Ongezwa Mbele
Ongezwa is a poet, storyteller, theatre-maker and researcher. She is currently a drama and performance lecturer at the University of KwaZulu Natal and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cape Town.
Her theatre, poetry, and storytelling skills and ventures are centred in working with young people and children. She tells indigenous stories to children and adults who are interested in stories. She has facilitated theatre programmes/projects with young people from the township and incarcerated people.
She brings all these experiences when she lectures. In her engagement with the students she attempts to have a dialogical and performance practice based exchange. She believes that her students are her teachers. She learns from her students' contribution in class and beyond the classroom.
For her Ph.D. research, she intends to analyse the representation of violence on stage done by township youth as a means of building and archiving the theatre and storytelling performance efforts in the margins of South Africa.
At the heart of the matter, Ongezwa is a daughter, sister, cousin, niece and aunt from a Black working-class family.