WEDNESDAY 13TH SEPT 2023
13H00 – 13H50
University of the Western Cape
School of Government Building Room 1C
A dramatic story about land and love
It is 2015, Nandi, Vuka and Java, three film students at a University in Cape Town start to work on a script on landownership in South Africa, but do not yet know how the project will shape their own lives and identities. The film script however has to wait while they participate in the #feesmustfall protest. Due to the resulting turmoil, the university is closed and they travel to Vuka’s grandparents near Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape to do local research on land.
There Vuka’s great-uncle Babanathi initiates them into the family’s history and tells them about his great-great-grandmother, Haa Smit and her life. They start to grasp why their lives still bear the marks of those long-ago experiences. The three friends have been close for a while, and working out who will be together when the film is made is as difficult as understanding the thing called land.
“A must read. Goes to the root, which is LAND.”
— Sindiwe Magona, author ofWhen the Village Sleeps
