Anton Jeftha Toasts To Afrocentric Storytelling and Cross-cultural Collaborations

Like much of the modern world, Africa is a vibrant tapestry of ideas, each thread offering a unique perspective on life. Crafting  a contemporary African story, even for a local creative, extends beyond working within familiar boundaries; it involves navigating diverse cultural and geographical landscapes, capturing the rich, multifaceted African experience while staying rooted in tradition yet aiming for global resonance. Though this may seem challenging, many African creatives have successfully balanced cross-cultural appeal with authenticity. One such talent is thirty-eight-year-old Anton David Jeftha, a dynamic South African actor, model and voice-over artist whose impactful work in film and television spans South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, Nigeria, and beyond.

On the Google Meet call, Jeftha shows up wearing a dark-colored hoodie and a gray baseball cap with an orange “NY” logo on the front. His background features a wall with artwork depicting a figure, possibly of historical significance, though details are partially obscured by Anton’s seated posture. He is in Nigeria to work on three film projects with Nigerian YouTube sensation Ruth Kadiri, following a film they did together back in South Africa. After initial network glitches that impede communication for the first few minutes, the conversation gains momentum from a preliminary exchange of pleasantries. Besides attending a beach party on the day of his arrival, he confesses, he has not had much time to explore the environment. You can tell he enjoys relaxation but also does not take his work for granted.

Jeftha visited Nigeria for the first time in 2022 for work with filmmaker Jade Osiberu on Sugar Rush 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2019 crime action comedy film  directed by Kayode Kasum.  With that, he announced his presence in the Nigerian film industry. Months ago, Ruth Kadiri reached out to him about a project she wanted to have him on, a film she wanted to shoot in Cape Town within a short period of time, to which he acquiesced.  Things progressed quickly afterwards, with  Kadiri arriving with her crew, and principal photography kick-starting in earnest. The project came out as Bare To Beauty, a simple romantic drama that addresses love, deceit and betrayal of trust. In the film, he plays the character of Ray, a conman who pretends to be in love with Cassie to swindle her of her inheritance, only to be exposed by William, Cassie’s old-time friend. The five-cast film, executive-produced by Ruth Kadiri, produced by Precious Kadiri, and directed by Okey Ifeanyi, fostered a close-knit, family-like bond among the cast and crew. This experience laid the foundation for Jeftha’s ongoing collaboration with Kadiri and her team.

Since his rise in the film industry about fifteen years ago, Jeftha has blossomed on the screens, bringing charm unbridled confidence to every character he embodies—with one of his notable roles being SJ on MNET’s telenovela The Legacy. Growing up in the Cape Flats, an environment susceptible to violence, he developed a passion for performance arts and hoped to make a living out of it. In his high school days, he participated in musicals and other stage productions, a period that solidified his resolve to find stability in an otherwise volatile profession. Yielding to the pressure of his parents who wanted a sense of security for their son, he studied Finance, Economics and Information Systems, bagging a degree at the University of the Western Cape. He had already enrolled for and started his postgraduate studies when he realized the need to abandon the programme and focus solely on his acting career.  He combined this with a lot of day jobs that he took for income. It took him about three years to get his first proper role on an international show titled Dominion in Cape Town. His performance on the show, then, drew the attention of people to him, as he garnered fame. Around that time, he became the face of Outsurance Life, the country’s biggest insurance company, for three years, representing the brand in numerous television commercials. Then, along came other Cape Town-filmed Hollywood projects, such as Homeland, Jamillah and Aladdin, and Death Race Inferno—steadying the limelight he had been thrust into.

While his influence in South Africa grew, Jeftha kept his fire for international glory burning, his identity accompanying him like a badge wherever he made his mark. In 2016, he relocated to Los Angeles, the US, seeking greater opportunities in film and television, while maintaining strong ties to his hometown in  Durbanville, Western Cape.

Creative evolution, Jeftha believes, is not a one-off, monolithic procedure. Instead, it involves multiple, constant breakouts, including both seemingly small and major ones, a consistent drive towards a sustainable career. When an actor delivers a remarkable performance in a project, he becomes the talk of the town. But the euphoria is short-lived. The actor has to move on from the moment, embrace more roles across different projects, and work towards building a sizable oeuvre to avoid fizzling out. Reflecting on his journey, Jeftha is grateful for his achievements, the ability to earn a decent living in his chosen field, and he remains focused on steering his career towards new horizons.

When asked how his experience on South African productions compares to that of Hollywood projects, Jeftha explains that the main differences are budget and attention to detail. In Hollywood, character preparation involves extensive support, with professionals guiding actors physically and mentally throughout the process to achieve the desired outcome. Although Cape Town has the infrastructure to host large-scale projects, local filmmakers often lack the financial resources to match Hollywood’s execution. Hollywood’s substantial funding allows for meticulous care in crafting a well-structured piece of art.

History is crucial to the worldview of a people, informing how they perceive themselves and relate to other groups in society. In Africa, the diverse and unique historical experiences of the cultural groups ultimately seep into their storytelling culture, often dictating the kinds of content they consume and project to the world. Nigeria, with over four hundred major and minor ethnicities, enjoys the privilege of cultural interchange and hybridity, particularly in cosmopolitan centres like Lagos, the country’s entertainment capital, which, owing to its benign landscape, postures as a “no man’s land”. As a result, Nollywood, a multimillion-dollar industry, opens its arms freely, admitting creatives regardless of ethnical affiliations and curating content that caters to collective taste. Jeftha believes the same cannot be exactly said for South Africa. South Africa’s history with racial politics and Apartheid persists in the post-independence era, with the population and infrastructural architecture of the country still conceived along racial lines of White, Colored (multiracial), and Black communities. Jeftha identifies as colored—far from what is White in his country—and says that based on a recent DNA report, his ancestry is a mix of West African, East African, Asian and German influences.

Jeftha recognizes how differently the Nigerian and South African film industries operate, a reality mostly occasioned by an imbalance in financing and distinct audience expectations. He acknowledges the prolificity of Nollywood, compared to South Africa and other film industries on the continent. But he also admits the role of history in shaping audience taste and expectations. In South Africa, with a smaller population than Nigeria, diverse cultures, races, and lifestyles create varied tastes. The legacy of segregation, he says, means that white audiences often do not really engage with works reflecting black experiences, such as those of the Zulu or Xhosa, due to a lack of familiarity with their lived realities or languages.

What matters as a continent with stories to tell, Jeftha agrees, is uniting amidst differences. With more collaborations between African artists and filmmakers, from music to film and other aspects of popular culture,  the continent gets better representation on the international scene. On Jeftha’s end, being in Nigeria proves his respect for the film culture here. So, when he says he wants to try and bridge the gap between Africans in general in order for the people to tell more African and Afrocentric stories, you know he is not bluffing about this long-term, probably lifelong quest, considering the steps he has taken so far. 

Regarding how the Western film ecosystem and media engage with African stories, Jeftha says there is a gradual shift in priority—with the West, appearing to have run out of  original stories, now setting their gaze on Africa and her social impact. Africa boasts an untapped space with millions of untold stories, capable of triggering what Jeftha calls “an organic type of awakening”. This lofty projection already permeates Afrobeats, a thriving musical style and philosophy springing from West Africa. Afrobeats artists, such as Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido, Rema and Omah Lay, enjoy unprecedented global attention, recording milestones particularly in the hearts of America and Europe. From an individualistic assessment, however, Jeftha is not resting on his laurels: he dreams of playing a major international action role, such as a soldier or fighter, that requires a great deal of physicality to execute, and keeps a mental note of filmmakers he would love to work with.

“At the moment, I’m very happy being at home and on our continent,” a lit face complements these words of Jeftha’s. He says he has spent more time in Africa lately, jumping from one project to another, and is not as keen on spending much time in the US as he used to be. He says he might go to the US next year for the premiere of a global Netflix production he recently got off. Off work, he spends time with his family, including his fiancée and her dog. He often hits the gym, goes hiking, and engages in other fun activities—which, for him, are steps towards living a balanced life, a therapeutic comeback from the mental and spiritual enervation that accompanies his career.