Mbongeni Ngema

Early life and education

Mbongeni Ngema was born on 10 May 1955 in Verulam, Natal (near Durban), the third of seven children of Gladys Hadebe and Zwelikhethabantu Ngema. Zwelikhethabantu was a policeman who had been born in the village of eNhlwathi, in kwaHlabisa, outside Mtubatuba, and was stationed at Verulam. This was a predominantly Indian area, but there were many Black residents too. After the 1950 Group Areas Act, Verulam was reclassified for Indians only, so black Africans were relocated, including the policeman's children, to kwaHlabisa, to live with their grandfather. There Mbongeni and his siblings lived a rural life, getting up early to tend to the animals before school, which he attended until Standard Six.

He moved back to Verulam and then Durban to attend various high schools. In Umlazi, he attended Vukuzakhe High School, but dropped out in his final year and started playing music in local bands. He taught himself to play the guitar, inspired by his father.

Career

Ngema moved to Johannesburg, initially working in a fertilizer factory. There he played guitar backing for a workers' production, and was then asked to fill in for an actor who had fallen ill. He joined Gibson Kente's theatre company as a singer and trainee actor, and was exposed to the work of Stanislavski, Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski. He acted in local productions in the 1970s. He later became a playwright, screenwriter, and librettist.

He became well known in the 1980s after co-writing the comedy/drama Woza Albert! with fellow actor Percy Mtwa (1981; toured the U.S. 1984) and the multi-award-winning musical Sarafina! (premiered 1988). He wrote about and was known for his representation of the spirit of Black South Africans under the apartheid regime.

After founding his own theatre company, Committed Artists, Ngema trained young men who had no experience in acting. He wrote and in 1983 directed a production of the prison musical Asinamali, which, soon after its first performance in South Africa was raided by police and actors arrested. The story is based on a famous rent strike in a Durban township, and toured to New York City, premiering at the Roger Furman Theatre and being nominated for a Tony Award. The musical has been mounted around the world in various places, including Australia with an upcoming 2024 production in South Africa at the National Arts Festival. A film of the musical was released in 2017, co-written, directed by Ngema, in which he starred as Comrade Washington.

Sarafina! (1988), set in the Soweto uprising of 1976, was nominated for five Tony Awards, and was later also nominated for the Grammy Awards. The musical won 11 NAACP Image Awards, enjoyed a two-year run on Broadway, toured the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and was later adapted into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo, and Miriam Makeba.

Township Fever (1990), about a major workers' strike, was very successful, and was produced in the U.S. after a production at the Market Theatre. In the same year, Ngema co-wrote (with Duma ka Ndlovu) and directed his first American work, Sheila's Day, staged by African American theatre company Crossroads Theatre.

Ngema was one of the vocal arrangers for the Disney film The Lion King (1994), for which he earned a multi-platinum award for sales in excess of 6 million copies. Also in 1994, he co-wrote the song "African Solution" with Mfiliseni Magubane for the National Peace Committee, with all proceeds going to the committee to assist families affected by violence. The song was awarded gold and platinum discs.

Musical collaborations

Ngema participated in a song called "Take This Song", recorded with the reggae band Third World, co-writing the backing vocals.

In 2020 he released the album Freedom is Coming Tomorrow (Remix) with Emtee, Saudi, Gigi Lamayne, Tamarsha, Reason, Blaklez & DJ Machaba, and Third World, and a single, "Sophia" in the same year.

Honours and awards

1987: Tony Award – Asinamali! nominated for Best Direction of a Play

1988: Tony Award – Sarafina! received five nominations: Best Choreography, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best Actress in a Musical

1988: Grammy Award – Sarafina! nominated for a Grammy Award at 32nd Annual Grammy Awards

1987/8: NAACP Image Award, Best Stage Actress, for Khumalo in Sarafina!, and 10 other NAACP Awards

1994/5: Grammy Award – The Lion King, for vocal arrangements

1996: FNB-Vita Award for Best Supporting Actor, in a production of Asinamali at The Playhouse, Durban

1998: Inducted in the New York "Walk of Fame" in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Manhattan, New York City

2001: Name engraved on Durban City Hall entrance, alongside those of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Miriam Makeba, and other heroes of the liberation struggle

2004: Voted 92nd in the Top 100 Great South Africans

2008: Living Legend Award from the EThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, Durban

2013: Inaugural Recognition Award at SAMRO's Wawela Awards

2013: Lifetime Achievement Award at the inaugural Simon Mabhunu Sabela Film and Television Awards

2013: Awarded honorary doctorate by the University of Zululand

Selected productions

Ngema's productions, many of which are available on recording platforms and CDs, include:

Asinamali (1987)

Sarafina! (1987)

Magic at 4 AM (1993)

Mama (1996)

Sarafina! 2 (1997)

Nikeziwe (2005)

The House of Shaka (2006)

1906 Bhambada The Freedom Fighter

Lion of the East (2009)

The Zulu (2013)

Other notable music

In 1985 the album S'timela Sase Zola, with its title track of the same name, was one of his biggest hits in South Africa. The song was re-released on the 2002 album Jive Madlokovu!!! (2002), along with a music video featuring dancing by a large group of Zulu dancers.

In 2004, to celebrate 10 years of the new South Africa, he released Libuyile ("Songs of Freedom").

Other albums include Township Fever (1991), Magic At 4am (1993), The Best Of Mbongeni Ngema (1995), Woza My-Fohloza (1997), and Sarafina! (2004).

Committed Artists launched as a record label in 2005, whose first two CD releases were Ngema's My Baby, and Nikeziwe, a debut album for 23-year-old Jumaima Julius written by Ngema for her. He had heard her when she was working on a play at the South African State Theatre, and decided to mentor her.

Personal life

Ngema married Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema in February 1982. After they divorced, Nduneni-Ngema published a memoir in which she accused him of abuse, which included allegations of rape. During the marriage, he had a long-running affair with actress Leleti Khumalo, starting when she was still a teenager. He remained married, with Nduneni-Ngema acting as his business partner during the making of the film of Sarafina, in which Khumalo starred. After the film's release in October 1992, the couple divorced, and he married Khumalo.

Khumalo was 15 years younger than Ngema. They divorced in 2005 after she left him. She later called her marriage "disgusting", saying that she was not allowed any freedom and had "fourteen years of misery".

Death and legacy

Ngema died in a head-on car collision on 27 December 2023, while returning from a funeral in Lusikisiki, Eastern Cape; he was a passenger. Ngema was 68 at the time of his death.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa as well as the head of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, paid tribute to Ngema, saying that his "masterfully creative narration of our liberation struggle honoured the humanity of oppressed South Africans" and "exposed the inhumanity" of the apartheid regime. Opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters wrote that he was "more than just an artist; he was a cultural icon, and a beacon of hope during some of our darkest times". Actress Sophie Ndaba posted a tribute to him on Instagram.

Works about Ngema and his works include Nothing Except Ourselves by Laura Jones (1994).

Ngema was buried on 5 January 2024.

Controversies

In 1996, the planned 12-month run of Sarafina II was cancelled due to corruption allegations, which implicated Ngema as well as the Minister of Health Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. The play had been commissioned by the new post-apartheid government at a cost of R 14m (US$750,000), which the Public Protector, South Africa's anti-corruption watchdog, investigated. It found that the health department's funding was an "unauthorised expenditure", and its messaging about the HIV/AIDS epidemic was unsatisfactory. In 1997, Ngema was investigated for fraud concerning the spending of the R3m paid to him for the play.

In 2002 Ngema composed a song called "AmaNdiya", which was critical of how the Indian people of KwaZulu Natal were treating its employees and paying them a pittance. This song was banned from public broadcast by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa, after the SA Human Rights Commission lodged a complaint. The judgment said that the song "promoted hate in sweeping, emotive language against Indians as a race", and incited fear among Indians for their safety. Many people criticised the song and there was even a motion in parliament by ANC MP Alfred Maphalala to demand an apology. Nelson Mandela also called on Ngema to apologise for the lyrics.

In July 2019, Ngema was removed from his position as co-director of a production of Sarafina following allegations of sexual harassment and intimidation by a cast member.