Project 10 - Belonging

BELONGING is a young woman’s journey through an identity crisis experienced because she is different. She feels excluded by the people who should embrace her. As a result, she feels disconnected. “I smile, I laugh and I joke,but I don’t really connect with people,” she says.Kethiwe Ngcobo was born to exiles who fled apartheid South Africa in the early 1960s. In 1994, the year that the country became a democracy, her family returned home.But moving back to a homeland Kethiwe had never seen,
except in her imagination as a Utopian paradise, turned out to be a convoluted journey.
She grew up in England, where she felt like an outsider who didn’t fit the model of the “typical” black immigrant – because of being an exile. Her father’s status as a prominent PAC (Pan African Congress) member rather than ANC (African National Congress) was an issue within the community of exiles. And now, in South Africa, Kethiwe is seen as British rather than South African. To add to the conflict, she has struggled to adjust to an extended African family structure and a culture of slaughtering cows, sheep and goats. This leaves her straddling two worlds.