Conte d'un mineur Série-Collection : Steps for the future

Gabriel Mondlane, Nicolaas Hofmeyr
2001 - 43 min - Beta numérique - Couleur - Afrique du Sud, France

Joachim is fourty something, a migrant worker from Mozambique who works on the gold mines of South Africa. He is a man who straddles two worlds – the modern, urban world of the mine and the traditional rural world of hid family homestead across the border in Southern Mozambique. Joachim small pay packet stretches far – he looks after his Mozambique wife and family, as well as his city family in South Africa.
Not far from the mine is a shack settlement, where his junior wife lives. Sometimes, so many years pass between his visits home to Mozambique, that Joachim almost forgets about his wife and child there. But at the back of his mind is a vision of a rural idyll that he hopes to return to one day. He only came to the city to earn money. Eventually, he wants to "break the cycle" and go home, never to return to South Africa and the mine again.
But a new factor has come along to disturb the usual set of contradictions that make up a migrant worker's life. Joachim has tested AIDS positive. And the time to visit home in Mozambique has come round again. Joachim has known his status for sometime, be he still doesn't know if he has the courage to tell his Mozambican family about it. He feels he should, but there are many questions in his mind – will they grasp what he is saying, will they just try and ignore it, or will they curse him and throw him out ?