Meet 'boet'... the other Tata

18 October 2016 - 09:04 By LEONIE WAGNER

To the world he became Tata, but to those who knew him in the 1960s, he was "boet" Nelson Mandela. Moviegoers will soon get to know "boet" through Tumisho Masha's portrayal of a young Mandela in the biographical drama Mandela's Gun.The film premieres at the Jozi Film Festival next week. It is based on Mandela's statement after his release from prison that he had buried a gun at Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia, Johannesburg.Set in the 1960s, the film follows Mandela on trips to African countries, including Ethiopia, in the eight months before his arrest in Howick, KwaZulu-Natal.Masha, the first South African to portray Mandela in a film, said it was a "dream role" but it came with a lot of pressure.Directed by John Irvin, the initial idea for the film was sparked by the hunt for Mandela's missing gun, a Makarov pistol Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie gave the Umkhonto weSizwe commander-in-chief during his training.One of the film's producers, Moroba Nkawe, said: "This is not just about a gun, it's a symbol of a story that encapsulated the beginning of the liberation movement."Production began in 2013 with filming in Ethiopia, Algeria, Botswana, Tanzania, the US, UK and South Africa. The mostly black-and-white film combines documentary-style interviews with those who were involved in the struggle at the time, and some dramatisation.Nkawe said the film took longer to complete because the production team felt "compelled" to incorporate interviews, which reveal the CIA's involvement in Mandela's capture."There was no doubt that we'd cast a South African as Mandela; we wanted the film to be authentic and Tumisho gives an incredible performance, one of the best we've seen," Nkawe said.Masha's uncanny resemblance to Mandela is clear but it's the icon's accent that audiences might struggle with.Masha's interpretation of Mandela is stronger, with a higher-pitched voice, something he said he picked up from a 1961 BBC interview the former president did."It's the voice of a man who was younger and stronger . it was a tough choice for me, I could've gone the easy route and done the voice of Tata Mandela . Most of us have not seen this Mandela before. But at that time he wasn't uTata, he was boet Nelson," Masha said...

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