A group of background actors staged a sit-in at the SABC in Auckland Park in Joburg recently, demanding their salaries from Duma Ndlovu’s daughter, Nonkululeko Ndlovu.
Nonkululeko is the owner of Turning Heads casting agency, and she supplied Muvhango with background actors. Duma is the show’s creator and producer.
150 actors face a bleak Christmas
Sunday World can reveal that about 150 background actors have not been paid. There is no hope they will ever get paid because Nonkululeko has allegedly disappeared and she is not even taking phone calls. This is according to the actors.
“I’ve been working as a background actor for a year now. I was getting my money until July this year. Otherwise, I’m owed over R22, 000 by Turning Heads,” said the background actor who wanted to remain anonymous.
Another actor said she is owed R2, 100. “I worked for three days and I was supposed to get R700 per day. I’ve been trying to get hold of her but she is ignoring my calls. She’s not even reading my messages. This is frustrating because I have bills to pay. I need to go home for Christmas and I don’t have money,” said the actor.
Sunday World has seen the back-and-forth messages between Nonkululeko and the background actors. In those messages, she keeps promising to pay.
But on Tuesday, November 10, the affected actors decided to approach the SABC with the hope of getting answers.
Demanded answers from the SABC after failing to get help from Duma
“We are here at the SABC to get an answer. Our issue is not with the SABC but with turning heads. We came here to get some clarity from the SABC’s finance department. And we want to know if Muvhango was paid at all, then we can link the dots. Nonkululeko and Duma have a father-daughter relationship, which complicated things. For example, we reported this to Duma, but he brushed it off. That is why we are here today,” said the aggrieved actor.
Sunday World tried to reach out to Nonkululeko and Duma, but their phones rang unanswered.
SABC was also approached for comment, but at the time of publishing they had not responded.
