FILM
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Scenes from Days of Cannibalism
Inside the making of Teboho Edkins’s new
Days of Cannibalism High in the mountains of Lesotho lies the remote town of Thaba Tseka – home to a community of proud Basotho herders and businessmen, and, more recently, an increasing number of Chinese settlers. The arrival of these economic migrants upsets the balance of power in Thaba Tseka. The documentary film Days of Cannibalism explores the emerging relationship between these two cultures. 20 | SCREENAFRICA | APRIL 2020
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uch like the film, director Teboho Edkins’s upbringing is a blend of diverse cultures and experiences. The son of a German mother and a South African father, he spent most of his early years in Lesotho. “I grew up in Lesotho because my father, a white South African, left his country in the 70s for political reasons and eventually moved to Lesotho with my mother. At the time, Lesotho was an island of resistance located within apartheid South Africa. My naming actually happened when the Queen Mother, Mamohato, met my pregnant mother and told her that her child should be called Teboho. And Teboho is a name for both girls and boys so it was a wise choice.” Despite moving to other countries, including Germany, South Africa and France, Edkins says that his deep-rooted connection to Lesotho always carries him back home. “It is the place which feels most like home. My fondest memories all blur together to form a blissful rural childhood captured by the Nikon camera and its 80s colour palette – the one my father used to photograph my brother and me,” he shares.
Times may have changed since then, but the majority of the Basotho people still remain fixed in their traditional ways of life and business. “The remoteness creates its very own particular universe and atmosphere,” says Edkins. But even this small, sparsely populated and seemingly far-off place is not immune to the forces of globalisation – and that is what he wanted to explore in Days of Cannibalism. As part of his research for the documentary, in 2012 Edkins spent some time exploring the sprawling city of Guangzhou in China and the remote mountainous regions of Lesotho. He returned to both countries, gathering footage between 2015 and 2019. “What really struck me is that although a Chinese megacity and a village in Lesotho couldn’t be more different, there are parallels in the experiences of the African traders in China and the Chinese businesspeople in Lesotho; they both feel misunderstood and disrespected by the other. There is solitude and loneliness in both sides of the (economic) migration,” Edkins expands. Days of Cannibalism provides an unusual look at how capitalist globalisation is threatening social, cultural
