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White and Black: Crimes of Color, directed by Jean-François Méan
Marked for Death: Albinos in Tanzania
critique
rédigé par Enajite Efemuaye
publié le 26/03/2018


Based on the title, it is easy to assume that WHITE AND BLACK: CRIMES OF COLOUR is a film about racism. It is not. It is about injustice of another kind: the killing of albinos for ritual purposes in Tanzania.
The East African country records one albino birth in every 1429, making it the nation with the highest number of albino births worldwide. This fact rather than being a cause for recognition is a source of worry. Tanzanian albinos are under attack from their own people. Such killings are at the centre of this 58-minute documentary by Jean-François Méan.






Eunice is fourteen years old when she is murdered in front of her younger siblings. Her body is cut to pieces and parts are taken away by her killers. Albino body parts are believed to bring good luck, and there is a high demand for them by witch doctors. Who these witchdoctors cater to is not examined in the documentary, and the lone witch doctor interviewed denies having anything to do with the practice.
After Eunice's death, her family, including two of her younger sisters who are also albinos, begin to live under the constant threat of death. For the two young girls, their fear is that they will be slaughtered the way their sister was. For the rest of the family, their fear stems from rejection by the villagers: the murder of Eunice has brought ‘guilt' and ‘stigma' upon the village and has to be wiped away. Eunice's father, their ‘son' is being charged with her murder. He allegedly sold her for $145.

In WHITE AND BLACK: CRIMES OF COLOUR, the matter-of-fact way the killing of albinos is discussed is more chilling than the images of severed limbs that are shown. "Our ancestors looked down on albinos," an old man says, pointing to a hill which contains a lake where albinos were thrown to their death in the past, as a way to bring good luck to their communities.
"It is complete craziness," the chairman of a local albino association says. Albinos are just like everybody else. But it seems only the albinos themselves and their family members see things this way. "All I know is that a child is a child, whether it is albino or not, it is still a child," Eunice's mother says, a distant look in her eyes. She has to make arrangements for her two younger girls to go to a school far away from their village, where they will be safe.
This school is home to a number of albino children who have sought refuge from almost certain death. But they still have to deal with a number of issues: isolation, rejection, fear, and the trauma of seeing a murder happen.

Adult albinos deal with the same issues. A man, begging on the streets of Dar es Salaam, cannot get a job. "'How is a zero-zero [a person seen as less than human] going to do this job? He can't even see.' But I can do the job better than them."
The success stories are few, as Méan, the director, shows: a parliamentarian who never thought she would make it to the House, and a beauty queen who worries her boyfriend is going to betray her.
A few minutes is dedicated to another killer of albinos, this time not human. 80% of albinos in Tanzania die - before the age of 30 - from skin cancer. The disease, which is preventable if caught early, has a high casualty rate because, ironically, witch doctors are the first port of call for most albinos when they first notice something is wrong.
At the time WHITE AND BLACK… was made in 2009, there had been no conviction for over 50 albino murders that had taken place in Tanzania.

Eunice's body rests under concrete, a measure taken to protect her remains from being stolen. Even in death, she is not safe.

By Enajite Efemuaye

First published in iREP 2017 Newsletter - Issue 2, edited by Derin Ajao, with support of iRep FilmFest and Goethe-Institut Nigeria. Courtesy iREP.

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