Edkins Teboho, director. Days of Cannibalism: Of Pioneers, Cows and Capital. 2020. 78 minutes. Sesotho, Fujianese, Mandarin, English, with English and French subtitles. China and Lesotho. Produced by KinoElektron, Day Zero Films, Kepler Film. - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue (Compte-Rendu De Lecture) African Studies Review Année : 2022

Edkins Teboho, director. Days of Cannibalism: Of Pioneers, Cows and Capital. 2020. 78 minutes. Sesotho, Fujianese, Mandarin, English, with English and French subtitles. China and Lesotho. Produced by KinoElektron, Day Zero Films, Kepler Film.

Résumé

"Africa is too far," an African importer tells his Chinese suppliers, to justify his request to check his sunglasses order again. "Sometimes you guys pack something that I didn't need!" We are in Guangzhou, somewhere in the Xiaobei district, where thousands of traders from Africa, the Middle East, and South America converge to purchase the low-end commodities that are produced by the countless factories scattered around the Pearl River Delta. The opening of the documentary Days of Cannibalism bears a striking resemblance to another recent documentary on China-Africa relations "from below," Christiane Badgley's Guangzhou Dream Factory (2017). But if the two films share the same critical look toward global millennial capitalism, the parallels end there. After the short Cantonese prologue, Edkins Teboho's film plunges us into the cold and arid mountainous setting of Lesotho, a small kingdom embedded in the belly of South Africa. Here too, China is very far away, embodied by a few migrants who have come to make their fortune in the retail or wholesale trade, in the restaurant business, or in the mining sector. Filmed in Cinemascope like a western, Days of Cannibalism questions the Chinese presence in Africa in an original and sui generis way. While it takes from the western genre the harsh and austere settings, the presence of pioneers in search of a better life, cattle rustling, strict and expeditious justice, and a scene of rare violence (which we will not reveal), the film is not focused on the clash between two communities. Thanks to his knowledge of Lesotho, where he grew up, and his privileged relationship with some Chinese families living in Thaba-Tseka, the town where the story takes place, Teboho was able to render with finesse the ambivalence of the relationship between Chinese migrants and indigenous Basotho. The main focus of the film is the transformation of a pastoral society by the forces of economic globalization. Traditionally considered by the Basotho as the "wet-nosed god," the cow is now becoming a simple commodity, which can be sold… or stolen. Some of the local farmers have become
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hal-03963218 , version 1 (30-01-2023)

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Giorgio Blundo. Edkins Teboho, director. Days of Cannibalism: Of Pioneers, Cows and Capital. 2020. 78 minutes. Sesotho, Fujianese, Mandarin, English, with English and French subtitles. China and Lesotho. Produced by KinoElektron, Day Zero Films, Kepler Film.. African Studies Review, 2022, pp.1-3. ⟨10.1017/asr.2022.120⟩. ⟨hal-03963218⟩
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