Ex-con puts past behind him

Bongani Gilbert Maseko is a 35-year-old Alexandra resident and ex-convict who has put his past behind him.

Instead of prowling the streets of Sandton in search of victims, Maseko, a former accomplished thief, gangster and hijacker in his early teenage years, is now an accomplished actor who is making waves in one of the latest hard-boiled drama productions to hit the small screen of e.tv.

Maseko, who plays gang leader Axe Mbazo in the drama series Z’bondiwe, which means a well-stirred pot in Nguni, has adopted the sharp impact of theatre as his new ‘shotgun’ to fight the very crime he was responsible for promoting.

Born in 1980 in Alexandra, Maseko, with no fixed address as the family lived a nomadic life, was arrested in 1996 at the age of 16 and sentenced to eight years for housebreaking and robbery.

While serving time in jail and messing up with the gangs inside prison, Maseko met the late doyen of theatre in Alex, Bongani Linda, and his life turned a corner. Linda had come to perform for the inmates with his theatre group, Victory Siyanqoba Theatre Company.

“I got excited and blown away by their drama, such that I visualised myself one day being a top-class actor, and immediately decided this was the way to go,” said Maseko.

“I got encouragement from Linda too and ever since that fateful day I have never looked back.”

Maseko, who was known as Shotgun in criminal circles, was released in 2004 and took up theatre to fight crime. He is now a crime-fighting ambassador who visits schools and uses public gatherings to pass on the message that ‘crime does not pay’.

“Some may say I am still promoting crime by playing the role of a criminal gang leader,” he said.

“No, I am actually fighting crime. The English say ‘get a thief to catch a thief’, and I say let a criminal tell other criminals how

bad crime is.

“Many pastors often come to prison to try and convert us but we always dismissed them, saying what do they know about being a criminal?

In Z’bondiwe we have set out to use these very criminals to show how devastating crime can be in the hope that criminals may desist from their criminal ways.

“Maseko is soon to be married to his sweetheart, Khosi Phaag, with whom he has two kids, Mbali (10) and Nkosinathi (4).

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