Izulu lami

Ten-year-old Thembi and her eight-year-old brother, Khwezi, are left alone in their rural homestead when their mother dies. All they have to remember Mama is a grass mat she wove, which she aimed to enter in a craft competition. Her dream, inspired by a visit to their village by a white priest from the city, was for the mat to win a prize that could support her children. So Thembi decides to take the mat to the competition herself, and Khwezi reluctantly goes with her. When the children arrive in the city they are spotted by a street-wise 12-year-old, Chili-Bite, and his gang. He offers them a place to sleep on the street and tells her of a friend who knows the priest – who turns out to be a sleazy pimp who aims to sell this rural girl’s virginity as a cure for AIDS. It is Thembi’s relationship with Khwezi that sustains her quest to fulfill her mother’s dream. When this bond between the siblings is broken, she succumbs to the grief that has been welling up inside her since her mother’s death. In her time alone she discovers her own dream and her own talent, then is able to reconcile with her new friends from the street, and with her little brother.