Past screening

Black Mambas

Details

Topics: Sociopolitical, Wildlife
Last Screened: Fri 26th Aug 2022

South Africa's first all-female anti-poaching unit, protecting the Rhinos of Kruger National Park. It's a good job for the three women featured in Lena Karbe's incisive film, which coolly observes the Mambas at work and at home.

They come from poor communities on the borders of Kruger, which have traditionally been excluded from the Park; neighbourhoods that don’t benefit from the lucrative wildlife economy. There is great promise in this empowering job, but as this exceptional, nuanced film develops, not-so-nascent colonial power dynamics come to the fore.

Chosen by the (mostly white male) conservation committees as a vital marketing tool, the women stand at the crossroads of progress and a colonial past.