/ 6 January 2017

Slice of Life: Idol an omen, Kani just luck

Swankie Mafoko
Swankie Mafoko

I’d just started shooting Keeping Score for SABC2. Before that I had always been a huge theatre head and there was this one actor I was in awe of. This was that one person who, if you met, you would go crazy.

One day, just a month ago, I walked into work at 6am, grumpy, thinking I would rather be anywhere else. As I was walking in, he was walking out of the dressing room area. I took a step back asking myself: “What was he doing there?” He was in our dressing room.

I’d tweeted so many times that working with Mothusi Magano would be the ultimate for me … and there he was walking up to me. He asked where the toilet was.

I couldn’t speak. I was star-struck — that thing is real.

After he left, probably thinking I was a weirdo, I gushed about how he was my favourite actor and how I had followed his work.

I couldn’t believe it because at the beginning of the year I kept on telling myself that the year couldn’t end until I had shared a scene with him.

When I put this out in the universe I hadn’t even landed my first job after my disappointment last year, when I lost my job.

And at my first television show I met the icon I wanted to work with. This was confirmation that I was doing the right thing and hadn’t left Durban for nothing.

It was the highlight of my year — besides the meeting I had with John Kani when he just walked up to me and said: “Hello sisi, unjani.” I think that was just pure luck. — Swankie Mafoko as told to Athandiwe Saba