Performers Percy Mtwa, left, and Mbongeni Ngema in a scene from “Woza Albert” on the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1981.

Ruphin Coudyzer/AP

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Ruphin Coudyzer/AP

Performers Percy Mtwa, left, and Mbongeni Ngema in a scene from “Woza Albert” on the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1981.

Ruphin Coudyzer/AP

JOHANNESBURG — Renowned South African playwright, producer and composer Mbongeni Ngema has died in a automotive crash on the age of 68, his household stated.

“Ngema was killed in a head-on car accident while returning from a funeral he was attending in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape this evening,” his household stated in a press release Wednesday. The celebrated playwright was a passenger within the automobile concerned within the crash.

He was finest identified for creating the hit Sarafina! which first premiered on Broadway in 1988. It was tailored right into a musical drama starring Whoopi Goldberg in 1992, changing into a world success and was nominated for the Tony and Grammy Awards.

Sarafina! informed the story of a younger pupil and the way she impressed her friends to struggle in opposition to racial segregation in apartheid South Africa after her instructor was thrown in jail.

Apartheid was an institutionalized system that discriminated in opposition to non-whites and ensured South Africa was dominated by the minority white inhabitants from 1948 until the early Nineties.

Ngema’s physique of labor included the lauded theatre manufacturing Woza Albert, which first confirmed in 1981 and went on to win greater than 20 awards internationally. The political satire explored the second coming of Jesus Christ as a black man, returning to South Africa as a black man.

Tributes to the famous playwright have been pouring in.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa praised the late Ngema in a press release.

“The many productions he created or to which he contributed inspired resilience and pride among us as fellow South Africans and took South Africa and our continent into the theatres, homes and consciousness of millions of people around the world,” Ramaphosa stated Thursday.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress occasion and one among its greatest rivals, the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters each conveyed their condolences.

The ANC stated in a press release: “He was a globally acclaimed playwright, composer and producer. We have lost a true legend, a doyen, and a genuine ambassador of theatre.”

The Leftist occasion described him as “more than just an artist; he was a cultural icon, and a beacon of hope during some of our darkest times”.

Zizi Kodwa, South African minister of sports activities, arts and tradition Zizi Kodwa stated in a tweet Negma’s loss was important to the South African artwork scene including that his work “touched and moved audiences around the world and made an important contribution in telling the South African story.”