Nomzamo Mbatha has the kind of fame that results in endless selfie requests from the star-struck fan base pretty much everywhere she goes.
Currently a respectful standoff with fans is taking place at Teta Mari, the Illovo eatery which arguably has the best hot dogs in Joburg.
With her powerful headgirl energy, she enforces a healthy set of boundaries born of years spent beaming directly into people’s living rooms on Isibaya.
She confirms that she was indeed the head girl in both primary and high school where she was roped into all sorts of public-facing children’s parliamentary roles, representing the school and the municipality with her flair for public speaking – and where expectations for her impending career in public life was a given.
Nomzamo may have been the Dux scholar but it was by no means an easy childhood. Her parents divorced when she was young‚ her father died shortly after, she grew up with her paternal grandmother taking responsibility for the running of their small household, practically parenting herself.
She did a brilliant job, scoring a full accounting scholarship to UCT where she knuckled down and seemed set for a corporate career, heading straight to the C-suite.
I always had a feeling that I would do something really special with my life.
— Nomzamo Mbatha
“It’s funny because everyone at school would be like, ‘You’re gonna be the first female president’. But my teachers would also be like, ‘You need to go into television’. And I just thought television is not going to pay the bills! Because even growing up, it was never the career that was known to have big fat paycheck.”
And I knew that I wanted a really beautiful life. To have a beautiful life, you’ve got to make money, and to make money, you need to make the right career choices. My accounting teacher, who I am still close to, encouraged me to pursue chartered accounting.”
But work during the holidays at Old Mutual for the scholarship was an eye opener. “It didn’t feel right at all. And I just knew it’s not what I want to do - I don’t want to be staring at my computer the whole day. I love people. I want to interact with people in a meaningful way.”
Her older sister’s untimely death when she was sitting her finals at the end of first year, then followed by her grandmother’s passsing before she started her second year was life changing.
“It’s my second year of varsity, and it’s hectic. BCom Accounting - I mean, I had beautiful moments, I had great friends. I made a community for myself, and it was wonderful, but it was really hard.
“In fourth year, I just watched this commencement speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford and something clicked inside of me and I said alright, whether I graduate at the end of this year or not, my journey in Cape Town is done.”
In the June holidays of that year she was back in Durban with her then boyfriend who persuaded her to audition as a MTV presenter.
“He said, ‘MTV is looking for a new presenter. And I was like, ‘Yeah, what does that have to do with me?’ And he said, ‘You need to enter.’ I said, ‘There’s no way. I am not cool. I don’t have cool clothes, and I don’t want to embarrass myself, and he was like, ‘No, you’re gonna be so good. I believe in you’.
To her surprise, she got through to the finals.
“I was in the top three, and I get a call. ‘Hi, I’m so and so, I’m one of the producers for a new show that we’re doing. It’s going to be on an M-Net channel, Mzansi Magic, and I said, ‘I don’t act’, and they said, ‘But you speak Zulu, KZN Zulu, and that’s what we’re looking for’.
So we do the finals in Johannesburg, I fly back to Cape Town, write my final exams, and the night before the audition I watch these amazing performances on YouTube compilations because I’m flying the next morning to Johannesburg to audition. I have no real desire to be on TV. It’s fun, but I’m not thinking to myself, this is my dream.“
The casting director called that afternoon with the news that she had got the role on Isibaya.
I said, ‘thank you’. And he said, ‘You don’t sound excited.‘ I said, ‘I am just happy I have a job’, and then I called home and said, ‘Hey guys, you know Steve Jobs says, ‘If you’re going to drop out of something, drop into something’, I got a job’.
“I said, ‘thank you’. And he said, ‘You don’t sound excited‘. I said, ‘I am just happy I have a job’, and then I called home and said, ‘Hey guys, you know Steve Jobs says, ‘If you’re going to drop out of something, drop into something’, I got a job’.”
She explains the impact of Isibaya.
“It was a launch pad, the gear shift. No one could have ever expected that show to be such a cultural phenomenon and I would have never expected myself to see my face on taxis roaming around South Africa, on billboards - and now you know you’re the new ‘It’ girl, so much drama around - it changed my life.
“Will Smith says it really well in his book, when he describes what a movie star is, what a TV star is, and what a musician is. Music goes everywhere with people, and that’s why musicians become so globally renowned. But television is in people’s homes, so that’s why you feel so familiar to them, so being a household name comes with being a television star.”
Her award winning co-producing role as Nandi in Shaka iLembe, film roles in Hollywood with Will Smith and starring in Bruce Willis’s last film, her United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ambassadorship. running her Lighthouse Foundation – which she started during the pandemic, initially to help women entrepreneurs with business skills – as well as a return to university to complete her degree, or landing on the Time 100 cover this year, all point to a driven, inspirational woman whose early promise has repeatedly borne fruit. But she is not complacent.
“I always had a feeling that I would do something really special with my life. Growing up was really tough, it was me and grandmother really, so to be able to experience those kinds of things, and for things to work out in the way that they’ve worked out, it would be very pompous and vain and conceited of me to think that it was just of my own hand – there’s no way.
“So even with all the things that happen, and the joy that I feel from these things, yes, I get to meet all these incredible people, and I get to do the work that I do – my humanitarian work, or working with Lorna Scott the founder of Inveroche gin (she is working with the brand as their cultural curator), it all just feels like I am guided and helped by something much more brilliant than me. And that’s why everywhere I go with every sort of experience and achievement, whether I’m doing school talks in South Africa or speaking on global stages, I get to work in these incredible spaces and with these wonderful people – and just feel that I am a small particle in the greater play of things.”
“There’s a reason why I believe in doing good, and I believe in receiving good because it’s just the testament of my life that good things will come, and I’ve got to stay the course. I show up, whether it feels good or it doesn’t feel good, show up and the good things will come”.
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