that's really the niche that I know the people in. So, I'm almost probably not focused to try and compete with Cape Town.

There are Christian producers in America who wants to film and save a lot on budget and especially film something that takes place in Israel or Rome or something like that, I'll be the ideal studio for them to partner with. So that's kind of how we're doing it and the drive is not too bad from O'R Tambo. It's a two-and-a-half-hour drive on the N1. There are no potholes to get to Senekal. If you're driving from O'R Tambo to get to Senekal, it’s a good road. 

You get there without any problems I think even if you must fly into Heathrow and then get to a film studio in the UK, you will most probably drive that same amount of time not the same distance, But the same amount of time if you do have traffic. If you must drive from Midstream where I'm currently to get to Joburg to work, it's only 20 kilometres, but it could take you up to an hour and a half to drive here So, we'd like to speak into of hours rather than kilometres to get people there. So, we're thinking that we'll obviously focus a lot on our own stuff, but if we do have other people coming, the access won't be that hard and we'll be able to give people everything that they want.

Linda van Tilburg (19:32:00)

You mentioned your film with a Roman theme that you are doing, but I would like a little bit of background about France Cronje. We know you are Hansie Cronje’s brother and you were involved in the movie Hansie as well. So, tell us a little bit about that and what you're working on.

Frans Cronje (20:38.574)

I've come from a very sporty family. I'm a qualified physiotherapist, but I only studied that just because my dad said you have to study. So, I taught myself filmmaking over the last 25 years and I'm not necessarily passionate about the film industry. I'm passionate about making the world a better place. That really is my main passion and that's why the movies that I make reflects that. I always try to find a story. Sometimes it's true, sometimes not but it happens to be true quite often.

Find a story that we can learn from, because I think people don't learn from history. That's one sad part, is we need to learn from history and find stories that inspire people and help to make the world better. That is kind of the thing that excites me and I think that's why getting involved in the town was also exciting for me. I'm passionate about community transformation. I believe solving the world's problems are not that difficult if you take the political agendas out and you try to take hands with the right people. 

I think we can solve a lot of those problems. I'd like to see the not just the films that I make, because I make videos as well that we post directly to YouTube featuring towns that do the rural makeovers so we don't do home makeovers, we do town makeovers and featuring tourism but featuring places that actually makes a difference so the Eastern Free State I think is one of the most beautiful places in the whole world it's the Golden Gate area, Clarence, the mountains, the Maluti Mountains and people don't really know that been featuring a lot of that and giving that exposure. And then sometimes we have to just laugh about ourselves. I think laughter is good medicine, so we try to bring in some humour and laugh about ourselves.

Linda van Tilburg (21:43.492)

Well, tell us about your movie that had so many views.

Frans Cronje (21:44.91)

You're talking about Faith Like Potatoes. Yeah, so I've made five feature films thus far. All of them have been in English to go out worldwide. The first one, Faith Like Potatoes, we made in 2006. And that's still the most successful movie we ever made. I think everything just worked out so well in that time. And it features Angus Buchan, the true story of a farmer who had to have enough faith to plant potatoes during the El Nino drought and this fascinating story of not just success but also hardships and how we overcame that.

So, by now we estimate that about 500 million people have seen the movie in 17 languages around the world. It's a lot of people; it's half a billion people and it's a South African movie. There are so many interesting things around that movie. One of the first things when people saw that, the first time they didn't think it was a South African movie that kind of said no it doesn't look  like it and they were saying that as a compliment I think since then a lot of the South African movies have really upped their quality as well which has been good and the other thing was it was a Christian movie and again, it was one of the first Christian movies that really upped the quality. 

We all know that the Christian film industry today is extremely healthy. There's some movies that far exceed what we've done. But what's been interesting about ours is its non-American movie. So, I think the Americans can easily make a Christian movie that does well. It's not so easy when you're in Africa trying to make a movie that breaks into the American market. And it's still doing well today, know, it's 2025, it's, what's that, 20 years later, it's still doing well, so it's amazing.

Linda van Tilburg (23:42.521)

And the Roman movie on the New Testament that you're shooting, when will we see that?

Frans Cronje (23:45.21)

Yes, so the gladiator story, even if I get the funding today, will take very close to two years to get to cinema. So, it's not a short game that I'm in. So, if I do get the money today, I can have the movie ready within 18 months and then release it within about two years. But the unknown is always how long will it take to get the funding. That's always the thing that's hard. At the same time, there's a person that I've become very good friends within England who wants to dramatise the whole New Testament as well. So if our plans work out well, we could film all that in Senekal, which would really be amazing because that will truly give us sustainability because we'll be able to film seven years of content 

For every movie you have to go and find the funding. But if you have a series, that could be the sustainable income and our business plan I think is really good. We can turn around within about two years we'll be able to pay off any funding that we receive and go into a profit because we are in Senekal, where the costs are a lot lower than anywhere else. And our government's very supportive. So, I've already been in discussion with various departments in government and they are very supportive all the way from national down to provincial and local government.

Linda van Tilburg (25:17.656)

What kind of budget are you looking at?

Frans Cronje (26:16.922)

So right now, we're looking for R109 million, so round about $6 million. A R109 million is a lot of money, but $6 million dollars in terms of movies not that much, especially if you think we want to make a gladiator movie. So, the old movie gladiator with Russell Crowe in was like a $110 million hundred.  That's why the Americans don't think $6 million is enough to actually make a gladiator movie.  So, we have to convince them that because we're filming it in South Africa where we control our own movie. It's going to be quality but it's going to be a lot less expensive to make. That's my mission at the moment.

Anyone watching and listening, you want to hear more, be involved, please contact us. But especially pray for us and support us. I think the more people pray for us, the more people that are positive about what we're and it doesn't matter if you're living in England, America, Australia or New Zealand where they don't play rugby. You can still pray for us and support us.

Linda van Tilburg (26:21.535)

Well, Frans, your enthusiasm is amazing and good luck with all this, and I hope you get the funding, and we'll watch your path as you develop this.

Frans Cronje (26:30.772)

Thank you very much and thanks a lot for your enthusiasm or passion to interview me as well. mean it's wonderful that you do feature good news stories. think news is often so negative that it's so amazing that you guys are featuring good news stories. Keep on doing it. Thank you.