On a cold afternoon during the Apartheid era, an aging "Brown" couple arrive at the Swartkops mud flat near Cape Town. They are scavengers rousted out of their shanty town that morning by Afrikaners. They've walked all day carrying what they possess. She may be alcoholic, he's prone to anger: earlier that day, he beat her for something she didn't do. Over the next 12 or 15 hours, their relationship goes through a storm, partly as each remembers earlier events both happy and tragic, and because Lena, over Boesman's objections, takes into their camp an elderly Xhosa tribesman, a Black. Boesman is cruel to the old man, she is kind, and as rain heads toward them, a confrontation develops.