Durban director Omelga Mthiyane is one of two South African filmmakers whose short documentaries featured in the Al Jazeera English documentaries series which have been airing over December and January.
Her film “Guerrilla Garden” shows how a guerrilla gardening collective not only provides food but also an important sense of belonging for the residents of Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Residents plant, harvest, sell or exchange produce in a self-help project in the face of huge social and environmental problems.
Fourteen films from nine African countries were chosen for broadcasting. The other South African filmmaker is Nadine Angel Cloete in “The Last Speaker”, where Claudia Snyman, a language researcher, tries to save the San language from extinction. She works to create a dictionary with her grandmother, Katrina Esau, who is the last living fluent speaker.
During the holiday period The Independent on Saturday caught up with Inanda-based Mthiyane, for whom, filmmaking is a calling.
“I come from Bantu education, but in Standard 8 I used to take videos of weddings and stuff. I applied to the President’s Awards to acquire skills in radio and TV, to train in using the video camera. I went to Johannesburg for an internship with documentary producer Ingrid Gavshon. She said ‘Come and work for me’, and that really gave me confidence,” Mthiyane said.
She assisted with the making of the documentary “Facing Death, Facing Life” which looked at the experience of death row prisoners. She also studied at the Binger Institute in the Netherlands.
Mthiyane spends most of her time in Soweto, “where I have a place. But when I’m working from my computer, I come home. My family is here”. Her daughter, 25, is studying at Mandela University in Gqeberha.
“In the documentary series, our brief was to tell African stories, and to portray the continent in a positive light. There’s so much negativity,” she says. “I began asking around. I had met Qaba Mbola of the Ujamaa Guerrilla Gardening project at a workshop in Cape Town. Twenty years later we met again, and I was attracted to the subject matter. It’s something so important that we plant food. My mother was big on planting food. No-one would go to bed hungry.
“Here they take unused land and turn it into a food forest. It’s such a basic thing but I love the idea. I hope the film powerfully inspires others to do the same.
“As impoverished people, we cannot wait for someone to save us, we must save ourselves. We must find solutions,” she says.
She notes some similar projects in KwaMashu, and while space may be an issue, there are innovative ways around this. She herself plants spinach and cabbage in her yard in Inanda. “Why buy, when you can plant?” she says. “And exchanging food is beautiful too.”
She notes that in Khayelitsha, the garden has also becomes a social space. “It encourages others to plant from home. It’s a struggle because the soil is sandy, but there are solutions. People exchange things like seedlings and manure.”
The garden has inspired impoverished residents to greater things. In the film, Portia is studying horticulture as a result.
“Filmmaking is a collaboration and very personal,” says Mthiyane. “It’s intimate conversations about the product, about our dreams. That’s important.”
When not making movies, she loves hiking. “I’m always looking for new places I can hike. When I’m in Cape Town I love climbing Lion’s Head. Otherwise I try to attend a lot of arts and cultural things.”
She currently lectures part time Johannesburg’s Academy of Sound and Engineering, and is in the process of doing here masters..
Future projects include looking at climate change. “The floods were a wake-up call,” she says. “We’ve been irresponsible. We’re supposed to take care of our environment. Climate change is here. I’d like to invite people to tell their stories,” she says.
The Independent on Saturday