by Thinus Ferreira
The TV and film producer Bongani Sibeko who was the executive producer, creator and head writer of the Family Secrets drama series on SABC1 has died a week after he was admitted to hospital with an undisclosed respiratory infection. He was 60.
Bongani Sibeko died on Thursday 12 August at the Sandton Mediclinic according to the David and Elizabeth Sibeko Foundation. He is survived by his wife Pulane and three children.
"He had gone to the hospital for a respiratory infection and there were complications. He couldn’t recover from that," says David Sibeko, family spokesperson.
"Family Secrets represented more than the plot lines of a television show based on a mega-wealthy powerful family, steeped in intrigue, wedged into the richest square kilometre on the African continent," the foundation says in the statement.
"It was a peek into the soul of Bongani Sibeko's belief that the aspirations, heroes and heroines of Africans didn't need to fixate on predictable Hollywood pre-packaged, recycled archetypes of who and hat the everyday African should be glued to on their TVs."
"Quite the contrary. Africans have always had their own stories, replete with heroes and villains that were relevant and deserved to occupy the powerful medium of television."
"As a businessman, political strategist, veteran and leader, film and television producer and more, Bongani will be greatly missed and to those who loved him, with baffling frustration, because we are left wondering how a flame that burned so brilliantly can be extinguished so quickly."
