In his latest film “Vaya,” Nigerian-born director Akin Omotoso explores the themes of migration and coming of age. 

“Vaya” tells the story of three strangers who get on a train, each of them with a mission to fulfill in Johannesburg. They’re coming from Durban to Johannesburg. They never meet, but their stories are intertwined,” Omotoso explained.

Each traveler has a mission. A young man is promised a job that is not what he expected. Another is sent to reclaim his father’s body — a task that is surprisingly difficult. A young woman escorts a young girl to her family in the city. Each faces rejection, abuse or violence.

The film came from the real-life stories of South Africans in the Homeless Writers Project, a workshop for people living on the streets of Johannesburg.

Vaya means “to go” in the Tsotsitaal dialect used in South African townships.

“It takes on several meanings. So, ‘to go’ — they’re leaving Durban to go to Johannesburg. But when they get there, maybe people don’t want you. They want you to go,” Omotoso said. 

The director is a migrant himself. He was born in Nigeria, but his family moved to South Africa, where his father, the writer Kole Omotoso, was a professor at the University of the Western Cape. Akin studied drama at the university, and then worked as an actor and director.

“Vaya” is one of 20 movies by filmmakers of color or female directors distributed by Array, a Los Angeles-based collective and distribution company founded by director Ava DuVernay.

“Our purpose is to make sure that audiences have access to films they otherwise would not see, those independent voices that deserve a platform for stories to be told,” said Mercedes Cooper, Array’s director of marketing.

“Vaya” was released in 2016 and has played at international festivals. It opened in U.S. theaters in late October and will stream on Netflix starting Nov. 1. Omotoso said many can relate to this story.

“I always say everyone has a cousin who’s arriving, or a brother who’s leaving, or somebody who’s coming,” he said. “So, “Vaya” is able to tap into something that doesn’t just happen in Johannesburg.”

The film taps into universal themes, notes Omotoso, such as the search for a better life and the struggle for survival. 

“It’s a thrilling ride when you start to put together the mystery of what’s going on.”
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The film Vaya from Nigerian-born director Akin Omotoso, tells the story of three people who journey from their rural homes in South Africa to Johannesburg. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, it’s a story of migration that deals with universal themes.
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Over 100,000 people around the world are missing, which has created a global “crisis,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday.

Agnes Coutou, the organization’s protection adviser, told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee that “this is the highest number we have ever had.”

“We know that this is the tip of the iceberg and that it represents only a fraction of those estimated to be missing because of past and ongoing conflicts,” she said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross works with the families of missing persons and authorities in over 40 countries affected by past and current conflicts. It also chairs five bodies trying to resolve cases of missing persons.

Coutou said three factors driving the crisis are the scale of armed conflicts responsible for a substantial number of missing; the “intergenerational impact” of people missing for decades on their families; and the increased internationalization of the problem.

“Missing persons shape the history of families, communities and societies profoundly,” she said. “Such unresolved consequences of conflict that stretch over decades can hamper the prospects of peace.”

Coutou said today’s wars involve individuals and groups from a variety of countries, which multiplies the number of people affected and involved in missing person cases.

“The transnational dimension of the question of missing persons is particularly clear in its overlap with migration, as thousands and thousands of people fleeing conflict also go missing in transit and destination countries,” she said.

Coutou said the International Committee of the Red Cross is calling for “early and preventive action” to keep people from going missing, “whether they are alive or dead.” This means registering all people who are detained, enabling them to contact their families, registering and centralizing information on all those missing, ensuring identification of human remains, and protecting gravesites, she said.

Coutou said the organization is also calling for upholding families’ right to know the fate and whereabouts of missing relatives and exchanging good practices and tapping into expertise on the missing.

She expressed hope that many U.N. member nations will respond and “help some of those who so desperately wait for news of their loved ones.”
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When massive gold deposits were discovered about a decade ago in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, the rural district became famous for attracting hundreds of artisanal miners from across the country every year.

Wealthy small-scale prospectors regularly offer residents generous deals for their land, locals say. To many widows selling their unused land, that kind of money can be life-changing and a source of greater autonomy.

But in recent years, widows in Chimanimani have found that taking a deal can have consequences. Many say they have been taken to tribal courts by their husbands’ families for selling portions of their land.

“I feel bruised,” said Mavis, a 63-year-old widow from Haroni village who did not want to disclose her surname.

“I lived in peace as a widow in my home until last year, when I sold an unwanted acre of my late husband’s land to korokoza,” she said, using a colloquial term for an artisanal gold miner.

He paid her $2,000 in cash. “All hell broke loose,” Mavis explained.

When her male relatives found out about the sale, they reported her to the tribal court.

“The accusations were insane. They said I bewitched my husband, even though he died way back in 1979, in the colonial war,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The cultural norms of the Ndau people, who make up the majority of the population in Chimanimani, forbid widows from owning land their husbands leave behind or selling that land unless a male family member controls the transaction.

As her uncles laid claim to her late husband’s property, Mavis joined a growing number of widows whose male family members have denied them the right to sell land they are supposed to legally inherit.

“In our village, I am the fourth widow since 2017 to be brought to (tribal court) for selling land without male approval,” she said.

Her case is still ongoing.

Tribal Justice

According to Zimbabwe’s latest census, which was conducted in 2012, there are more than half a million widows in the country.

Throughout rural areas, widows routinely find themselves harassed and exploited by in-laws claiming the property their husbands left behind, rights activists say.

O’bren Nhachi, an activist and researcher focusing on natural resources and governance, said the problem has gotten worse in Chimanimani over the past few years, as the gold rush has pushed up the value of land.

“Chimanimani was a poor backwater district until gold was discovered. Suddenly, local land prices shot up because artisanal gold diggers are paying huge sums to snap up plots,” he said. “This has brought conflict, with male family members using patriarchy as a tool to dispossess widows of potential land sales income.”

Although Zimbabwe’s constitution gives women and men equal rights to property and land, in many rural communities tradition overrides national legislation, experts say.

Tribal custom dictates that chiefs are the custodians of communal land, and responsible for allocating land to villagers.

“A woman cannot sell land unless she has obtained permission from my Committee of Seven,” said Mutape Moyo, a tribal headman in Chimanimani, referring to the group of elders — all men — who hear cases in the local customary court.

But this makes it unclear who has legal ownership of land, Nhachi said.

“The laws of the country say the state is the owner of all land. Tribal chiefs are merely ‘custodians’. Does custodian mean they are owners?”

In a country where women carry out 70 percent of the agricultural work – according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization – Nhachi said more women need to be made aware of how to legally hold onto their land if their husbands die.

He said he would like to see the government implement legal awareness programs and properly define who owns and distributes land in rural Zimbabwe.

No Recourse

Provincial administrator Edward Seenza, the head civil servant of Manicaland province, where Chimanimani is located, said that if widows lose their land in tribal courts, there are ways for them to appeal and reverse the ruling.

“If anyone is unhappy with a village head’s decision, they can speak to a chief,’ he said. “Where this does not produce the desired result, they can take their complaint to the district administrator and further up to my office.”

But activists say few rural women know they have that option. And those who do are often too poor or too scared to travel to a government office.

Seenza said that so far, not one woman has come to him to appeal a tribal court ruling.

And without legal help, widows denied the right to sell their land can be left devastated.

Rejoice, a 38-year-old widow from Chipinge district, sold her late husband’s mango orchard two years ago to a wealthy gold digger for $4,000. She needed the money to pay for medication to treat a kidney tumor.

Her father-in-law took her to tribal court.

“I was ordered to refund the buyer, in cash, with punitive interest; pay court fines for ‘disrespect’; and surrender the rest of the land to male family custodians,” said Rejoice, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

She paid back the buyer as much as she could, but still owes him some money. And her husband’s family is still fighting for ownership of the land, she added.

The court told her that if she does not honor the ruling, she could be thrown out of her home.

“I will end up a destitute, living on the roadside,” she said. “The thought of this gives me sleepless nights.”
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The World Health Organization says air pollution kills hundreds of thousands of children every year and puts the physical health and neurological development of hundreds of millions of other youngsters at serious risk. The WHO is issuing a report titled “Air pollution and child health: Prescribing clean air” on the eve of the U.N. agency’s first-ever Global Conference on Air pollution and Health.

The World Health Organization reports more than 90 percent, or nearly 2 billion children under the age of 15, breathe toxic air every day. The WHO says debilitating problems associated with air pollution begin at conception and continue until adolescence.  

The report notes pregnant women exposed to polluted air are likely to give birth prematurely and have low-weight babies. A WHO scientist and expert on air pollution, Marie Noel Brune Drisse, warns that many babies will have neurodevelopment problems, resulting in lower IQs. 

“The fact is that air pollution is stunting our brains, even before we are born,” said Drisse. “The fact that it is leading to diseases that we may not be able to see immediately but look at much later in life like adult diseases. Our lung function and our respiratory systems are being altered during our development.” 

Drisse says this can lead to chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as certain types of cancers later in life. In 2016, the report estimated that 600,000 children died from acute lower respiratory infections caused by polluted air. It said the heaviest toll is paid by children in low- and middle-income countries. The report found that the highest death rates among children between the ages of 5 and 14 from both ambient and household air pollution occur in the African region.

The report says switching to clean cooking and heating fuels and technologies could save the lives of many children. It says other measures for reducing the toxic impact of air pollution include moving away from fossil fuels.

The report recommends the use of cleaner, renewable energy sources, less dependence on private cars in favor of public transportation, and better waste management systems. WHO officials say the benefits from implementing such measures will be felt almost immediately.
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