She wears the hat of being Mduduzi “Mandoza” Tshabalala’s wife with pride. When she lost her best friend, her pillar and the love of her life, she worked to make sure his legacy lives on.
Mandoza’s wife Mpho Tshabalala is the executive producer for her late husband’s biopic: Nkalakatha: The Life of Mandoza, which will premiere on BET Africa on 16 August.
Talking Drum soon after the screening, Mpho says she always had a dream of telling authentic South African stories and with her husband being one of the kwaito icons, she saw it fit to tell her husband’s life story.
“Post-apartheid we had so much to celebrate as well as successful black stories, we had so many challenges that we have seen in the country and globally. So, personally with my journey, my stroke journey automatically, I wanted to get a place for me to tell my story and a place where people can see that story and my first answer was TV. From then I wanted to find a place that tells black people’s story stories globally and that platform was BET.”
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She says for the longest time, she couldn’t talk about her loss and her relationship with her late husband after her passing. Healing has got her to a point where she's opened herself up to let everyone in on the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of her and Mandoza’s story.
“I had to heal first because Mduduzi died on my birthday, and that was very heavy for me. But going through different journeys through my healing, I got to understand that he made an agreement with God and left me with a task to continue with his legacy. I had to understand that he trusted me with all this, and that is when I started writing. The Mandoza Foundation was focusing on cancer awareness, and then we thought that we should do something that he lived for, which is music and entertainment, so we wanted to start by telling his story, but I didn’t know where to go about starting.”
She says when she went to BET, Monde Twala linked her up with Zuko and Thandeka Nodada and the Nkalakatha was in the pipelines and they were talking about it for a while now. She says her main concern was to tell everything the way it is and show all the that is there to show about her husband, as raw and authentic as they can.
“We had the story, but we didn’t have the money, so we went to look for other partners because we had BET. I just wanted this biopic to happen because I knew that I would work on this year after year. My birthday last year was on Sunday, and he died on a Sunday so when I celebrated my birthday, I also had a bit of healing because I could celebrate my birthday, so that was a full circle for me. I told myself that after the full circle, I would be ready to do this.”
When it was all set, she started with her husband’s family, to ask for blessings and then proceeded to Mandoza’s grave where she took the main characters Lorraine Moropa, who plays Mpho in the biopic, and Wiseman Mncube, who plays Mandoza.
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“I had to ask for blessings because I am a very spiritual person and believe in connecting with people on a spiritual level before we can take on this project. I have to say we found the perfect people to be in this biopic because they opened themselves to play this amazing and authentic story. I bare it all and I knew that I would open some doors from the past and, I would use my husband’s clothes so I needed someone I would connect with.”
Making TV is a new territory for her, but she says she enjoyed every time she spent on set because when she does something she gives it her all.
Her days started at the crack of dawn with preparing to get to set and when she arrived on set, she would ensure that every little detail and nuances that complete the story were in order because she wanted to do justice to the story.
“I am glad I worked with this cast on my first-time making TV because I felt safe even when I had emotional moments, they allowed me to feel everything. They should know that we are stuck for life now because they respected the story and gave it their all. Again, Lorraine is Mpho, and I am glad we crossed paths in this manner because it all feels so pure.”
Mpho says this won’t be her last production. Nkalakatha will be on the small screens next week and she says she hopes that people appreciate the work the artists put in to tell the story.
