Lorcia Cooper-Khumalo unpacks the injustice at the heart of Umthetho's prison system, why she's drawn to pivotal female characters, and the gratitude she wants audiences to feel.
Lorcia Cooper-Khumalo’s take on Umthetho‘s prison-justice theme centres on how survival inside the system breeds more of what it’s meant to punish.
“Someone is guilty of a crime but becomes even more criminal having to survive the system within prison walls – learns even more about a criminal lifestyle than when they went into it,” she said in a recent interview with The Citizen.
Cooper-Khumalo plays Crystal Dlamini, wife to Moses (Tony Kgoroge), and the mother of his child. In the story, the pair met while she was a prison nurse.
Umthetho is a 2026 Netflix South African crime drama (adaptation of the Brazilian series Brotherhood). It follows prosecutor Mbali Dlamini (Nqobile Nunu Gamedze), who discovers her long-lost brother (Moses) leads a ruthless prison syndicate and must choose between the law and family.
What stayed with Cooper-Khumalo long after filming wrapped, though, was the endlessness of the chain of command.
“There’s always someone above someone. So when does that chain end? When am I getting to the top person who I need to speak to, so that I can correct this injustice?… Because no one below here can fix it.”
Choosing roles with intention
Having starred in shows such as Backstage, Scandal!, Lockdown, Fatal Seduction and Red Ink, Cooper-Khumalo has built a career playing women who arrive at pivotal moments and move the story forward – and she says that’s no accident.
“[It’s] God’s design. I’ve always wanted to be intentional about not just working for the money. To be able to put myself in a position where I can tell stories that I’m able to tell with dignity and to honour.”
She draws a direct line between her character and the show’s lead: “You find this woman fighting in a man’s world mirrored by Mbali fighting in a man’s world. Had Mbali not been in the position where she had to pick, they would have been a team above all the men.”
She’s candid, too, about the messiness of her character’s own choices: “I’m sad that she does it to Mbali and using her niece as a reason… I think a methodology might not always have been sound, but her motivation for it, for me, for Crystal, had reason.”
Gratitude as the final word
Asked what she hopes audiences sit with after they finish Umthetho, Cooper-Khumalo poses a question back at society itself.
“It’s the question of how have we failed each other as a society?” she says. “Where have we fallen short in using our voices, in taking back our power, in restoring what is unjust?… Where are we responsible for the backstories of people who had to live in survival mode and therefore had to do things that we say is criminal for the means of survival?”
She closes on thanks rather than provocation.
“I hope the audience takes away gratitude from us, because we know that their support makes all the difference… We laid it all on the line for them… To deliver excellence as representatives of South Africa for a show that will be streamed in 192 countries.”
Umthetho is currently streaming on Netflix.
