Tony Kgoroge explains how he built Moses' commanding presence in Umthetho - channelling political charisma, and why fighting the system inside prison walls is its own kind of layered war.
Tony Kgoroge plays Moses in Umthetho S1. Picture: Supplied, Mishaal Gangaram for Netflix
Tony Kgoroge’s read on Umthetho‘s prison-justice backdrop is shaped by how his character, Moses, experiences it – as something far more layered than the “fighting the system” he grew up hearing about.
“We always grew up saying that we’re fighting the system; it was like either we’re fighting the cops or we’re destroying something that has to do with anything that is connected to government,” he said in a recent interview with The Citizen.
“But now, in terms of the jail kind of like system way of looking at things, there were just so many layers in there. And even the walls themselves, they are becoming part of the system.”
That layered resistance became the engine of his character.
“I think that’s what my character was going through. Every time he tried to fight this, he’s thinking that he’s winning, there’s another blockade… until you go to court, even in court, it’s still the same problem.”
Building an orator
Moses commands every room he’s in from episode one – a presence Kgoroge says he built by leaning into political charisma rather than typical prison-boss menace.
“It kind of like helped for me to look into the political side of things and say, okay, let me bring a little bit of that into this guy. So I call him the prisoner, the prison revolutionary.”
He wanted Moses to read as someone who could just as easily have been “a politician or a foreman in a company who’s fighting for the rights of the workers.”
Asked whether that same gift, in different circumstances, could have made Moses a real-world politician, Kgoroge doesn’t hesitate: “I think if he was given a chance to go and study and become someone, he would be like Eugène Terre’Blanche. Whether you liked him or not, when you watch him speak, you are like, ‘there’s something about this guy.'”
For his closing thought, Kgoroge keeps it simple and moral: “Whatever choices you make in life will lead somewhere, whether good or bad. It’s up to you to choose which one you want to stick with. And if you choose that one, go all the way.”
