After The Fire - Images By Paul Zisiwe

Secrets Lessons About Insects - A Khahliso Matela Film

Sitting around a fire on a winter’s night, a father and his children hold a jovial discussion about what insects can teach humans about ‘the art of budgeting.” Using a number of well-known insects found in the pristine environment of the mountain kingdom, Mohau Matela bestows pearls of wisdom to his descendants, while encapsulating the tradition of transmitting knowledge for which Basotho are famed and envied.

Filmed in single take, while Matokelo was still among the living, this film is cut as both eulogy and celebration of times fired by the warmth of familial love, which is characteristic of many Basotho households.

The robustness of thought that went to devising parables recounted in the film is a mystery to the filmmaker, but these lessons will always remain examples of what communal intellectual property comprises.

And told through flames and beauty of nightly silence, it could well be that a myriad of families share such jewels before slumbering into dreams, preparing a generation of wiser future highlanders geared for preservation of all their gains.