Forerunners

Editor’s note: This film is no longer available online.

Filmmaker: Simon Wood

They are young and urban, and they are South Africa’s black middle class. But can their new wealth match the riches of family, tradition and spirituality?

Forerunners explores what it means to be black and middle class in South Africa today. This portrait of four young black South Africans – Miranda, Mpumi, Martin and Karabo – maps the unprecedented social change of the post-apartheid years through their personal stories.

The film introduces us to them and their urban lives, businesses and professions, and explores the story of their newly-made wealth. It then follows them as they return home to the rural areas and the traditional family lives that shaped them spiritually and emotionally.

The themes of tradition and modernity are subtly explored as they each try to balance childhood worldviews with the cut and thrust of urban professional life in today’s South Africa.