Thank You Mama

Omelga Mthiyane is documentary maker with a powerful personality and also a very personal approach to work. Her films look at general social situations and problems, but the angle is always individual. For instance, for her documentary Home/Ikhaya she travelled with her mother, Margaret Mthiyane, from Kwazulu-Natal via Zimbabwe and Mozambique to Malawi, where her ancestors came from. Using this personal story, the grand tale of migration and violence in Kwazulu-Natal at the time of apartheid is told.
The mother of the film make also plays a role in this latest film. Her motivation to make the film was the threatened demolition of the legendary Warwick Market in Durban, South Africa. The market has meant a lot to generations of poor black people: traders made a certain level of income from it, customers could do their everyday shopping cheaply. As part of the major cleanup around the soccer world championships, the market had to make way for an expensive shopping mall.
Omelga Mthiyane is also heard in Sarah and Omelga, the short documentary made by the Malaysian film maker Tan Chui Mui for the Forget Africa programme.