Summary

In 1960s South Africa, a close-knit community from Die Vlakte was forcibly and violently uprooted to make way for the Stellenbosch University as part of the Apartheid regime’s segregation measures. José Cardoso’s What the Soil Remembers recounts the traumatic effect displacement had on residents by bringing to the foreground a university that is still grappling with its racist legacy. To this day, the Die Vlakte community is fighting for justice and seeking reparations with little to no tangible solutions.