Zimbabwe

Amidst failed harvests and the threat of AIDS, Zimbabweans look for work, preferably in South Africa. But their illegal status and xenophobic whites do not make life any easier in the neighbouring state.
‘Over 40,000 Zimbabweans cross the border into South Africa every month’. Darrell James Roodt depicts in Zimbabwe the consequences of this illegal labour migration. On both sides of the border is, Zimbabweans live in terrible conditions in and outside what was once a powerful African nation. The 19-year-old Zimbabwe (given that name by her patriotic parents) loses her parents to AIDS. The village chief sends Zimbabwe and her brother Dumi away: the orphans are extra mouths that cannot be fed. A long journey by foot through a world filled with beautiful panoramas but painful lives brings the children to their cold aunt in the border town of Beitbridge. In exchange for scrubbing and chopping wood, Zimbabwe and Dumi are allowed to stay in a shed behind their aunt’s house. A job in richer South Africa looks like being a better perspective and Zimbabwe finds herself in a large house with a white couple. But she doesn’t have anything to say about her new life, just like so many others. Tens of thousands of illegal migrant workers cannot return and fear their dark future. Zimbabwe has to make a choice to survive.
The Hubert Bals Fund supports this South African world première.

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