DOCUMENTARY FILM
FILM REVIEW: A moving tale of a community’s land struggle
Miki Redelinghuys's documentary film, This Land, explores rural people’s struggle for rights and accountability on communal land, writes Tsepang Tutu Molefe
Makhasaneni has the typical rural topography of KwaZulu-Natal: bulging hills and harmonic rivers. People plough the land and their livestock grazes freely. When a resident of the village transitions to the other side, the land enfolds them in a final resting place. The people are the land, and the land is the people. This Land, a documentary film by Miki Redelinghuys, was commissioned by the Land and Accountability Research Centre at the University of Cape Town, for rural people to bring the untold story of their struggle for rights and accountability on communal land into urban forums of legislative, political and corporate decision-making. Redelinghuys stitched together the 48-minute film with diligent, journalistic precision. The narrative follows the people of Makhasaneni near Melmoth in KwaZulu-Natal as they battle an Indian company in its collusion with politically connected members of the elite in developing a vast opencast iron-ore mine on the land they have lived and farmed...
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