South Africa and USA / 2011 / 19mins / Documentary / English

Sifuna Okwethu: We Want What's Ours is about loss, resistance, identity and the elusiveness of justice as experienced by the Ndolila family in their quest to get back their family land stolen by the apartheid government in 1973. Standing in their way are working class black homeowners who purchased portions of the Ndolila's land in the 1990s. For the homeowners, the land and houses they have legally purchased are a reward for their hard work. For the Ndolilas, the land is part of their family legacy and hence deeply intertwined with their identity. Both sides have a legitimate right to the land, but whose rights will prevail?

Bernadette Atuahene

Bernadette Atuahene is a writer, filmmaker and Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and a research professor at the American Bar Foundation.. She earned her J.D. at Yale Law School in 2002, her M.P.A. at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2002, and earned her B.A. in 1997 (magna cum laude) from the University of California, Los Angeles. After law school, Professor Atuahene was in South Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. She served as a judicial clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, working for Justices Madala and Ngcobo. In 2008 she won the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship and worked with the South African Director General of Land Affairs and his staff. Her book, We Want What's Ours: Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program, is based on 150 interviews she conducted with program beneficiaries. She also directed and produced a documentary film about one South African family's struggle to reclaim their land, Sifuna Okwethu (We Want What's Ours). Professor Atuahene won the Law and Public Affairs Fellowship and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Princeton University for the 2011–12 academic year. She won a National Science Foundation Grant for her book project about squatters in Detroit. Learn More