Thembi Mtshali

Thembi Mtshali-Jones, born on 7 November 1949 in Sabhoza, a village near Ulundi, Durban, South Africa, is a South African actress, singer, and playwright. She grew up in KwaMashu Township, where she completed her education. Her career has spanned stage, television, film, and radio across South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and beyond.

Mtshali-Jones's performing career began when Welcome Msomi recognized her talent and cast her in his original production Umabatha. She subsequently joined the musical Ipi Tombi, taking on the lead female role of Mama Tembu. The production toured internationally, including engagements in the West End and on Broadway, where Mtshali-Jones appeared in 1977. Following those international tours, she traveled to the United States to pursue her musical career further, where she met musicians Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba and toured Europe and Africa with them for several years.

In 1987, Mtshali-Jones returned to South Africa and joined the Market Theatre, where she worked with director Janice Honeyman on Black and White Follies. During this period she also co-wrote and performed the stage play Have You Seen Zandile alongside Gcina Mhlophe and Maralin Vanrenen, earning a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for her work in that production. She subsequently co-wrote Eden and Other Places and Women of Africa with Barney Simon, and toured the United Kingdom and the United States in Malcolm Purkey's musical Marabi.

Her television career gained wide recognition beginning with the 1986 sitcom Sgudi 'Snaysi, in which she played the role of Thoko. In 1988, she made her first cinema appearance as the female lead in Mapantsula, a film recognized as Best New Film at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In 2002, she joined the television sitcom Stokvel in the role of Hazel, a performance for which she received an International Emmy Award nomination in 2004. That same year she was also nominated in the category of African Excellence in Entertainment and Arts at the Tribute Achievers Awards Ceremony.

In 1999, Mtshali-Jones co-wrote the one-woman play A Woman in Waiting, drawn from her own life, which was performed at Joseph Papp Theatre in New York and later won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival. The production subsequently played at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London in 2001 and traveled to South Africa, Tunisia, Canada, the United States, and Bermuda. She won the Best Actress Award at the Carthage Festival in Tunisia in 1999 in connection with this work, and later adapted the play for BBC Radio 4, receiving the Sony Gold Award in 2002.

Also in 1999, Mtshali-Jones sang Happy Birthday for then-President Nelson Mandela at his 80th birthday celebration in Washington, D.C., a performance broadcast live on CNN. Her residency at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. took place in 1998, and she held a further residency at the University of Louisville in 2004. The Mayor of Louisville named her an Honorary Citizen, the Kentucky Senate passed a vote of thanks in her honor, and the Governor of Kentucky awarded her the title of Honorary Kentucky Colonel.

In 2006, Mtshali-Jones joined the international production Truth in Translation, directed by Michael Lessac, which opened in Rwanda before touring the United States, Europe, and Africa, and played at the Baxter Theatre Centre in 2007. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal Province in 2009, followed by a Lifetime Award from the Arts and Culture Trust in 2015. In November 2019, she was honored with the Living Legend Award at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina and starred in the production Mother to Mother, based on a novel by Sindiwe Magona, at the same festival. Magona later wrote the biographical book Theatre Road: My Story, released to coincide with Mtshali-Jones's 70th birthday.

In addition to her performance work, Mtshali-Jones has served as an Associate Teaching Artist at Global Arts Corps in Kosovo and as a trainer in Cambodia. She has one daughter, Phumzile, from her first marriage. She later married Emrys Jones, a business analyst for a London-based oil company, whom she met when he attended a performance of A Woman in Waiting. They lived together for 17 years until his death following a heart attack in 2016.