Richard Wicksteed started off as a South African journalist involved in anti-apartheid reportage for press and radio. In exile in Zimbabwe in the 1980s he turned to documentary filmmaking and actuality reportage covering southern African liberation struggles, ecological and development issues and African cultural heritage.

After returning from exile, he worked on current affairs, expose reportage and focussing on First Peoples issues in southern Africa. Richard’s passion to give expression to African hunter-gatherer and nomadic cultures, and to uncover the dispossession and oppression of First Peoples, are the driving forces behind a number of his documentary films.

Richard’s San films include In God’s Places (1995) on the San cultural legacy in the southern Drakensberg’s Transkei, Lesotho and NE Cape; Death of A Bushman (2004) on the murder by police of Kalahari San tracker Optel Rooi; Bushman’s Secret (2006, with Rehad Desai) on San medicinal knowledge; My Land is My Dignity (2007) on San land struggles in Botswana; The Will To Survive (2008) on
San life in southern Africa today; In The Land of Ou Makai (2012-2017) on the life of South Africa’s San/Bushman traditional leader Dawid Kruiper; !Khwattu – San Spirit Shared (2019) on the work of the !Khwa ttu San cultural heritage centre, and the 2020 feature documentary, SanDance! which covers the music and dance culture of the Kalahari San peoples, via the annual Kuru Dance Festival in Botswana. Richard is currently developing further documentaries with San communities in the Kalahari and writing feature film screenplays set in southern Africa.

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