7 months ago
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“Be careful what you wish for, ’cause you just might get it…” Nicole Scherzinger sings at the top of her lungs in the song When I Grow Up by The Pussycat Dolls.
This is no longer just a catchy verse for rising star Makoma Mohale — she is feeling the serenity and joy expressed in the 2008 girl-power anthem. Sure, manifestation has become a spiritual buzz word on social media, but Mohale can’t stop beaming as she breaks down how she has felt the maximum impact and power of understanding intentions, energy, and words.
By scoring the titular role in epic drama Queen Modjadji, inspired by the mystical power of the Balobedu rainmaker, the windows of heaven opened, clouds became heavy with water, and the proverbial rain fell on Mohale. This year has been a season of breakthroughs for the 27-year-old actor, with all her dreams coming to fruition.
“It’s been an incredible year. I manifested all of it,” Mohale says with a twinkle. “I have this book where I write down my goals — where I want to be and the things I want to do, from appearing on billboards and walking runways to getting a lead role in a huge production. So, when it all happened, I was just ticking it all off. I’m playing Queen Modjadji. There is this huge billboard and I got more than I wanted because now my face is all over the taxis in Bolobedu [Limpopo]. I asked for a rose, but I got a whole bouquet.”
The Mzansi Magic series helmed by Duma Ndlovu has also helped Mohale connect more with her Balobedu roots and heritage. Mohale was born and spent her early childhood living with her grandmother in the Limpopo village of Ga-Lekalakala, outside the small town of Mokopane. When she started primary school, she moved to Mamelodi, east of Pretoria, living with her great-grandmother. A year or so later, she moved in with her parents in Mabopane, north of Pretoria, which became her permanent home.
“Firstly, this is my home language [Khelobedu], but it’s not the language that we speak at home. It’s my dad’s first language,” she says. “My parents grew up in Pretoria and I was raised there. The only language I knew and could speak fluently was my mom’s, which is Sepedi. But Khelobedu, never. I would hear my dad speaking with his siblings and thought it was an interesting language. I understood a few things, so when this project came, I knew I had to learn to speak it.”
Mohale credits her father — plus working with linguistic and cultural advisors on set — with helping her get into character and then forming a stronger connection with her Balobedu side.
"On a personal level, I didn’t know much about the Balobedu culture, even though it’s part of my heritage. This role helped me discover so many of our customs and traditions — how we present ourselves, how we communicate with our ancestors, how we dress, and how we approach elders,” she says.
The series has not been short of drama off-screen. A few days before it premiered in July, a courtroom drama saw the Balobedu royal family trying to stop MultiChoice from airing it as per schedule. But the Pretoria High Court struck the urgent application to halt the series off the roll. Mohale admits that it was a difficult week for her.
“I was nervous,” she confesses. “There was initial noise with the drama a month or so before the show aired. That died down. Then the urgent court interdict came a week before [the air date]. I was scared that we were never going to air. Luckily, we had a WhatsApp group where there was someone to keep us updated and calm. It was a lot.”
Another big challenge was being a principal actor in Queen Modjadji and e.tv daily drama Scandal!, filming both simultaneously. While the experience was exhilarating, it meant very little sleep for Mohale for about three months.
“I was not really sleeping, maybe two hours at the most. So, I would be on first call on Scandal!, they would have me from 6:45am and then maybe wrap at 12pm,” she says. “When I stepped off set, the driver to the Queen Modjadji set was already there to pick me up. We would then shoot until midnight in North West and then I had to travel back to Joburg. I would get home around 2am, quickly freshen up, and read my lines for Scandal!. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even read the Queen Modjadji lines, I would just scan them so I could at least get two hours’ sleep. Then, after shooting Scandal! and driving to North West, I would read my Queen Modjadji lines.”
Mohale has done well for someone who didn’t have acting ambitions until her second year of studying biomedicine in varsity. She dropped out to pursue performing arts at the South African State Theatre.
“During gossip sessions [with a group of friends], I would imitate the people in our stories,” she remembers. “I did it so well and they would validate me. Then people started to encourage me to model too. I tried modelling and did one casting, then I saw a poster for a public audition for something on Mzansi Magic. I auditioned and got cast. That’s how the acting started.”
Before long, she got the small role of vixen Tlhogi in Scandal!.
"When I first started, it was only a three-month contract. I never thought it would be more than that,” she says. “I did my three months and my part. I thought I’d gotten an opportunity in a big soapie, so what is next? I then received a text from one of our creative writers, saying I had one scene here and another there, we’d see. I did that and then, out of the blue, came a year-long contract. Since then, it has been insanely incredible.”
Now that she has everyone’s attention, Mohale says she wants to do it all, in front and behind the camera — acting, directing, and producing her own shows like her role model Connie Ferguson. If her power of self-prophesy is anything to go by, like the pleasant smell that fills the air just before it rains, that day is fast approaching.
