MNQOBI NGUBANE, TSOGO KUPA & EUGENE SKEEF

Mathonga Elizwe is a lament, a wailing from the soul. To watch this film is to shed all the false layers of optimism that we sheathe ourselves in in order to stay sane and keep on maintaining the illusion of inkululeko. The film’s tenderly scored music sustains the lament, the elegy for ancestors whose graves are not allowed to be tended in our so-called “democracy”. So many layers of cruel irony and bitterness get uncovered in this film. The absurdity of being forcefully removed in 1995??? The ongoing cruelty of the white love of “nature” at the expense of human beings identified as “black”. Hilton College – wow, this is the comprador production industry in full fleek. Mathonga Elizwe is beyond brilliant, it is an essential unraveling of how the post-apartheid apartheid system works; the nuts and bolts of the illusion laid bare. It’s a devastating film to watch and so necessary. On the level of film form, of editing, of framing, of music, of tempo, this is a masterpiece, no punches pulled, a cry from the heart delivered with the analytic acuity of a razor blade.

The section describing how so-called “educated” people have this tendency to join the oppressor in order to separate themselves from themselves, clearly illustrates one of the most disabling mechanisms that so-called “whites” use to neutralize and sweeten so-called “blacks” in the insidious and highly effective black capture machines called universities.