Mbongeni Ngema's "Sarafina!" was a 1987 a successful Soweto musical transiting to America's big screen a few years later. Lead character played by Leleti Khumalo reprises her role again as wide-eyed Sarafina, a Soweto teen in South Africa 1976 planning a high school musical about Nelson Mandela and while at the same time, getting involved in a protests with her fellow students about the apartheid that was going on. Sarafina reason for joining the protest was largely based on scoping out the boys rather than the cause itself.
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Distant from her mother as her mom works as a maid for a white family, the two hardly sees each other to have a close mother-daughter relationship. But despite this problem Sarafina mom's urges her daughter to get more serious about the racial segragation in South Africa. Inspriing teacher, Mary Masembuko gives lectures to Sarafina and the rest of her students about the oppression of their people is facing and how the situation is worsen giving details that otherwise their textbook would not covered. Masembuko encourage the children to be proud of whom they are. She reminds them all that peace and freedon will prevail throughout the town. Besides her concern for the children and all the problems surrounding them, she also helps them with a play about imprisoned Mandela.
However personal experiences get Sarafina more passionate about civil rights as students protestors is caught in a deadly arson along with a potential boyfriend of Sarafina who was slaughtered by angry mbos after the murder of a policeman. The government now caught Ms. Masembuko and kept her imprisoned. More violence abruptly taken place and riots is ensured between students and the police. But Sarafina's role in being active in the protest causes her time in prison where she is tortured simply because she and others demand equal rights as human beings.
The review of this Movie prepared by Alicia M.
