BUHLE NGABA
Writer, speaker, actress and arts activist
Buhle Ngaba is part of the new crop of artists breathing new life into the arts and culture space. A multi-award winning South African actress, writer, speaker and arts activist, she studied Acting and Contemporary Performance at the University of Leeds, in the UK, before going on to perform in the world premiere of John Kani’s play, Missing, at the Baxter Theatre, in South Africa. Later, she went on an international tour with the production.
In 2016, Buhle was awarded the Brett Goldin Bursary, which enabled her to study further at The Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK. Armed with new knowledge and skills, she was inspired to write her first onewoman play titled Swan Song. In 2017, she won two South African “Kanna” Theatre Awards for this production.
Her other achievements include making the list of Mail and Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans in 2016, and being voted Number 1 by the public in the Superbalist Top 100 Entrepreneur List (2016).
Buhle’s creativity is not limited to the arts and culture space: she’s also passionate about promoting diversity in children’s literature, and developing the love for storytelling among the youth. Her book, The Girl Without a Sound, has been translated into all of South Africa’s 11 official languages.
Buhle has been invited to speak at schools, workshops, and corporate events around the world. In 2019, she was invited to participate in the international Writing Program’s Women’s Creative Mentorship Project at the University of Iowa. While attending the programme, she began the process of collating research with the intention of writing a new novel based on the life of her great-aunt, Ruth Mompati. In the same year, she was awarded the Rising Light Award at the Mbokodo Awards for Women in the Arts.
In addition, Buhle has recently been awarded the 2020/2021 artists Pro-Helvita Swiss Studio residency, as well as the fellowship at The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape. She’s also the 2021 artist resident at the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre for Shakespeare, Transnationalism and Multilingualism, where she has been recently cast as Ophelia in the South African writers and directors’ online adaptation of Hamlet.