
Namibia: A Country Divided
Namibia has one of the highest levels of income inequality on earth, where 6% of the population owns 70% of the land. The film traces that imbalance back to German colonization, when the Herero and Nama people were interned in concentration camps between 1904 and 1908, a campaign Germany has since recognized as the first genocide of the twentieth century. Descendants like Karvita now live in illegal settlements under constant threat of eviction, while the descendants of colonial settlers still hold most of the farmland and defend their inheritance on camera. The film follows the money into the present: DeBeers dominating diamonds, Chinese firms controlling construction and uranium mining, and leaked 2021 documents showing North Korea illegally subcontracted to build the country's State House. It also visits the sparsely populated wilderness that shelters the world's only free-roaming black rhinos, animals poachers linked to Chinese networks keep targeting as drought and desertification push in on indigenous communities. Interviews, land records, and wildlife footage carry the argument that Namibia's independence never fully settled who owns the country.