Lionel Ngakane

Lionel Ngakane was born on the seventeenth of July 1928 at Pretoria, in the Union of South Africa, the son of Reverend Edward Ngakane — a South African Wesleyan Methodist minister and African National Congress organiser — and Sophia Ngakane. He was raised in the segregated African Township community of Sophiatown at the family relocation in the principal early-1930s post-1923 Native Urban Areas Act period.

He completed his secondary education at the Adams College at Amanzimtoti in 1947 — the principal mission-educational institution for the principal South African Black-mission-Christian-and-African-National-Congress elite of the principal pre-1948-Nationalist-victory period.

He was cast in 1949 by the principal British-South-African co-production Cry, the Beloved Country at Johannesburg under the principal British director Zoltán Korda — and emigrated with the principal Cry, the Beloved Country production to London in 1950 at the principal post-1948-Nationalist-victory South African Black-political-exile period.

He lived in London from 1950 to 1994 in the principal post-Nationalist South African exile community — and worked across the 1950s and 1960s as an actor in approximately twenty British feature films, television series, and BBC radio dramas.

He directed his first short film, Vukani-Awake!, in 1962 — a thirty-eight-minute documentary on the principal post-Sharpeville-massacre South African anti-apartheid international community.

He directed Jemima and Johnny in 1966 — a thirty-three-minute Notting Hill drama of an interracial child-friendship across the principal post-1958 Notting Hill race-riot London period. Jemima and Johnny was the first British feature film directed by a Black African filmmaker and won the Venice Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival of September 1966 in the principal short-film category.

He co-founded with the principal Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (placed in this archive) and the principal Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb-Makharam (placed in this archive) the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) at Algiers in October 1969 — at the Pan-African Cultural Festival of Algiers — and held the principal FEPACI South African vice-presidency from 1969 to 1995.

He directed approximately fifteen further short documentaries across the 1970s through the 1990s — including the principal documentary portraits of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 in the principal Nelson Mandela: The Man and His Country of 1989 and the principal post-1989 South African political-transition documentaries.

He returned to South Africa in 1994 at the principal post-1994 democratic-elections South African post-apartheid-exile-return period.

He died at Johannesburg on the twenty-fifth of November 2003 of complications of a stroke, at seventy-five.

He is honored here as the director of Jemima and Johnny.