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Leleti Khumalo draws inspiration from her domestic worker mother for her role in Free State
‘When I was growing up in KwaMashu, my mother was working in town [Durban]. She was a domestic worker and I would see her only at the end of the month,” said Leleti Khumalo this week of her role as a domestic worker raising a white child in the award-winning new local film Free State.
“My mother was raising the children of other families while her family was suffering ... I understand that she didn’t have a choice, and that when people trust you with their baby, you have to do your best. And it comes naturally because you are a mother ... The real mothers of these children should come out and say how grateful they are to black women for raising their children,” Khumalo said in a candid interview.
It was this background that she drew on to prepare for her role in Free State.
The movie, a Romeo and Juliet story set in the apartheid era, was in the news again this week when it picked up the best cinematography award at the Garden State Film Festival in New York just weeks after winning the best director award at the Luxor African Film Festival.
The film, written and directed by Sallas de Jager, is about an Afrikaans woman who falls in love with an Indian man in the 1970s – but their love is illegal according to the apartheid Immorality Act.
In the film, the young woman, Jeanette, loses her mother and Khumalo, their domestic worker, raises Jeanette as her own.
“In Free State, I was playing my mum – the maid, raising white children. When my mum came home, she would tell us about this family she worked for. What I did was take all that information she told us and I used it to play the role,” said the actress who has starred in major films like Sarafina, Yesterday and Invictus.
“You know, I have been very lucky – very blessed – to be involved in productions that make sense to me and make me better as a person. This movie is history. I didn’t really know that during apartheid Indian people also faced such a challenge. That even white people faced such a challenge. To find stories like those and to be involved in making that story is a blessing in my life,” said Khumalo from Durban, where she is working as a lead actress on the hugely popular telenovela Uzalo.
“To make Free State, I had to juggle my role on Uzalo,” she said. “They are very different characters – a maid in the 1970s and a preacher’s wife today. I am happy that I delivered on both.”
The illicit lovers in Free State are played by former model Nicola Breytenbach and former Mr SA Andrew Govender. The film also stars award-winning Skoonheid star Deon Lotz as Jeanette’s father, the local minister who, with Khumalo, must deal with the realities of Jeanette’s illegal love affair.
Khumalo hasn’t yet seen the finished film, but when she does, she is determined to watch it with her mother. “I will definitely love to see this with her. It will bring tears to her eyes.”
Free State will be released locally on April 27.
