Milisuthando
ABOUT
This penetrating coming-of-age personal essay on love and what it means to become human in the context of race explores the memories and experiences of Milisuthando Bongela, who grew up within apartheid without knowing it was happening until it was over. Bongela was born to a loving middle-class Xhosa community in the Transkei — an unrecognized state that was formulated out of the separate development dream of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The Transkei was designed to raise some denizens on a diet of suggestions that they did not experience the ills of apartheid, and though it was dissolved after the fall of apartheid, it left behind bewildered memories in those who built their lives inside the regime’s sordid social experiment. Milisuthando elucidates that apartheid was something that was done to all of us. Bongela invites the audience in as she plumbs the anatomy of race as bequeathed to us by our ancestors and explores what roles our ancestors play in how we create our personhood.
Milisuthando Bongela (b.1985, South Africa) is an award-winning writer, editor, cultural worker and artist. Her career began in the fashion industry but the last 15 years has seen her traverse the worlds of music, art, media and film - continually turning towards indigenous knowledge. For 3 years she was Arts Editor for the Mail & Guardian's Friday section and was host and co-producer of the podcast Umoya: On African Spirituality with Athambile Masola. After 8 years, she has recently completed her first film, a personal essay documentary titled MILISUTHANDO which will have its world premier at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. She is an inaugural fellow of the 2020 Adobe Women at Sundance Fellowship.