Raise your voice!

Scandal! Head Writer & Creative Producer Grace Mahlaba chats about South Africa’s TV journey, through her eyes.

- GENEVIEVE TERBLANCHE

Over the past 23 years at tvplus,it has been our privilege towatch our local shows grow and change to reveal who we are as South Africans, debate our future, and reckon with our past. tvplus was just a few months old when soapie Backstage was launched in May 2000 on e.tv. We were swept up in the excitement of watching characters like performing arts college principal Ipeleng Theledi (Grace Mahlaba) rocketing from one crisis to another. It was also the show that got Grace thinking seriously about what South African TV still needed. We chatted to her about how she put her belief in herself into action, and why representation matters . . . even if all you want is a gripping story.

BEYOND BACKSTAGE

When Backstage ended in July 2007, Grace set off for a new life in Canada. But as much as it promised a beautiful future for her children, Grace wilted when her roots were cut off. “I just didn’t realise how big language is for me. I was trying to write, but I knew that nobody was going to be interested in my stories, because the people that do relate to my stories are back in South Africa,” she explains. And so . . . back home!

Backstage had opened Grace’s eyes to one of South African TV’s biggest problems. “I played Ipeleng for so long and I was beginning to question how she was written. I grew up surrounded by black women from all different walks of life, educated to poor. And I didn’t understand her. I felt a disconnect,” she explains. One example she mentions is how Ipeleng often expressed frustration by downing a glass of wine . . . in front of her kids. “Yes, it is happening today, and for various reasons. But give me context to this woman who decides to drink when there are little children around her,” she insists.