Sakawa – the business of con

Khaka Ngcofe finds the story behind the scam gap

It is no secret that there’s an economic gap between third world and first world countries, especially between white and black people. Many African people resort to illegal methods including swindling money from wealthy white people as a method of survival because of their impoverished conditions.
Sakawa, meaning illegal practices in Ghanaian terms. Sakawa is a Ghanaian word for internet fraud schemes that are often combined with religious rituals. Directed by Belgian-Ghanaian Ben Asamoah, follows the lives of young men and women who resort to internet fraud as a means of survival. Asamoah takes ‘a fly on the wall’ observational everything to unfold and for us to formulate our own conclusions. (more…)

Desai and Kaplan’s guide to Stealing A Country

Luvo Mnyobe lowlights a highlight

In just under 90 minutes Mark J Kaplan and Rehad Desai, director of some of the most prolific contemporary documentaries including Everything Must Fall (2018), exploring the Fees Must Fall movement in 2015 and 2016, and Miners Shot Down (2014), on the Marikana Massacre, explores the cronyism in the state with captivating suspense and detail.
In the film How to Steal A Country, he tells the gripping story of how President Jacob Zuma surrendered his executive duties to the Gupta brothers allowing them to control procurement of tenders at State Owned Entities such as Eskom and Transnet that are the bedrock of South Africa’s economy. (more…)

Don’t Miss Heritage Cape Town

Monique January feels the power of a different beauty pagaent

Beauty no longer has one fixed face and body representing it, it comes in all forms, shapes and sizes. While including various physical appearances may seem like the end goal, real beauty is the deeper ideological meaning associated with beauty. This is the prize.
Miss Heritage Cape Town tells an empowering story of surpassing normative beauty standards and celebrating more voluptuous unconventional woman seen through the lens of 20-year-old Olwaba Nkuzi. (more…)

Women – as the first recourse

Leago Mamabolo meets women helping themselves develop their art

There is great value and importance in documenting yourself- particularly for disenfranchised groups who have historically been left out of the picture. Given this, it is no surprise why Zanele Muholi, a South African woman and internationally renowned visual artist, would lead the inspirational project of a Women’s Mobile Museum (WMM). Muholi describes photographing yourself as “giving yourself a voice”. (more…)

Displaced

Khethiwe Shobede is less than impressed with a documentary on the Holocaust

Displaced is a documentary film directed by Sharon Ryba-Kahn centred around the experience of a third-generation survivor of the Nazi Holocaust and the difficult conversations that still surround the topic. While this exploration of people’s experience of memory and genocide is an interesting and insightful ‘idea’ for a documentary the film itself fails to deliver. It does ask important questions about the effects of the Holocaust three generations after the actual events took place. (more…)

Bellingcat key shifts citizen journalism

Michael Taylor reviews a memorable documentary that questions the truth of headline news challenged by internet investigators

Bellingcat: Truth in a Post Truth World offers a fascinating insight into the world of citizen journalism, telling the story of the individual’s working for the titular Bellingcat investigative news website. Over the course of its 89 minute, Bellingcat goes into detail about the innovative methods that citizens can use to fact check the information that we are presented with on a daily basis. This is all derived from social media, Google Earth and other open source internet data. (more…)