Mzansi Magic’s, Lockdown is one of the most popular series' in South Africa and since its debut, it has trended every week without fail even in its third season. We recently sat down with the man behind the award-winning show, Black Brain Picture's head honcho, Mandla 'Mandla N' Ngcongwane.
If you follow Mandla Ngcongwane on social media, you would have noticed that his pages are now flooded with his work projects and his children, highlighting his focus following the reports made by Sunday World that the director and businessman had allegedly filed a lawsuit against his former partner of 16 years, Tumi Masemola.
With his baby mama absent on his recent social media posts, we asked Ngcongwane about his relationship status, to which he simply responded by saying that he was single, confirming his split with the former Gang of Instrumental singer. He also added that the only constants in his life had been his work and children.
“That’s the only constant in my life, it’s been my work and my kids, relationships are really great but they constantly change, people fall in love with your relationship and when it changes, it becomes something else, so you take people through this rollercoaster ride, but what do I want people to remember me for? Definitely my work more than my relationship or anything like that, it’s life, I’ll constantly go through different relationships but if people are hung up on those relationships, it just distorts my brand...that’s what I’ve got control over, I can never be in control of any relationship…right now I’m in a lot of relationships, it’s work-related, its friends related...a lot of relationships” he said.
Mandla Ngcongwane is a musician, actor, director and producer, best known for his starring role as Themba Khumalo in SABC 1's sitcom, City Ses'la and its spinoff series, Ses'Top La between 2005 and 2010 and throughout the years, he has managed to make strides in the industry and has earned his stripes with consistency which has led him to become one of the most reputable content producers in Mzansi right now.
“I'm a storyteller, so I do a lot of music as well...when you’re doing music, there are different songs for different moods, so the only opportunity I had within the TV space was making comedy, so when they did give me a drama opportunity, I then created ‘Lockdown’ which took a life of its own and became really really huge...and then now recently they gave me an opportunity to create ‘Side Dish’ and that was a huge success...people always thought that comedy is my strongest point, but my strongest point is storytelling…I'm a content maker, so whoever wants content and wants to be prime and to have numbers, they come to me,"
When Ngcongwane is not playing the role of a father to his children, he plays the role of a father on set as a director:
“As a director, I would say that when I’m on set, you know you dealing against time and money, after some time you gotta make decisions really fast and when you’re on set, let's say you’re not getting it within the first four takes or three takes, you need to know when to move on, you need to know how to hide great performances, you need to know how to tone it down and you’re constantly competing against time and money...at the end of the day for me in my shoot is about over half a million, so I can’t lose that day, so I need to know my pace and I work in it…”
Although everything might seem to be smooth sailing for the director, Ngcongwane says that he has had to face a lot of challenges and deal with racism in the industry.
“Within the industry, the challenges that me as Black Brain...I’ve been in the business for a long time and running my own business in the space and there’s a lot of racism in South Africa, if you look at the people that have got the telenovela's, it’s all white people that don't give you the numbers but they basically cater for the big amounts of money...only because those are businesses that have been there for a very long time…”
Ngcongwane is currently working on his movie and is set to release his next project, Being Mandela soon.
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Main image credit: instagram.com/@mandla_n