He moved to South Africa in 1994 and wrote The Foreigner, a short fiction film about xenophobia in this country.[4] In 1996, after Maseko drove to his house, an unknown assailant pointed a gun at the director and fired twice. He fled after the gun did not fire. A few minutes later, he called his house, and the assailant was on the phone. He "thought [Maseko was] a foreigner. We are a vigilante group going around killing foreigners. We don't want them here."[5]
Other short films by Maseko include The Return of Sarah Baartman, Children of the Revolution, and A Drink in the Passage, all released in 2002. The latter won the Special Jury Award at FESPACO.[4]
His first feature film was Drum, released in 2004. Set in 1950s Johannesburg, it tells of the magazine of the same name and specifically focuses on Henry Nxumalo, a journalist protesting apartheid. He received the top prize at FESPACO, the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, in addition to a cash prize of 10 million CFA francs (US$20,000) at its closing ceremony in 2005, the first South African to do so.[8]Drum was the first English-language film to win the prize since 1989.[9]
The filmmaker is currently working on the television series Homecoming, following the adventures of three MK fighters trying to fit in with the rest of South Africa. Maseko is also working on Liverpool Leopard, which is to be his second feature film.[4]
In 2017 he directed and scriptwrote the film adaptation of Zakes Mda's 2006 novel The Whale Caller.[10]
^"Art of Africa: The 50 best African artists". The Independent. 1 December 2006. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Retrieved 31 October 2020. Maseko was born in exile in 1967 and educated in Swaziland and Tanzania.
