South African Actor Nomzamo Mbatha: "People Who Are Displaced Want to be Home"

TIME

Actor and activist Nomzamo Mbatha has long embodied advocacy through action. An UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador since 2019, she has used film and television to amplify refugee voices and narratives.  Having participated in field missions in Malawi, Kenya, and South Sudan with UNHCR, Mbatha reflected on how difficult it is to experience a refugee camp, because you’re “coming out of your own reality where you have resources and you have the privilege,” she said on the TIME100 Next red carpet on Oct. 30.

Transcript

00:00When people are displaced, they're essentially stateless.

00:05So, they're essentially stateless, and to be stateless is something that can be completely foreign to somebody who's never had to navigate that kind of reality, right?

00:15And so how do we be able to shift the narrative of people as well, the host communities, to understand that people who are forcibly displaced want to be home.

00:24They don't want to go to foreign land. They want to be home, but there are certain circumstances that don't allow them to be.

00:31And so, to be able to engage them and to be able to showcase that it's not statistics, that these are people and there's a human story behind that.

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