1. THURSDAY JANUARY 21 2016
It’s Bear and Barack Running Wild
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OMPILO Gwala strutted through
our offices just like any other
20-something would. Only she
isn’t any young lady; she is the
lead actress on Mzansi Magic’s Saints and
Sinners.
She plays the gorgeous Phindi who has
been abducted by Gibson Mosia (Tumisho
Masha) and from what we saw last week, he
is about to have his way with her.
While I was happy to chat with Gwala
about the show, I wasn’t sure how to handle
the story she wanted to tell. The story of
Kamo Peterson that The Star had published
and later found out was fake, popped up in
our conversation.
“I read the Kamo story and cried
throughout. The Department of Women
even tweeted that although the story turned
out to be fictitious, the reason that it pulled
at our heartstrings is because many of us
have that story to tell,” she said.
“The problem thereafter was that some
people started raising points along the lines
of how many people have been unfairly
charged as rapists and are in prison today?
While that is true, the last time I checked,
less than 2 percent of rape cases are false,
more than 60 percent go unreported and 97
percent of rapists will never spend a day in
jail,” she pointed out.
As I formulated the dreadful question,
she must have realised this and made it
easy for me.
“I haven’t reported what happened to
me. Although Kamo’s was a fake story, I am
living testimony that these things happen.”
The hows, whens and whys flew threw
mind and I mumbled something before she
cut me short.
“I had two incidents. The first one
happened when I was 6 years old. I went to
buy a packet of chips, but because I was so
young I think the brain blocked out some
of the details. I was raped on someone’s
kitchen floor. I know who it was and for my
entire childhood he taunted me about it. He
called me a ‘whore’ afterwards whenever
I walked past their house in my school
uniform. He’d say how good I was to have
sex with,” she recalled, her eyes watering.
So Phindi (her character on Saints and
Sinners) is actually living this young
woman’s real-life nightmare.
“I think making television that is
socially educating is important to me
because I figured out what had happened to
me through watching Soul City back then.
There was an episode when Sister Bettina
(Lillian Dube) was dealing with a little girl
who had been sexually abused. She gave
her a teddy bear and asked her to point
where on the teddy where she was touched.
“For the first time in my life I was like,
‘that’s what happened to me’. In the mid-
’90s, when it happened, kids were not as
advanced as they are today so I really didn’t
know that I was wronged,” she added.
The enlightenment was only good for a
moment before she realised she did not
know what to do with the knowledge she
now had.
“Even though I had figured out what had
happened to me, I didn’t know what to do.
What do you say? Who do you say it to?
Which words do you use? So I carried on
with my life. Primary school was horrible.
I was bullied and made fun of. At 12 or 13, I
attempted suicide. I had the rape in my
head and the school was not safe for me so I
had no place and I think I wanted to quieten
down things and next thing I woke up at
Pretoria Academic Hospital. I had to have
my stomach pumped free of the painkillers.
My mother found me and saved me.”
For a preteen, that was obviously too
much to take, but more was in store.
“The next time happened when I was
about 18 and it was with a guy I was dating.
I was honest, while we were dating, about
not being ready to have sex yet and he was
okay with it. (But) clearly, he was not
because there was one day that he simply
didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. So I was
pinned down and couldn’t move. All I could
say was ‘no’ and I remember thinking,
‘this cannot be happening again’. I
remember crying and at some point he
stopped, looked at me and went to the
bathroom and returned with a towel. I was
bleeding because there was no consent. For
the longest time I didn’t know what to call
that. When someone shows concern after
an act like that, is it still rape?” she paused.
“At 21 I had to step out of my denial and
admit to myself, what I already knew, that
where there is penetration without consent
that is rape,” she said.
In time she had to break the silence and
talk to someone and the natural person to
turn to was her mother.
“It was only when I was 23 that I decided
to open up and talk to my mother. That’s
what started my journey to dealing with
this and I found myself at a rape crisis
centre,” she said.
So is she still angry?
“To respond to cruelty with cruelty is
succumbing to a negative force that started
it all in the first place. I will never be cruel
to a human being because I know what it
feels like. My name is Nompilo, meaning
‘she who brings life’. I am proud of my
younger self for keeping us both alive. I
know I will never get justice, but that hasn’t
left me with bitterness, but rather my belief
that the suffering doesn’t compare to the
glory that shall be revealed in me.”
Enter Saints and Sinners season 2 in
which Gwala plays a character who is
brutally raped.
“I am dealing with theme that has
haunted me all my life. When your destiny,
which is my job, and your victory, come
hand in hand, that’s God’s doing. When I
found out that Phindi was going to go
through what I went through, I said: ‘Okay
God, I get it, you don’t want me to go to the
grave with this. You want me to help other
people with my experiences’. That’s why I
am speaking out,” she said.
“I would like to do things through my
acting that teach people. I really want to
make a difference though my acting.”
● Saints and Sinners, 8pm, Sundays
on Mzansi Magic (DStv channel 161).
When art imitates life…
Actress Nompilo Gwala speaks about how
her role on‘Saint and Sinners’ mirrors her
troubled past,writes MunyaVomo
NEW SEASONS OF HOT SHOWS AND THE DEBUT OF A NEW ONE MAKE FOR RIVETING VIEWING
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PICTURE: ITUMELENG ENGLISH