Screening and Q&A with director of Mother City

Tue 17 February

Wolfson College

A daring urban revolution in a city breathtakingly beautiful and brutal.

In 2016, the South African government sold prime land in the city of Cape Town – earmarked for affordable housing – to a private developer. This careless disregard for the desperate housing needs of Capetonians gave rise to the social justice movement Reclaim the City (RTC). Through the deeply personal story of RTC activist Nkosikhona Swartbooi, Mother City follows, over six years, a David-and-Goliath struggle in a city still disfigured by spatial apartheid.

The event will feature a full screening of the documentary, followed by a Q&A with one of the directors, Pearlie Joubert. She will discuss the collective six-year process of making Mother City, reflecting on how the legacy of over 400 years of colonialism and apartheid – and 31 years of democracy – has shaped the lives of Black, working-class, landless, and homeless communities, contributing to deepening inequality and posing a threat to democracy.


Speaker
Pearlie Joubert is an acclaimed investigative journalist starting her career in 1989 at the only Afrikaans language anti-apartheid newspaper in South Africa. Having spent years as a news producer for ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and the BBC, she ended her journalism career blowing the whistle on the biggest Sunday newspaper in South Africa’s complicity in enabling the then corrupt state president’s attempts to loot the fiscus. For the past seven years she has been die director of the Bertha Challenge, a global fellowship programme for lawyers, investigative journalists, activists and filmmakers.


Details
This event is open to all and free to attend with no need to book.

Refreshments will be available for the audience.


Access
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.


Contact
If you have any questions, please contact our events team - events@wolfson.cam.ac.uk

Cost: Free