Caught in the acting: convicts steal the show

one they step forward and address the audience, telling us who they are and how they ended up behind bars.

The prison department’s director for sport, recreation, arts and culture, Fezile Sipamla, says the department is not sending offenders to the festival for fun. “We’re showcasing the success stories of rehabilitation. They’re going there to show people that these are the stories behind bars which our communities are never exposed to.

“What most people think [about prison] is that we lock the gates, throw away the keys, the offenders will rot in prison and they won’t be doing anything until it’s time for parole or until they die in prison.

“We’re trying to create corrective measures and to skill offenders so that when they go back to their communities they are resourceful and can serve the community,” he says.

Morwesi Theledi, a 33-yearold mother of two boys aged six and 10, is also taking part in Stories Behind Bars, even though she was released on parole at the beginning of June.

In 2008, while a bank supervisor, she was approached by two customers who asked her to help them swindle the bank.

“At first I said no, but the love of money brought me closer and closer to these guys. They would give me money and shopping vouchers. They paid off my debt,” she says.

They asked her to transfer R2.7-million from the bank’s funds into their account — and promised her a R300 000 payment in return. She refused, but quickly realised she had to pay them back the money they had spent on her.

“They followed me, they knew everything about me, they followed my mother, they knew where my kid went to school.”

Theledi says she finally gave in in 2009, when the men called her while watching her child playing and threatened to kill him.

“Losing my child was not an option,” she says. She immediately transferred the money, but felt guilty and reversed the transaction an hour later.

“These guys got furious with me and sold me out to the cops,” she says. After she was arrested, Theledi says one of the men showed up at the police station pretending to be her lawyer, threatening to kill her child if she ratted on them. They were at every one of her court appearances,

They’re going there to show the stories behind bars our communities are never exposed to