When Rain Clouds Gather

As When Rain Clouds Gather opens, a young man sits in a hut and waits for dark to fall. This young man, Makhaya Maseko, a South African, intends to cross the border from his home country into Botswana. An old man who has been assisting Makhaya on his journey checks in at the hut, and Makhaya explains to his visitor that he has just finished a jail sentence and wants live in freedom: as a black man in apartheid-era South Africa, Makhaya is treated as inferior by national law.

Makhaya sets out once it is night, evading patrol vans and jumping over the barbed wire border fences. He is dazed by the new, dark landscape and by the sound of bells, though eventually he finds a possible place of refuge, a few huts that are inhabited by an old woman and a young girl. The old woman is suspicious but lets Makhaya spend the night in a hut (for a fee); she also explains to Makhaya that the bells he has been hearing are cowbells. After Makhaya settles in for the night, the young girl comes to him and offers him sexual intercourse (again, for a fee). Makhaya pays her to go away, then reflects in disgust on the people he has just encountered.