Caught in the acting: convicts steal the show

On stage she plays an aggressive and intimidating woman, but after the performance the 22-year-old prisoner speaks softly, not making much eye contact.

"I was daddy's little princess who was roaming the streets at night," she says. "He tried to give me everything - including the best education - but I decided to sit at street corners smoking nyaope."

Dikeledi Portia Motaung left home at 17 to live with a friend and wouldn't move back despite her father's best efforts to rescue her.

She was 19 when she eventually went home, where she got into an argument with a drunk neighbour after he smacked her behind. He followed her into her parents' home and she stabbed him in the kitchen while they were fighting.

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Motaung was sentenced to eight years in prison in August 2013. She is one of a group of women from the Johannesburg Female Correctional Centre who are part of a theatre production being staged at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown from next Sunday.

Theirs is one part of Stories Behind Bars, a production featuring song, dance and drama and starring 95 offenders from prisons throughout South Africa.

This is the sixth time that the Department of Correctional Services will perform at the festival. Despite taking part in South Africa's largest arts festival, the performers are still offenders and will be housed in Grahamstown's prison.

All Stories Behind Bars shows are at 10am and on the days the prisoners perform, they will be allowed out of jail from 9am until 1pm.

The play Motaung stars in is about a high-school pupil who falls in with the wrong crowd, which results in her imprisonment. It's not just entertainment: the story line serves as a cautionary tale.

Motaung is due to be released in August next year, but says: "I'm not ready to go home." When asked why, she breaks down. "I'm scared because I live on the same street as [my victim's] family. I don't know how they'll receive me. When I left I was on nyaope [a street drug concoction used widely by the poor] and everyone pushed me away. I'm scared to go home."

The female prisoners on stage, dressed in prison uniforms, cross their wrists to represent being locked up. One by one they step forward and address the audience, telling us who they are and how they ended up behind bars.

block_quotes_start When I arrived in prison I was a bitter, angry person. I was blaming everyone else but myself. Participating in drama helped me to heal block_quotes_end

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-year-old 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.

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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.

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"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, seated behind her family, so Theledi took all the responsibility for the crime.

"Those guys are probably still outside, doing the same thing to someone else."

In 2012 she was sentenced to 10 years in jail. She gave birth to her second child in prison.

Theledi joined a choir and took up drama while incarcerated. One of her passions is a programme called Pillar to Post, in which youngsters visit prisons to hear motivational speeches from offenders.

The hardest part of readjusting to life on the outside for Theledi has been the struggle to reconnect with her young sons.

She hopes to return to banks and other financial institutions so that she can warn their employees against making the same mistakes that landed her behind bars.

Theledi serves as an inspiration to some of the other women she was incarcerated with.

Motaung, whose family visits her regularly, sees Theledi as an older sister. "I want to be like her. She's added value to my life. She's taught me failure is not falling down, it's failing to get up. All I have to do is grab the opportunities afforded to me."

Motaung doesn't know what she'll do when she leaves prison, but says that as long as Theledi is around, she knows she won't go wrong.

Another performer in Stories Behind Bars is Mamosa Kok, 34, who is serving 15 years for drug trafficking. While she was working for the Department of Agriculture, Kok found herself under a mountain of debt.

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"I was chasing after the luxurious life - expensive cars, houses in exclusive suburbs - knowing very well that I couldn't afford it," she says.

Her cousin introduced her to a man who promised her R60,000 to make a trip to Brazil.

She ended up trapped in São Paulo for three months after she refused to swallow "bullets" of drugs. She eventually gave in after a failed escape attempt and was told to swallow 150 "bullets" - but managed to swallow only 120. "It was like swallowing rocks," she says. The dealers weren't happy and sold her out to the police, so when she arrived at OR Tambo airport, the police were waiting for her.

This was in January 2009. Kok is due out on parole in December. She's excited but is also very anxious because her relationship with her 11-year-old son is strained. "He's very angry with me. I left him when he was three," she says.

Her manicured nails are painted pink and she plans to open a beauty parlour as she is now a trained beautician. "There are people who are willing to help me with capital," she says.

Kok joined the prison drama group in 2010, and has even performed with them at Pretoria's State Theatre. "When I arrived in prison I was a bitter, angry person. I was blaming everyone else but myself. Participating in drama helped me to heal."

boshomanep@thetimes.co.za

• 'Stories Behind Bars' is at Grahamstown's City Hall at 10am on July 6-9. The first show is free