Mother City at Encounters — No battle is won without resilience and solidarity

The festival, celebrating its 26th year, is premiering over 40 films in Cape Town and Johannesburg theatres starting Thursday, promising films bound to change perspectives by amplifying diverse and insightful narratives

Among the wide range of international films showing are several award-winning documentaries such as the Belgian film Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat which unravels the CIA’s mission to further covert agendas through African American jazz musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MRHFGP7Oho

The headlining Mother City, an emotionally charged documentary directed by Miki Redelinghuys and investigative journalist Pearlie Joubert, exposes the tooth-and-nail struggle happening in the underbelly of glamorous Cape Town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdiCr3t5V98

The film masterfully uncovers the housing crisis in Cape Town, highlighting how low-income workers, who are integral to the city, are often excluded due to unaffordable high rents.

While Cape Town, and the Western Cape as a whole, are often seen as an outlier from the rest of the country, frequently uplifted for the standard of living its citizens enjoy, Mother City sets out to prove that impoverished Capetonians are often suffering in this idyllic town, that it is, in fact, brutal at its core.

“I have always thought of Mother City as a love letter to the city I call home and love very deeply,” Miki Redelinghuys said. “But love can also be painful in as much as it is beautiful.”

Reclaim the City activists marching to protest the sale of the Tafelberg site. (Photo: Supplied)

Shot over four years, the documentary follows the Reclaim the City movement that started when activists decided to fight against the city’s sale of the old Tafelberg school, a piece of public land they said had been earmarked for public housing, to a private developer in 2016.

The opening scene places viewers in the middle of a dinner party at the Cape Town Press Club attended by former Western Premier Helen Zille in 2016, at the start of the movement. The protesters intruded on the dinner as a form of protest but did not come to fight — instead, they sang.

They sang a powerful anthem that echoed throughout the film as much as it did in the small venue they crowded.

They sang the lyrics to Rebecca Malope’s My Mother chanting, “My mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a garden boy.” In the film, they are seen being kicked out — they are not met with weaponised violence but instead an equally sinister oppression in the form of denial and the refusal to listen.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Reclaim the City’s Cape Town occupations are opportunities, not threats

Succeeding this initial call to action, with the efforts of ‘activist organisation and law centre’ Ndifuna Ukwazi and one particularly charismatic activist Nkosikhona (Face) Swartbooi, the movement pledges to fight spatial apartheid and occupy public land in the inner city of Cape Town.

The film juxtaposes this community-led struggle for justice with the looming threat of being squished out by private developers like Growthpoint Properties encroaching on the city with the government’s green light.

City residents facing eviction are relegated to temporary housing settlements in Wolwerivier, over 30km from the city center.

Repeatedly, activists compare the situation to apartheid.

Showcasing communities and endeavour

The Reclaim the City activists are masters of the phrase “there is no convenient time for a protest,” showing up at former Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson’s house, crashing golf courses, and occupying parking lots, but city leaders, such as Neilson seem to brush them off without addressing their concerns.

Read more in Daily Maverick: City of Cape Town refuses to respond to activist prank

Throughout the film, city leaders such as Zille and Neilson appear apathetic at best, except for mayoral committee member for transport and urban development Brett Herron, who resigned over disagreements on how the city handled low-income housing.

The film portrays the activists’ struggle as a “David versus Goliath battle,” with Swartbooi at the center of it all, making sacrifice after sacrifice for his vision of the greater good.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Spatial injustice remains at core of rising inequality

For Swartbooi, securing this housing is a matter of human dignity.

“My mum died when I was seven. I grew up in Khayelitsha in a shack with my grandparents, my brothers, and my sisters. It was eight of us crammed into a single room.

“We had to relieve ourselves in the bush, no running water, sleeping on the floor. Growing up like that was humiliating. I wanted to change this, but I just didn’t know how,” Swartbooi says in the film.

His renewed efforts are rooted in the basic human desire to be acknowledged. In this case, it is to force the government to recognise that low-income citizens have the right to also live in the spaces where they work.

Swartbooi drives the emotional core of this film, tethering the cause to someone who captures the movement’s spirit and needs so acutely. 

His fight for justice also comes at the cost of spending time with his daughter and mourning multiple family losses – his nephew, two-year-old Imthande Swartbooi drowned in 2021, in the height of the pandemic, after falling into an uncovered manhole in Greenpoint, Khayelitsha.

While Swartbooi is the face of the movement, the responsive community surrounding him is a testament to the strength Reclaim the City holds. 

The documentary tells a fierce story that proves no battle is won without resilience and solidarity, and while the Tafelberg ruling, originally a grand victory, was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal, small wins like the newly announced social housing development in Woodstock have been adding up.

“Mother City has been selected as our opening film, as it represents the heart of what documentary film-making is about,” Festival Director Mandisa Zitha said.

“Dedicated, tenacious, and vociferous in its approach to following a group of activists over a long period, to capture their challenges and frustrations, and indeed their successes. It speaks to the power of film in exposing the arduous journey so many in this world have to embark on to effect change. It is also a universally powerful story of the triumph of the collective.”

The documentary should leave you outraged and unsettled, yet observing the community these activists forge and their optimistic perspective also offers the viewer a sense of hope and empowerment.

Although the goal of Mother City could have likely been accomplished in a shorter runtime, the film’s 112-minute runtime beautifully delves into the growing pains South Africa’s society is left with post-apartheid and the grit it takes to endure the drawn-out, painstaking battles we call progress. DM

Mother City and a selection of local and international films will be featured at Encounters from June 20-30 in limited theatres.