COMMUNITY BUILDING culture & sport
Festival seeks to empower African film producers
by Jean Chimhandamba

Sankofa, a powerful award winning feature film about the fight for freedom by a slave girl, was the film set to open the Southern African Film Festival (SAFF) in Harare and set in the mood of empowering Africans through African films, which was the overall theme at this year's SAFF.

The festival was the third such event following SAFF '93 and SAFF '96. Through the Federation of African Film-makers (FEPACI), SAFF is now officially recognised by both the OAU and FEPACI as the third Pan African film festival on the continent.

Said Isaac Mabhikwa, the executive director of SAFF: "We at SAFF truly believe that entertaining African people with African films is empowering them."

Film giants from around the continent attended the workshop putting forth their views that filming should be made an important instrument to spread African culture and help keep it alive.

Guston Kabore from Burkina Faso, who has a long career in film-making, believes that Africans have a lot of tales to tell that can be put on screen. "I believe film production should not be viewed as a luxury in Africa. It's vital for people to have access to their own image," he said. "It's the only way we can portray our reality and understand each other better," he added.

Guston started to take film production seriously when he was doing his Ph.D. in History in Paris in the 1970s. He used his academic background to see how film can portray history. In the four feature films that he has produced to date including Bud Yam, which is his latest, and Zam Boko, he tries to access the African imagination in order to help his audience see Africa from an African point of view.

Award winning South African film producer and director, Lionel Ngakane, also attended the festival. Ngakane makes social and political films. Among his productions are the original Cry the Beloved Country, a feature film on apartheid and discrimination against Africans; and Mandela - The Struggle Is My Life, a documentary film on Nelson Mandela and his struggle for freedom.

The festival ended with the war torn DRC scooping six awards despite being a new participant in the SAFF. It entered two films for the competition, Macadam Tribu and Pieces d' identite (Pieces of Identity). The latter was billed as one of the major attractions at the one-week event.

Zambia retains regional football championship
by Caiphus Chimhete

Zambia once again emerged as southern Africa's soccer power house after beating Zimbabwe's youthful national team 1- 0 to retain the title in the Confederation of Southern African Football Association (Cosafa) mini league in Harare recently.

The Zambians, who won the cup last year, walked away with the winner's prize of about R425 000.

The Zambia team, accompanied by scores of supporters, broke into song and traditional dance soon after the final whistle to celebrate their victory.

Needing a victory to overtake the Warriors of Zimbabwe on the mini-league log, Zambia snatched victory from the jaws of success starved Warriors 11 minutes from the final whistle.

The Chipolopolo of Zambia, playing for the first time under the guidance of new coach Fighton Simukonda, showed great determination and skill despite the team being comprised mainly of new youthful players.

The Zimbabwe national soccer team has never beaten Zambia in more than a decade. The Warriors of Zimbabwe only needed a win or a draw while Zambia needed an outright win to lift the Cup, which they did.

The Cosafa Castle Cup tournament started last year.

The five teams that were in this year's edition of the regional competition are Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The southern Africa soccer champions, Zambia, finished with eight points from two wins and two draws while Zimbabwe and Angola secured six points each and five and one for Namibia and Mozambique respectively.

Meanwhile, Cosafa has changed the format of next year's Castle cup series with the final being played on a home-and-away basis. The winners will walk away with an increased champion's cheque of about R500 000.

In a statement, Cosafa general secretary Ashford Mamelodi said the confederation's executive agreed that the 1999 Castle Cup be played on a knock-out-basis, as opposed to the league format used in the last two championships.

Mamelodi said the matches played in terms of knock-out phases must produce a winner and it was expected that a penalty shoot-out would ensue in accordance with the laws of the game and no extra time would be played.

The runners-up will get about R250 000; losing semi-finalists will earn R150 000 each while R100 000 will go to the losing quarter-finalists and R75 000 for secondary knockout losers.

The preliminary round draw of the Castle Cup is set for 15 December in Mozambique's capital, Maputo.

Southern Africa makes impact at Commonwealth games

Most southern African countries which participated in the 16th Commonwealth Games in Malaysia recently managed to win at least a gold medal with South Africa topping the list with nine gold medals. Zimbabwe had two gold medals, followed by Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique and Tanzania with one each.

The 11-day games extravaganza, which drew together nearly all Commonwealth countries, was officially closed by Britain's Queen Elizabeth. The next Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held in the northern English City of Manchester in the year 2002.