Unmasking Boniswa
A secret from the past exposes the real Boniswa Langa – ruthless, deadly and determined.
April is a cruel month for Boniswa Langa (Lusanda Mbane), starting with the revelation that her new son-in-law Mthunzi (Bongile Mantsai) orchestrated the kidnapping of her late husband Siseko (Hlomla Dandala) that led to his murder in August 2018. But there has been no time to fully process the horror of the past year spent living under the same roof as this snake or to dwell on the fact that they kissed in October 2018, less than a month before he married her daughter Xolile (Sivenathi Mabuya). Boniswa must deal with a potentially far more deadly secret to come out this fortnight, one that will expose her own ruthless actions in Mthunzi’s past. And it feels like her past has shifted under our feet with each revelation, like walking off the shelf in the ocean and sinking into deep darkness between one step and the next. But how does Lusanda play a character whose past can be as much a mystery to her as it is to us?
IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ME
Lusanda points out that while she knew the bare bones of Boniswa’s backstory coming into the soapie in August 2016, what has been important for her is not every minute detail of what happened in Boniswa’s past, but rather her being aware of how staggeringly far Boniswa may go in pursuit of her goals. “I remember Boniswa a couple of years back, she was there to hide evidence. She was there to burn documents. She was there to do anything just to make sure that her family is protected,” explains Lusanda. “It wasn’t all going to come out in one big chunk. There had to be layers to it. And I think we are getting to the crux of it now, showing the dark side of Boniswa that has always been there. Boniswa has always been the woman who does what needs to be done in order to protect her family. Everything else has simply revolved around that.”
PEELING BACK LAYERS
The face that Boniswa presents to us now will be closer to who she really is, more than fans have ever seen her onscreen. “You see it now. When you are speaking to Boniswa, you see that okay, maybe I shouldn’t mess with her. She hasn’t done a 180-degree turn. As much as I didn’t know her full story, I have always known that Boniswa will do whatever it takes. There has always been that hint of a darkness.”
For the day-to-day though, Lusanda says that her work has been grounded in what is actually happening onscreen and not in the past. “I work in the moment, with the emotions that we are dealing with now,” she explains. “As a performer, I don’t take things too far ahead. My co-workers are all giving me something to work with. I feed off who we all are in the story right now. Xolile gives me something, Mthunzi gives me something. I play along with that and we create it together.”
BRINGING BONISWA
This pivotal moment in Boniswa’s story is Lusanda’s time to shine. “Bringing out all those emotions from one scene to another at the same time, you need to play that with all the subtlety in between, in her facial expressions. Without even doing anything, even in her pauses, you must look at her and think, ‘I don’t know what is going to come out of this woman!’ You look at her and you realise that she will not stop at anything. So can I do ‘nothing’ but still get the audience to fear me and to know that I will do what it takes?” Lusanda asks. “You will see her shedding a tear every now and then. But I don’t think there is much regret. Boniswa honestly believes that she did what she had to do to keep her family intact and to make sure that they would rise to the success that they have risen to.”