Filmmaker Milisuthando Bongela. Photo: Hankyeol Lee
To raise capital as a filmmaker in South Africa is tough. Even more so for black women in film.
What writer and cultural thinker Milisuthando Bongela has done in the past decade, navigating the film industry, is not only an anomaly but a rare occurrence.
It has been a sequence of deliberate actions, reaping fruit for generations to follow suit.
Milisuthando, her documentary film, is a nuanced offering, commenting on the colonial hangover, which Bongela describes as being “sausaged” into the construction of the so-called rainbow nation, which many black parents had to grapple with as they sent their kids to the formerly recognised “white schools” in the late Eighties and early Nineties.
“There is a step that was missed,” Bongela says, during our interview on Zoom, delving straight into how the film came about and what it sought to do — dissecting black people’s proximity to whiteness and the impact of it on our psyche.
The basic concept of the film is to interrogate the story of Mandela’s rainbow nation and begin an excursion down memory lane. This includes what was endured by pockets of society, who had no idea how to navigate it, considering the cultural indoctrination spewed by the oppressive, patriarchal, supremacist apartheid regime.
She sharpens the discussion by pointing to present-day South Africa, raising a thought-provoking question about the urgent need for leaders in the country to deal with — and heal from — the repercussions of apartheid and its effect on them, on a subconscious and spiritual level.
“Even our leaders — at which point did they have the opportunity to heal?” she asks.
In 1994, South Africa got its democracy, against the backdrop of a very violent system, stripping away so much of black people’s dignity, but beyond that, creating a rift between whole communities, cemented by the 1913 Land Act.
A still from her documentary Milisuthando. Photo: Hankyeol Lee
Over 100 years later, Bongela, digs deep into the archives and questions how nationhood is imagined through her documentary film, placing themes such as belonging, love and relationships at centre stage.
“There are all these questions,” adds Bongela, who is a renegade storyteller, and has been ready since her time as an independent content blogger, moving on to being the arts editor for the Mail & Guardian, and juggling passion projects with peers in the writing and publishing industry, in between, .
These projects included being part of a collective, Feminist Stokvel, investigating hair in the context of black women’s lived experiences in post-apartheid South Africa.
In addition to her commitment to re-claiming her own identity as a black, African woman, Milisuthando Noxolo Bongela is a daughter and granddaughter, who has consistently prioritised, or rather anchored, her practice as a creative writer through the lens of black vulnerability, a very close cousin to spiritual healing.
In the documentary film Milisuthando, the cultural thinker and critic,carefully comments on the promise of a united country at the genesis of a democracy.
But, beyond the glory and celebration, the children who were sent to white schools by their parents and loved ones, are faced with a conundrum — the integration of their own African-ness into a white world.
“We’ve grown up, now,” laments Mili, as she is popularly known, tying together the purpose of including her adult friends in the doccie who, like thousands of black children in South Africa, were part of Mandela’s new generation.
“There has to be a mass review,” she goes on, with regards to what could possibly be a way to re-shape the conversation on the psychological impact of apartheid, from a collective point of view.
A conversation where all South Africans take part and “have a look at it”, as Bongela boldly puts it.
To have a complete overhaul of the emotions and intricacies of being in relation with one another, across racial, cultural and religious lines and borders.
“We are this hotpot mix of people,” she says, when asked about the significance of Umsamo, documented in the film, paying homage to some of the ancestral communities and figures that in some way shaped the trajectory of the histories and stories of our country.
There are figures like the Xhosa chief Maqoma and Charlotte Maxeke, who introduced this notion of attempting to integrate their African cultural upbringing and beliefs with the whites during the 1800s and early 1900s. Whether they succeeded or failed remains a debate for the historians and anthropology scholars. This in some ways, as much as it is controversial, resembled the very Model C structure of today.
More importantly, the unforgettable special Umsamo, Bongela passionately notes, was a deeper task of acknowledging those who came before — who form part of this collective ancestral past of South Africa.
“This is the tapestry of this country,” she emphasises.
Healing and love are very much central themes in the documentary.
How love shows up in the film is in the smallest details, the questions raised, the pauses covered in surprised looks and repressed emotions.
It is a love that is devoid of all the niceties. It is a love that remains when all that is left is to work through the rubbled up memories — be at a complete loss for words, with a relentless, deep stare.
“We didn’t speak of the sacrifices our parents made,” she tells me. “We also have to indict ourselves,” she quickly adds, poking at the responsibility of this generation to begin thinking through the repair work needed in our country.
One can never be sure, as a filmmaker, when it comes to counting the cents. The funding trail can be brutal, however in Bongela’s case, she and her producers had initial financial support from The National Film and Video Foundation and later received funding from US-based funders the Sundance Documentary Fund, Chicken and Egg and Field of Vision.
Later, she was funded by the Sundance Institute, telling a story she’d conjured up since 2014.
From pitching to the inception of the filming, following around her maternal grandmother, at her own family home, with a camera, the journey was made increasingly better with collaborators Marion Isaacs and Hankyeol Lee, who had seen the vision, throughout her various career pivots.
“Nobody knows your film better than you,” Bongela excitedly recalls advice given to her during her fundraising run.
The documentary is a homecoming to self while also creating space for questions to not necessarily be answered but asked, anyway.
After a celebrated international run, Milisuthando is returning home with screenings across South Africa. The film will also be shown abroad, continuing its dialogue with audiences around the world.
Full screening details are available at https://film.milisuthando.com/. The film is also available on Criterion for countries outside of South Africa.