Mbongeni Ngema

Mbongeni Ngema was born on 10 May 1955 in Verulam, Natal, near Durban, South Africa, the third of seven children of Gladys Hadebe and Zwelikhethabantu Ngema, a policeman originally from the village of eNhlwathi in kwaHlabisa. Following the reclassification of Verulam under the 1950 Group Areas Act, Ngema and his siblings were relocated to kwaHlabisa to live with their grandfather, where he attended school through Standard Six and helped tend animals before classes each day. He later returned to Verulam and then Durban, attending Vukuzakhe High School in Umlazi before dropping out in his final year to play music with local bands, teaching himself guitar in the manner of his father.

Ngema relocated to Johannesburg, where he initially worked in a fertilizer factory. His entry into theatre came through playing guitar for a workers' production and subsequently filling in for an ailing actor. He joined Gibson Kente's theatre company as a singer and trainee actor, where he was introduced to the work of Stanislavski, Peter Brook, and Jerzy Grotowski, and performed in local productions throughout the 1970s.

His international profile rose sharply in the 1980s. In 1981 he co-wrote the comedy-drama Woza Albert! with fellow actor Percy Mtwa, a production that toured the United States in 1984. After founding his own theatre company, Committed Artists, Ngema wrote and directed Asinamali in 1983, a prison musical based on a rent strike in a Durban township. Shortly after its South African premiere, police raided a performance and arrested the actors. The production subsequently toured to New York City, premiering at the Roger Furman Theatre and earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play. A film adaptation, co-written and directed by Ngema, in which he also starred as Comrade Washington, was released in 2017.

Ngema's most celebrated Broadway work was Sarafina!, a musical set against the backdrop of the 1976 Soweto uprising, co-written with Hugh Masekela and premiering on Broadway in 1988. The production received five Tony Award nominations, including Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical, both of which Ngema received individually. Sarafina! also earned a Grammy Award nomination at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, won eleven NAACP Image Awards, ran for two years on Broadway, and toured the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan. It was later adapted into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo, and Miriam Makeba. As a librettist, Ngema also wrote the musical soundtrack for the 1992 film version.

In 1990, Ngema's Township Fever, centered on a major workers' strike, was produced in the United States following a run at the Market Theatre. That same year he co-wrote and directed Sheila's Day with Duma ka Ndlovu for the African American theatre company Crossroads Theatre, marking his first American-originated work. In 1995, Mama, a musical about Soweto gangsters produced by The Playhouse Company, toured Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. That year Ngema also presented The Best of Mbongeni Ngema at The Playhouse, releasing an accompanying CD and video. In 1995 he created Sarafina II, a musical addressing the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, which debuted in early 1996.

Ngema served as one of the vocal arrangers for the Disney film The Lion King in 1994, earning a multi-platinum award for sales exceeding six million copies. Also in 1994, he co-wrote the song "African Solution" with Mfiliseni Magubane for the National Peace Committee, with all proceeds directed toward families affected by violence; the song received gold and platinum discs. In 1997 he composed and produced the solo album Woza My Fohloza, toured South Africa to showcase it, and was appointed a visiting lecturer at the University of Zululand, subsequently producing the first CD released by the university's music department. That same year he wrote, composed, choreographed, and directed Maria–Maria, which premiered in Wiesbaden before touring Germany and Austria and opening at The Playhouse. The City of Durban commissioned Ngema to compose a song marking the new millennium in 2000, and in 2003 he was appointed artistic director for the Cricket World Cup.

In 1998, Ngema was inducted into the New York Walk of Fame in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Manhattan. In 2001, during the African Renaissance Festival, his name was engraved on the entrance of Durban's City Hall alongside those of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Miriam Makeba. The South African government commissioned him in 2006 to write 1906 Bhambada The Freedom Fighter, commemorating the centenary of the Zulu Rebellion against the settler government in Natal, and in 2009 Mpumalanga Province commissioned Lion of the East to mark the 50th anniversary of the Potato Strike in Bethal. His 2013 play The Zulu received standing ovations at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and toured Europe before returning to South Africa for runs at the Market Theatre and The Playhouse.

Among his musical collaborations, Ngema participated in the recording "Take This Song" with the reggae band Third World, co-writing the backing vocals, and in 2020 released the album Freedom is Coming Tomorrow (Remix) alongside Emtee, Saudi, Gigi Lamayne, Tamarsha, Reason, Blaklez, DJ Machaba, and Third World, as well as the single "Sophia." He also arranged music for artists including Michael Bolton on the soundtrack for the 1989 film Sing, and composed the album Stimela SaseZola, at the time his largest-selling album in South Africa.

Ngema died on 27 December 2023 in a car accident.