Five black women, fully aware of the risks they are taking, talk openly about their lives. A mother, living in the aridity of a black reserve, longs for the annual return of her husband from a caretaker's job in distant Johannesburg.... A maid working for a white family in that same city talks of her own children who are forbidden to live with her and must be boarded out with relatives ... A nurse in Soweto dreams of the day when the skills she has slowly acquired will be properly recognised and used ... A hospital cleaner allows a camera to follow her into an enormous barrack block where she lives with 4,000 other women ... A housewife in the illegal shanty town of Crossroads tells of police and bulldozers ... South Africa -from five very individual and rarely filmed viewpoints.