- Set in Zululand South Africa three Zulu men must re-awaken sleeping demons when Mpiyakhe, now a successful Johannesburg businessman, returns home. Under adversity they are compelled to make life changing choices.
- Set in Zululand South Africa three Zulu men must re-awaken sleeping demons when Mpiyakhe, now a successful Johannesburg businessman, returns home. Under adversity they are compelled to "look in the mirror" and make life changing choices. Choices that set off a chain of events with irreversible consequences.
- Mpiyakhe has a highly successful life in Johannesburg, is in business partnership with his white wife, Rachel's cousin and has just clinched yet another business deal. A far cry from his roots as a young herds boy in rural Zululand. Then he receives that fateful call from his childhood friend Sizwe, his estranged father Nondaba is dying and he is compelled to return to his roots, guilty having not visited his father for several years.
He has to confess to his wife Rachel that his father unbeknown to her, has been alive all these years, and worse still he has to confront the demons of his past. Compounding this though he and Rachel do love one another, there is some tension in their relationship, and she suspects he may be attracted to Narisha, the copywriter who works for him. Rachel has started drinking which compounds the tension between them and disappoints her husband. The question rises can she desist, and their marriage survive.
In Zululand Sizwe greets him, and the contrast between these two is evident, Mpiyakhe is a somewhat arrogant smartly dressed businessman, while Sizwe strives to be smart in his well-worn clothing, and the differences run deeper than that. In the village Mpiyakhe encounters Vusi, hostility from both sides as Mpiyakhe believes Vusi is the one who informed on his father to the Police during apartheid leading to his father's arrest. To further complicate things the resentful Vusi has married Thembi, Sizwe's sister, who had been Mpiyakhe's childhood sweetheart. (but she chose Vusi, the induna's son!)
Thumb is a modern woman in that, though she embraces her Zulu culture, she recognises that women need to be emancipated, yet she loves her husband who is by nature of his upbringing, but without intent, culturally chauvinistic.
Mpiyakhe reconciles with his dying and forgiving father Nondaba, a wise man who acts like a mirror for Mpiyakhe allowing him to now see a clear reflection of himself, his values, his identity, his long forgotten cultural heritage.
Mpiyakhe encounters the embittered and homeless Johan, dying from cancer. Johan struggles to see from a clear perspective, fighting inner despair. Mpyakhe recognizes Johan as one of the policeman in charge who arrested Nondaba all those years ago, the first assault on the young Mpiyakhe's psyche. Here Mpiyakhe has two choices, bitterness and rage, or reconciliation and forgiveness. The story escalates and Mpiyakhe, Vusi, Sizwe, Rachel, and Johan must make life changing decisions as they are forced by circumstance to "look in the mirror" and make those choices, for better, or for worse.
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