Three years ago Terry Pheto was living in a shack with a roof of corrugated iron, in a township just outside Johannesburg. Later on Sunday the young woman tipped as black South Africa’s first international female star will be on the red carpet for the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles at the end of a journey from crushing poverty to beckoning fame.
The film that has thrown her into the limelight is Tsotsi. A gripping evocation of life and crime in South Africa’s townships, tipped for best foreign film, it was made possible by a remarkable institution, township theatre. Pheto, who will accompany director Gavin Hood, and co-star Presley Chweneyagae, to Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, was spotted by casting agent Moonyeenn Lee in a theatre group in Soweto run by Thulani Didi and Kere Nyawo, two actors at the forefront of running Saturday drama groups credited with saving hundreds of young people from a life of poverty or crime.
Terry Pheto plays Miriam, a young mother a little older than the central figure of Tsotsi himself, who has lost her husband to violent crime and the kind of gang led by the central character. ”I have been going to see township theatre all my life,” said Moonyeenn Lee. ”It is absolutely amazing, and it is fantastic at keeping young kids off the streets. When Gavin was casting for Tsotsi there was an issue about whether it should be in English or in patois, and I argued it would be more authentic if the kids’ language was absolutely genuine [the film is subtitled]. So I asked Thulani Didi if I could come by and see some of the people he was working with. I saw Terry on the stage with around 20 other young actors, and it was just like a bolt of lightning.” When the director Anthony Minghella later saw her he declared her destined to be a ”star”.
It is not only Terry Pheto who has been catapulted into the limelight by Tsotsi. The story of a group of violent, and occasionally murderous, young township hoodlums, the redemptive tale of the central character Tsotsi — or ”thug” — based on a novel written in 1980 by Athol Fulgard, has drawn critical acclaim and been compared to City of God, the tale of youth violence in Brazil’s favelas.
The orphaned teenager in Tsotsi, who inadvertently finds himself caring for a baby he finds in a car he has stolen from the child’s mother, is played by Presley Chweneyagae who grew up, a policewoman’s son, in the townships. He was discovered by Moonyeen while playing Hamlet in a theatre group. ”He had had no drama training at all when I saw him, and he just blew me away.”
The electricity generated between the two on the screen, says Lee, was evident on the set. After one key scene, where Tsotsi threatens Miriam with a gun and forces her to breastfeed the child, Pheto was so scared by Chweneyagae’s performance, she was physically sick.
But it is one of the film’s most moving scenes that has thrown up the most remarkable transformation for its actors — street children recruited by Lee to act in a scene where Tsotsi takes the stolen child to see the concrete pipes where he grew up after fleeing his violent father.
”The children all lived on the streets,” says Lee. ”We made sure that when they were paid the money was put into trust for them so that their school fees would be paid … and to ensure that, if they had parents, it would not just be spent on alcohol. We also arranged a screening for them and their friends so that they could have dignity among their peers — to give them a sense of worth.”
While some of the children have already been cast in another film, Blood Diamond, it is Chweneyagae and Pheto who have attracted international interest. Phillip Noyce, the Australian director responsible for The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence, flew Pheto to London for a casting, and Danish director Billy August is also interested. Lee says: ”They are both very young. But both have got their feet firmly on the ground. Terry in particular is very level-headed. She does not drink or smoke or take drugs.”
Director Hood says: ”There is a wealth of young acting talent in South Africa. One sees great work in local community halls and student theatres and yet all too often these performers are not given the opportunity to display their talent beyond these small venues.” – Guardian Unlimited Â