BBC film to capture struggle of people in Masi

A DOCUMENTARY filmmaker working for the BBC will spend several nights in Masiphumelele in Kommetjie to experience first-hand the daily hardships faced by thousands of residents.

Lizzie Allen’s experience will form part of a documentary to be screened in South Africa and internationally, which will take viewers into the informal settlement to show how those who live there survive daily.

She said her documentary in no way seeks to belittle the experiences of residents, “but shows them to be courageous heroes trying to prevail against insurmountable odds”.

“The Masi leaders are involved in this show and will select the family who volunteer to host me,” said Allen.

Yesterday, she spent the day in the area to acquaint herself. She told the Cape Times: “In a few months’ time, I will be going to live with a shack family in Masi and filming my experiences for a documentary.”

“I will be sleeping on the floor, negotiating my way down poorly-lit shanty corridors and struggling to adapt to the noise of 40 000 people crammed into 2 square kilometres.

“I will be dodging early morning poo, because children were too frightened to go to the filthy toilet blocks in the middle of the night and trying to avoid overflowing sewage pipes,” she said.

Drawing on the hit TV series, How Clean Is Your House? on which she was a producer, a team of microbiologists will be taking swabs and sending them back to the lab for analysis.

“The question being asked is whether the bacteria, the consequence of overcrowding and poor sewerage and infrastructure, are being brought into the homes, restaurants and supermarkets of the valley,” said Allen.

She said domestic workers, chefs, packers, staff of the Greater Noordhoek Valley have nowhere to live, other than in Masi.

“They cannot afford to get on the property ladder after apartheid, and they have nowhere else to go.”

The film will also ask why no other land has been granted to the people living in Masiphumelele’s informal settlement. “It will ask what politicians have done to assist them and whether there has been a conspiracy to block land reform in the area.”

Community leader Tshepo Moletsane said Allen’s initiative was endorsed after discussions with her.