Lionel Ngakane

Lionel Ngakane was born on 17 July 1928 in Pretoria, in the Union of South Africa. His father was a teacher who set up a hostel together with the writer Alan Paton, author of Cry, the Beloved Country — a formative connection to the literary conscience of a divided land. Coming of age under the hardening of segregation, the young Ngakane joined the African National Congress Youth League and began his working life in Johannesburg's vibrant Black press, contributing to Drum and Zonk magazines around 1948 to 1950.

His path turned to cinema when he served as an actor and assistant on the 1951 film of Paton's novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. In the 1950s he went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he built a career as an actor on screen and stage while teaching himself the craft of direction. There he made his landmark short, Jemima and Johnny, inspired by the 1958 Notting Hill unrest — a tender fable of a Black girl and a white boy that won prizes at Venice and Rimini and is honoured as the first British feature-scale film directed by a Black African.

Ngakane became a tireless builder of an independent African cinema. He was a founding force behind the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), which he had originated as a lobbying body for African filmmakers, and he was among the founders of FESPACO, the great Panafrican film festival at Ouagadougou. He served as honorary president of FEPACI, championing the right of African peoples to tell their own stories on their own screens.

After apartheid fell, he returned home to South Africa in 1994, and in 2003 the nation honoured him with the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver. He died on 26 November 2003. May Lionel Ngakane be remembered as a pioneer who opened the door for African cinema and never stopped holding it open for those who followed.