The Founder

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Founder: Mbongeni Ngema

Ngema founded his company, Committed Artists after the success of Woza Albert, and began to work on, Asinamali, which he wrote and directed on his own with a company of five inexperienced young men whom he rigorously trained as actors. Asinamali, structured around a real-life event (a critical rent strike in a black township near Durban), played at the Market Theatre, toured South Africa, and then went on to the Roger Furman Theatre in New York City for its American premiere. Asinamali opened at the Lincoln Centre’s Festival of South African Theatre, toured the US, Europe and Japan, and returned to New York for a Broadway engagement. Asinamali also won numerous international awards and, for his direction, Ngema was nominated for a Tony Award, the most prestigious stage award in the world.

When Asinamali went out on tour, Ngema immediately began to work on his next production, Sarafina. This was to be a major musical about the indomitable spirit of the youth of South Africa, with a company of more than 20 youngsters whom Ngema trained as actors, singers and dancers. At this stage Ngema had developed as a major artist in the world, not only as a theatrical person, but also as a major musician, composer, arranger and record producer. Ngema composed the score for this musical with additional songs by Jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela. After an engagement at the Market Theatre, Sarafina travelled to the Lincoln Centre and then quickly moved to Broadway where it stayed for two years before embarking on a major US tour. In the meantime, Ngema assembled a second company in South Africa and sent them on a tour through Europe, Australia and Japan.

The Broadway production was nominated for five Tony Awards and the original cast recording was nominated for a Grammy, the world’s most prestigious award in the music industry. Sarafina also won eleven NAACP Image Awards, and a major documentary film was made about the production and the cast. Sarafina has now been adapted into a feature film starring Leleti Khumalo, and other key members of the original company, as well as Whoopi Goldberg, Miriam Makeba and Ngema himself.

Ngema has won several gold discs for his music. In 1994, Ngema released a song titled ‘African Solution’ which he wrote for the National Peace Committee with Mfiliseni Magubane. ‘African Solution’ won gold and platinum discs. All the proceeds went to the Peace Committee to help families who were affected by violence, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. The song is popularly known as “Siyi Nkatha, Siyi-ANC”.

He was also one of the vocal arrangers for The Lion King, Disney’s animated film. Ngema received the multi-platinum award forThe Lion King, for sales in excess of six million copies; he was subsequently nominated for a Grammy award for the movie.

In 2004, Mbongeni Ngema produced and directed a showcase at the Union Buildings with hundreds of prominent South African artists as part of the inauguration of former president Thabo Mbeki. In 2008, The Department of Economic Development and the KZN Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism assisted Mbongeni Ngema and Committed Artists to establish the first major 100% black South African owned recording and distribution company, entitled KZN Music Power House.

Several books have been written about Ngema and his works. The following are just a few of them:

Nothing Except Ourselves by Laura Jones (USA)
The Best of Mbongeni Ngema, The Man and his Music by Isabel Cooke (RSA)
Mbongeni Ngema’s ‘The Zulu’ by Isabel Cooke and Mbongeni Ngema (RSA)
An Investigation into Creation and Interpretation in Mbongeni Ngema’s Intra-cultural Theatre by NO Sabelo-Mkhulisi (University of Durban-Westville Thesis)
Sarafina – The Times, The Play, The Man

In 2009, Ngema produced Lion of the East, a blockbuster musical destined for Broadway in New York, and the West End in London. For the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa and 2014 Soccer World Cup in Brazil, Ngema is working on a motion picture and soccer musical to set hit the world, entitled ACE.