The Forgotten Kingdom is the first feature film in history to have been made in Lesotho. This is noteworthy and interesting, but it is also, in some sense, a pity. It means there is a danger that it will become the “Lesotho movie”; its reputation reduced to little more than the location where it was filmed. Yet this is a film that can easily stand on its artistic merits, which are quite considerable.
The Forgotten Kingdom tells the story of Atang (Zenzo Ngqobe), a Basotho man who has spent most of his life in South Africa. At the start of the movie he has fully acclimatised to city life in Johannesburg, but he’s shiftless and unemployed. He’s also kind of a jerk. (At one point, in a clear example of movie code for villainy, he gives a cigarette to a school-age child.)
In 1987, South African Paul Morris went to Angola as a reluctant conscript soldier, where he experienced the fear and filth of war. Twenty-five years later, in 2012, Paul returned to Angola, and embarked on a 1500-kilometre cycle trip, solo and unsupported, across the country. His purpose was to see Angola in peacetime, to replace the war map in his mind with a more contemporary peace map, to exorcise the ghosts of war once and for all.
Shifting skilfully between present and past, ‘Back to Angola’ chronicles Paul’s epic journey, from Cuito Cuanavale to the remnants of his unit’s base in northern Namibia, and vividly recreates his experiences as a young soldier caught up in a war in a foreign land.
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
I wonder how fucked I’d be if something bad happened. My self rescue plan has always been to hitch a lift to a place where I can find help. There’s no traffic on this road, this bush track; no prospect of rescue. It will be better once I reach Cuchi and the tar road starts again. I hope the advice I’ve received about the tar starting again is accurate, not because I’m not enjoying this quiet track, but because the isolation of it could put me in a difficult situation if I am unable to keep cycling through illness. I contemplate phoning Martin, my doctor friend, for advice. It seems alarmist so I don’t. I battle on alone.
As I move further into the floodplain, I come to the first of several river crossings. A series of channels cut the road. If I were on an unloaded bike I would simply ride across, but I don’t want to risk a soaking, especially because of my camera equipment. A more critical consideration is that a fall could result in injury. I get off the bike and take off my shoes and socks. The water is cold and clear and I can see what I’m placing my bare feet on as I wheel the bike across. On the other side I lay the bike down and put my shoes and socks back on. I repeat the process again at the next crossing.
The road to Cuchi. (Pic: Paul Morris)
There’s a man walking next to the road as I put on my shoes after a third crossing. As we talk I realise how weak I am. I struggle to form words and can’t seem to think straight. I’m in worse shape than I thought I was. I sit for a while on the side of the road, feeling frustrated at my slow progress. Hauling myself to my feet, I walk over to a little ford and kneel next to the river to splash my face. I feel like lying in that cold water and letting it wash away whatever poison is debilitating me.
The sun is lowering in the west. I’ve long resigned myself to the fact that I won’t make Cuchi. I’ve been pushing myself, but I can’t go on like this for much longer. It looks like I’m going to be spending the night in the bush. I start riding again and as I crawl along the broken gravel I scan the bush for a potential campsite. I haven’t seen many landmine signs on this road, but the lack of red-and-white warning signs doesn’t mean that there aren’t mines.
This should be a relatively simple exercise, but my brain seems to have slowed to match the cadence of my fatigued legs. It’s so much effort to think about camping that I keep moving. Then a village emerges in a clearing. The quiet of the bush is replaced by the sounds of settlement. The murmur of many conversations is punctuated occasionally by laughter or dogs barking or a call across from one homestead to another. Woodsmoke trickles up from cooking huts made from mud bricks and thatch, the sharp oily scent of it familiar to me.
I call a boa tarde [good afternoon] to some people talking in front of a homestead. It’s a relief to stop here where the track has begun to turn to sand in places. I’m too tired to power through it and too weak to armour my pride against a fall. Two men take leave of the women and walk slowly from the little group of huts that squat behind the log palisade to where I’ve stopped. When they reach me one man hangs back. The first man is obviously interested in finding out about me. We go through the usual dance of words, some comprehended, some not, and he grasps that I am a turista. Sun-hat man is scowling and muttering in the background. The first man says something back to him. I point to my tent and do my best to convey that I’d like to camp somewhere for the night. Sun-hat is very obviously unhappy about my being here and when he grasps that I want to spend the night his muttering becomes louder and more animated. The first man turns to him and snaps at him. I pick up the word ‘turista’. Sun-hat slopes back towards the homestead complaining as he goes, ‘Problema?’ I ask, starting to become anxious. ‘Não, não,’ says the first man. ‘Não problema.’ It’s the first time I’ve encountered anything like this open hostility. Should I continue and find a wild camp tonight?
I gather that I have to ask permission from the soba, whose homestead I’m given directions to. A young man is tasked with guiding me through the maze of huts. As I haul my loaded bike through the sand, a sow and some piglets scuttle out of my way. There’s the buzz of dinner time about the place. I smell pap and unidentifiable cooking aromas mingled with people sweat and goat shit. Chickens and goats escape between the huts as a handful of wide-eyed, snotty-nosed children follow me at a cautious distance. The old soba has his khaki bush jacket draped over his shoulders. His hair is nearly white and his eyes are milky with age. It’s instantly clear that my staying in the village is beyond question – he is so nonchalant about it, it’s as if I were a regular visitor who passed through every week. A pair of kitchen chairs is brought for us and we sit together next to a little rectangular hut. Conversation runs out within minutes, but we remain sitting together anyway.
The soba (4th from right) and his family. (Pic: Paul Morris)
I say something about his lovely orange tree. It seems ancient and no less fecund for the years. He says something to a boy of about nine, who is quickly into the highest branches of the tree with the skill and fearlessness of a boy of his age. In a few minutes I’m presented with five oranges. I thank the boy and the old man and begin to eat, not without some concern for my stomach. The sourness of the unripe orange on my tongue is eclipsed by the severe stinging of my sunburnt lips. I battle on gamely until it is finished. To reciprocate the old man’s hospitality, I give him the remains of a loaf of bread I bought in Menongue.
After a while the soba leaves me to attend to some other business. A small gallery of curious young residents has formed at a respectful distance from where I’m sitting. ‘Hello,’ I say to the gathered children. I’m answered by a quiet spread of big eyes. One whispers something to an older girl and she replies. Silence. ‘Como estás?’ I ask. Shy giggles. I smile. Little coughs ripple back and forth through the dust-whitened band. Many of the children’s scalps present scabs caused by some or other ailment. Gradually the members of the little band drift off, called for dinner at their respective homes. The sun sets into the forest and in the remaining twilight a girl of about twelve, wearing a flared skirt, arrives with a grass handbrush and a bowl of water and disappears into the hut outside of which I’m sitting. She sweeps the beaten-earth floor and then sprinkles water on it to keep the dust down. The old man indicates that this is my room for the night.
Close to where I sit there’s a small solar panel about the size of an open laptop charging a mobile phone. The sun is down so the phone’s owner, a man in his twenties, collects it and tramps off again down the sandy lane. Someone else puts the panel away for the night. It happens without fuss or discussion, one of the many daily routines that have claimed my hosts for now.
A little while later I roll out my mattress and sleeping bag and wonder where I’ll find the strength to continue on my journey tomorrow. Somewhere a generator chunters power to a thumping music system and children shriek their delight. I lie down, insert my earplugs and, with the sickly sweet smell of the dust floor in my nostrils, drift into a dead sleep.
How is it possible that we know the correct behaviour or the healthiest practice and yet we don’t follow it? Is it human nature or just a lack of discipline?
I’m guilty of this when it comes to my weight. No amount of knowledge I acquire or books I read can help me get off my roller-coaster ride of weight gain and loss.
I see teenage pregnancy in South Africa in the same light. Having loads of information about it is not enough to change our behaviour. One would think that young people today have enough tools to avoid unwanted pregnancy: contraception is available and sexual health information is a fingertip or a cell phone away. But many girls still fall pregnant before finishing high school. In 2009 alone, more than 49 000 schoolgirls, mostly black and poor, gave birth in South Africa, according to the United Nations Population Fund. This not only endangers their education and their future, it also places a huge burden on their families.
(Pic: AFP)
That number of 49 000 pregnant schoolgirls means that as many boys and men impregnated them. Hey, it takes two to tango.
Why does this happen? What perpetuates this cycle?
An insightful 2009 study by researchers Jewkes, Morrell and Christofides aptly summed it up: “Teenage pregnancy is not just an issue of reproductive health and young women’s bodies but, rather, one of its causes and consequences, rooted in women’s gendered social environment.”
Sad but true. Our environment influences young women hugely. In some South African communities, young women are pressured to prove their fertility at a young age, and so they fall pregnant, simultaneously risking contracting sexually transmitted infections and HIV.
And if that’s not enough, they are often left to raise the babies alone because the father is “unknown” – meaning he is either married, or not ready to assume this responsibility, or does not want a child, or is still too young so he gets to continue with his education – while she (the expecting mother) likely drops out of school to care for the baby.
In addition, young women have to wrestle with the societal expectations that they must be conservative and passive.
We are also expected to prove our social status – to look a certain way, wear certain clothes, and be seen possessing certain material things. Dating someone older to provide these status symbols or necessities seems the easier route – no matter the cost.
However, experience has taught me otherwise: nothing is ever for mahala, meaning there are no freebies in life. What you do today will determine your future.
Among teenagers, girls have eight times the HIV infection rate than their male peers.
Girls aged 15-19 are more likely than boys the same age to have sex, and sex with older men.
Condom use has dropped significantly among young people.
To change this gut-wrenching reality, we must ask some hard questions:
Can we honestly see progress in South Africa when so many girls still fall pregnant and/or contract HIV daily?
Can we not take advantage of the booming social networks and other creative platforms to create safe spaces for dialogue around the real reasons why young black girls are falling pregnant today?
We should change our way of dealing with this sensitive social issue. Let us be less prescriptive about the young girls’ behaviour and meet them where they are.
Hearing their voices when messages and programmes are designed will help us address the real issues behind teenage pregnancy in South Africa.
To walk the talk, I am developing an interactive session for a group of high school students aged 14-17 in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. We use applied drama and theatre methods to build a platform for dialogue around teenage pregnancy. I’ll keep you posted.
Zandi Mqwathi is a confident, innovative young leader and a former radio personality with a zeal and drive to use her craft and experiences to educate and empower other young women. She writes for Countdown to Zero, a Unicef/Inter Press Service project.
Methodist church reverend Canaan Banana (left) and his wife Janet share a moment with then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe (centre) and his wife Sally five days before independence celebrations. (Pic: STF)
I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.
Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.
When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.
My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.
In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.
Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.
A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.
With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.
It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.
Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.
She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.
But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.
The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.
A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.
My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of dismissal are rescinded.
We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.
The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.
Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.
He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.
April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.
It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.
Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.
The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.
I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.
Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.
When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.
My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.
In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.
Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.
A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.
With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.
It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.
Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.
She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.
But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.
The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.
A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.
My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of dismissal are rescinded.
We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.
The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.
Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.
He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.
April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.
It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.
Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.
The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.
Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer living in exile in Europe. This piece was first published in the Mail & Guardian’s Zimbabwe edition.
Crocodiles are some of the most feared predators in Africa, ruthless reptiles renowned for tearing their prey to pieces before swallowing hunks of meat raw.
But in the baking sun at Nyanyana crocodile farm on the shores of Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba, feeding time has a surreal edge as the beasts nibble lazily at bowls of vegetarian pellets.
Besides being cheaper than meat, the diet of protein concentrate, minerals, vitamins, maize meal and water is said to enhance crocodile skin destined to become handbags or shoes on the catwalks of New York, Paris, London or Milan.
“We don’t feed them meat any more,” said Oliver Kamundimu, financial director of farm owner Padenga Holdings.
“It actually improves the quality because we now measure all the nutrients that we are putting in there, which the crocodile may not get from meat only,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Crocodiles feed on vegetarian pellets inside a pen at Nyanyana Crocodile Farm in Kariba. (Pic: Reuters)
Four hundred kilometres northwest of Harare, Nyanyana is home to 50 000 Nile crocodiles and is one of three Padenga farms around Kariba, Africa’s largest man-made lake.
The company has 164 000 crocodiles in all and started feeding pellets in 2006 at the height of an economic crisis in Zimbabwe that made meat scarce and very expensive.
Initially, the pellets contained 50% meat but that has gradually been phased out to an entirely vegetarian diet.
“We have moved gradually to a point where we reduced the meat to about 15% then to 7% and where we are now there is zero meat, zero fish,” he said.
“It’s a much cleaner operation and the crocs are getting all the nutrients they want from that pellet.”
Fed every second day, the crocodiles are largely docile and lie asleep in their enclosures as workers walk around casually cleaning up leftovers.
Hermes, Gucci The crocodiles are slaughtered at 30 months, when they are about 1.5 metres long and their skin is soft and supple.
Last year Harare-listed Padenga sold 42 000 skins to tanneries in Europe, especially France, where the average skin fetches $550.
Ninety percent of the leather becomes high-end handbags, Kamundimu said, while the remainder makes belts, shoes and watch straps for some of the biggest names in world fashion.
“When you hear names like Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Gucci – those are the brand names we are talking about,” he said with a satisfied smile.
Having survived economic collapse and hyperinflation of 500 billion percent in Zimbabwe, Padenga then had to deal with fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis, and economic contraction in the euro zone, its main market.
However, while appetite for crocodile meat cooled in Europe and Asia, super-wealthy European shoppers shrugged off recession and continued to snap up crocodile-skin items, Kamundimu said.
“When you look at people who buy handbags for their wives or daughters that cost $40 000 a piece, even when the euro zone problems came, they could still afford to buy,” he said. We didn’t feel a decline.”
