Under the dusty bluegums a schoolboy kicks a soccer ball to his friend. But his friend is black and in 1960s South Africa such interaction is not tolerated. So we enter the world of small-town Tamboekiesfontein where all the tension of white versus black and English versus Afrikaner plays out in the dealings of its inhabitants, whose secrets are guarded by the local doctor – who has a very personal secret of his own. As the country staggers through a border war and liberation struggle so the people of Tamboekiesfontein are caught up in events that deliver each of them with their own scars into the new South Africa.