Ntokozo Mbuli

 

Managing Director, Sugar Bean Pictures


Ntokozo Mbuli is a television producer, writer and managing director of Johannesburg-based television production house Sugar Bean Pictures. She is known for being the face of environmental and wildlife programming and the brains behind some of South Africa's award-winning content across genres. Her equally successful on-screen career has accompanied her career behind the camera. 

A multi-award-winning executive producer, a 2020 Eisenhower Global Fellow and an International Emmy Awards Jury member, Ntokozo infuses her work with her passion and the irresistible urge to fill the missing pieces in South Africa's history and cultural story. She believes deeply that South Africa's colonial and apartheid history stripped its people of their cultures and languages, leading to a modern-day country that gives what is Black less respect than what is white. This is a plague faced by many countries in the world. She also believes that the history, science, and engineering of Black societies should be elevated to equal their western counterparts. Her flagship projects include SABC 2's hybrid nature/culture series, Imvelogy, and a medical drama series set in a township hospital, Vutha, both of which aired in 2021.

She has received the Mail & Guardian Greening the Future "Future Leaders" award (2013), the WESSA (Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa) National Award for Individuals (2015), and a South African Film and TV Awards (SAFTA) nomination for Best TV Presenter.

She is also the ambassador for the Rory Hensman Conservation and Research Unit and a board member of conservation organisations, Pangolin Africa and the Lapalala Wilderness School.

Ntokozo has a special interest in African oral history from the perspective of the Africans, the meeting point between culture and science, and subjects centred around the African Diaspora.