When Pragna Parsotam-Kok and Noel Kok made a wildlife series for South African TV in 2015, they were struck by how challenging it was to access animals to film and how few other African wildlife documentary makers there were.
Their response was to set up the not-for-profit Nature Environment and Wildlife Conservation Trust (NEWF) and to host a conference for African wildlife film-makers, the first taking place in 2017.
But the following year the couple were unable to find any African underwater film-makers to speak on a panel about oceans. While searching, they also realised how many marine biologists on the continent could not swim, let alone scuba dive.
The couple organised NEWF’s first dive “lab” for film-makers and scientists in 2019. The 10 attenders were the first fellows in a now nearly 400-strong cohort, from 37 African countries and 13 more in the global south, as the Koks seek to change how wildlife documentaries are made.
“I like to joke that black African nature, environment and wildlife film-makers were rarer than most of the species scientists and conservationists were trying to protect on the continent,” said Noel Kok.
“The fact that we were excluded from telling the stories of Africa’s wildlife, for me, it just felt like they were just not authentic,” he said. “The stories were not complete.”
More than 200 divers have now been trained in Sodwana Bay on South Africa’s northeast coast, home to Africa’s southernmost tropical coral reefs. Hundreds of fellows have also been trained in wildlife film-making on land at Bayala, a private game reserve.
In 2021, NEWF added composition workshops. “One of my biggest frustrations is the lion chasing the buck on the African plain, Mozart and his 50-piece orchestra going crazy in the background,” said Kok. “We love Mozart and Beethoven … but music should be representative of the region.”
Two years later, the music for a National Geographic film about Botswana’s Okavango Delta, composed by NEWF fellows including Okavango local musician Koolkat Motyiko, won best original score at the Jackson Wild film festival, beating Hans Zimmer’s score for David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet II.
In 2019, the Koks met local diver Silindile Mbuyazi. Mbuyazi wanted to dive to find the body of her brother, who drowned in Sodwana Bay in 2015. She started learning with a tourism company in 2018, defying her community’s warnings about a seven-headed snake lurking beneath the waves.
Mbuyazi never found her brother, but discovered a whole new world, including a green turtle she recognised as her grandmother, who raised her and died in 2010. “I found myself,” Mbuyazi, now 37, said. “I fell in love in the ocean.”
Mbuyazi, known affectionately as Mama Sli, began teaching diving with NEWF in 2022. She and the Koks recognised they needed their own base, in part to cut costs and to be able to host longer workshops.
That year, NEWF secured annual funding of $1m-$1.5m (£747,000-£1.1m) from National Geographic for Africa Refocused, a five-year programme of workshops, residencies and for building a dive and film-making centre in Sodwana Bay.
Mbuyazi, who has taught more than 150 NEWF fellows to dive, proposed a partnership, with the centre built on her grandmother’s land. eKhaya, meaning “home” in Zulu, opened in November 2023 and has an editing suite, a 3.5-metre dive pool and 12 rooms for fellows.
In mid-June, eKhaya was a hive of activity. An induna (a traditional Zulu official) and his entourage were being given a tour. A group of musicians was holed up in the recording studio, rehearsing for a performance at the National Geographic Explorers festival in Washington DC.
Local interns were learning to swim, taught by staff who had only learned themselves last year. Later they will learn to dive. NEWF currently has 30 interns, its second 12-month cohort, working on self-driven projects ranging from volunteering with elderly locals to rock pool research.
Meanwhile, the Koks are negotiating new National Geographic funding and have aspirations for everything from buying a dive boat to building a six-person fellows’ house in Bayala.
Soon after dawn the next day, Ethiopian film-maker Elshadye Berhanu crouched on the side of an adapted safari vehicle, her lens trained on six cheetahs – two mothers, each with two juvenile cubs.
“It’s very uncommon to see two female cheetahs bonding together and raising their children,” said Berhanu, who was on a two-month NEWF residency to work on a film about the cheetahs, as well as one about Mbuyazi, which is due to be finished this year.
Berhanu said she had gained invaluable practical and creative experience since first attending a one-week NEWF workshop in November 2024. “With the cheetahs’ story, when I’m staying with them, I understand each and every part of it – it’s very deep,” she said. “Being able to film that, from your eyes, it just makes me happy.”
