 The story is based on real events and real people and is set in the mid @-@ 1950s freehold township of Sophiatown , Johannesburg — one of the few areas in South Africa where blacks could own property and drink alcoholic beverages . Drum begins with the central character , sportswriter Henry Nxumalo , reporting on a boxing match with Nelson Mandela . Nxumalo leaves his wife Florence at home while going out into his community 's night life and has an affair with a female singer . He works for Drum magazine , which was " the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa . " The magazine was financed by whites and had a multiracial staff ; it was popular among the black community . Drum 's British editor , Jim Bailey ( Jason Flemyng ) , asks Nxumalo to write on the township crime scene , and Nxumalo , while at first unwilling , finally agrees . While on the job , he encounters Slim ( Zola ) , a gang leader , that he had previously met in illegal township drinking places , and witnesses him kill a man in Sophiatown . 
