Here’s what to look out for.

The installations

The exhibition’s most compelling offering has always been its designer-led installations, and 2026 delivers on that front. Ten x Ten brings together 100 design objects from across Africa and beyond, tracing the connections between makers, materials and cultures in a format that rewards slow looking rather than quick browsing. Nearby, 100% Local keeps the focus where it belongs at an African design exhibition: on the makers, materials and ideas emerging from this continent.

FloodLight, created in collaboration with acclaimed lighting designer Martin Döller, makes the case for light as a design material in its own right. Some installations at a design show leave you thinking differently about your own home. FloodLight is likely to be one of them.

The Lexus presence

The Lexus Recharge Garage, designed by interior and product designer Tshepo Sealetsa, is built around stillness rather than spectacle: neutral tones, gentle lighting and refined textures that translate the Lexus RZ 450e’s sense of flow into a spatial experience. Rather than centering the vehicle, Sealetsa has built an environment that communicates the same values through material and atmosphere alone.

The Lexus VIP lounge is available exclusively to guests of the Lexus concierge service.

The Soft Life Kitchen and Design Pods

In Moments of Attention with Woolworths, the Soft Life Kitchen by NUMU and the Soft Life Design Pods by Arcpop, Styleast, Karoo Baba and Constantia Fabrics, the focus is on domesticity: material choice, tactility and spatial arrangement brought together in an intimate, considered way. For anyone renovating or furnishing a home, this is the section most likely to generate ideas that translate directly into real decisions.

The programming

The talks and workshops are worth building time around. Future Talks, presented by Oggie, brings leading voices in interiors, architecture, craft and materials together across all four days, with attendees able to earn two CPD points. The @home Cooking Studio, built by Sprung Outdoor and featuring chefs Zola Nene and Lerato Maleswena, demonstrates how thoughtful kitchen design functions in practice rather than simply in theory.

The Discovery Bank DIY Studio opens the floor to practical building and making sessions with hands-on guidance, insights from interior designer Bridget Meier on current home décor trends, and advice from Angela Glover of Discovery Home Loans on financing renovations and home projects.

For those who prefer to leave with something tangible, the Capitec Design Market brings independent makers, small studios and established brands together in a format designed for serious design shoppers.

The practical details

Decorex Cape Town runs from June 25 to 28 at the CTICC. Doors open at 10am and close at 6pm daily. Tickets are available online at register.decorex.co.za/cape-town and at the door.

Adult tickets are R150 online and R160 on site. Pensioners and students pay R120. Children between 12 and 16 pay R50. Under 12s enter free. VIP tickets are R400.

For those who cannot make Cape Town, Decorex Joburg follows at the Sandton Convention Centre from July 30 to August 2.

Wanted

From day one, the powerhouse restaurateur was a world builder. For her, the table was always more than a place to eat; it was a space where texture, memory, family, and ritual converged. And over the past two decades, as the founder and CEO of Tashas Group has built an empire of restaurants stretching from South Africa to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UK, she has developed an instinctive understanding of the objects people return to again and again. Tashas is not about ornamental pieces reserved for special occasions, but the plates, glasses, and linens that feel good in the hand and endure the rhythms of daily life.

Now, with the launch of Tashas Home in Sea Point, those objects have taken their rightful place as part of the Tashas universe — from the restaurant table into a retail space of their own.

Located inside the Art Deco residence Dolce Vita on Regent Road, the store feels like an obvious extension of the Tashas world. There is the same understated elegance that has long defined the group’s restaurants: warm textures, restrained styling, and an atmosphere that encourages lingering. The space is intentionally small and pared back, allowing the objects to speak for themselves.

What makes Tashas Home compelling is that this is not a celebrity lifestyle brand conjured from mood boards and trend forecasts. Every piece in the collection has earned its place through use. Much of the crockery, glassware, and linen has been sourced from or used in the group’s restaurants over the years, surviving the pressures of high-volume hospitality while retaining a sense of beauty and refinement.

The collection currently draws from three of the group’s concepts: Tashas, Avli, and Arlecchino, each with its own distinctive mood. The Tashas edit is crisp and timeless, built around white porcelain, classic glassware, and immaculate linen tablecloths that evoke relaxed Mediterranean lunches and long breakfasts that stretch into the afternoon.

Avli, inspired by the group’s Athenian-influenced restaurants in Dubai and Bahrain, introduces richer textures and more tactile finishes. There are silver-toned serving pieces, artisanal bowls, and statement platters that speak to generous shared dining and old-world hospitality.

Arlecchino, meanwhile, injects a playful Italian spirit into the mix, with characterful pieces designed to bring personality and warmth to the table.

And in true Tashas’ style, there is an almost obsessive attention to proportion and practicality throughout. Plates are selected for balance and weight. Glasses are chosen for clarity and comfort in the hand. Materials range from porcelain and bone china to stoneware and earthenware, while the South African-made linens prioritise durability as much as softness and elegance.

The store also offers a glimpse into the broader Tashas universe. Alongside tableware are the group’s published titles, including tashas Café Classics, tashas Inspired, and Galaxy Bar Cocktails, presented beside cocktail accessories and striking blue glassware in a dedicated bar section.

What emerges is not simply a homeware store but an articulation of Sideris’s broader philosophy: that good design should be lived with rather than admired from afar.

tashashome.com

From the June issue of Wanted, 2026.

Of course, the idea of high-end brands segueing into new areas of experiential luxury is nothing new. Brands such as Range Rover and Ferrari have expanded into luxury fashion. Bulgari and Armani have entered the hotel industry, and an array of luxury fashion and fragrance houses now offer everything from fine-dining restaurants to upscale tea rooms. Louis Vuitton, not satisfied with their Café V locations and the restaurant in Osaka, expanded their presence at Doha’s airport in 2025 with the Louis Vuitton Lounge by Yannick Alléno.

But on our African doorstep it’s been fascinating to observe hotel resort brands flex into a world of new travel experiences.

Since its founding in 2011, LUX* Resorts and Hotels has expanded to operate more than a dozen properties worldwide. Beyond its well-established presence in Mauritius — where most South Africans will have encountered the brand — Réunion, Zanzibar, the Maldives and China, new openings have been announced in the UAE, Vietnam, Bali and Oman. They have now set their sights on southern Africa with plans for two complementary destinations that tap into a proven safari circuit.

LUX* Xinii Mababe in Botswana’s Okavango Delta will be the first on the continent and is set to open in early 2027, offering a “futuristic, high-end safari camp with about 26 lodges, designed to blend luxury with the wildlife landscape,” says Carlos Luis, Sales & Business Development: South Africa & Africa for The Lux Collective. A second safari-style property — LUX* Xinii Victoria Falls — is set to open in Zimbabwe in 2028.

“The expansion into Africa and the safari space is a natural evolution of the LUX* brand,” says Luis, who highlights the “experience-led approach at each resort” as key to the LUX* offering.

“Today’s luxury traveller is seeking depth of experience, connection to nature, wellness, culture and a sense of discovery, not just traditional resort luxury,” says Luis. “Safari destinations offer a compelling platform to deliver all of this, while allowing LUX* to reinterpret the safari experience through its own lens of design, comfort, wellbeing and meaningful guest moments… Africa isn’t a departure from the brand; it’s a broader canvas for it.”

Nico Vivier is equally passionate about the potential for a new interpretation of the safari experience: “Africa sits at the intersection of two very powerful trends: the desire for meaningful, experience-led travel and a growing appetite for destinations that feel rare, authentic and deeply connected to nature.”

As Regional Director of Operations & Development in Africa for Minor Hotels, Vivier has spent the years after Covid mapping how the luxury market has evolved in Africa, highlighting the destinations that resonate with a new generation of travellers.

“What stood out was how many of our guests naturally gravitated towards the Livingstone and Victoria Falls region, and how strong the opportunity was to create a true luxury safari and wilderness circuit for that journey. Anantara Kafue River Tented Camp represents the first chapter of the strategy.”

While Anantara has properties in cities and cultural capitals, jungles and mountains, South African travellers likely recognise it for its island resorts in Mozambique and Asia. Though safari lodges and larger hotels in Zimbabwe and Zambia have broadened the appeal, it is with the new opening in Zambia’s Kafue National Park that Anantara can now offer a more comprehensive safari circuit in Zambia.

“From a guest perspective, Africa offers something increasingly difficult to find elsewhere — vast landscapes, raw beauty, cultural depth and a sense of discovery. From a brand perspective, it aligns perfectly with Anantara’s DNA,” says Vivier.

Guests arriving at Anantara Kafue National Park later in 2026 are also likely to encounter an experience that ticks all the boxes of a high-end safari but is woven through with the signature Anantara touches, from arrival rituals and storytelling to architectural design and culinary signatures.

“The goal is not to replace what traditional safari brands do so well, but to complement it with layers of experiential luxury that today’s travellers have come to expect,” says Vivier. And while design, architecture and service are key pillars of the brand, it’s wellness where Anantara could really shake up the safari space.

“Anantara brings a depth of expertise that translates beautifully into the safari environment,” says Vivier, and each guest villa and suite at Anantara Kafue River Tented Camp includes a private wellness space. “Our focus is not on generic spa menus, but on creating wellness experiences that are rooted in nature, culture and the rhythms of the location itself.”

Down on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, another resort brand focuses less on finding serenity and more on delivering unbridled technicolour fun.

In July 2026, Club Med will open its first resort in sub-Saharan Africa, with 411 rooms on the Dolphin Coast leaning into the brand’s successful resort recipe of sun and sea (or snow). However, the new Club Med South Africa Beach & Safari will mark another first for the brand, with Vikela Safari Lodge weaving a safari element into the resort experience.

“This is not a new idea; it’s been in the making for many years,” explains Olivier Perillat-Piratoine, MD of Club Med Southern Africa. “The idea was to offer something different to our global customers that we know they would enjoy.”

Set in an 18,000ha private reserve near Pongola, about four hours’ drive from the beach resort, Vikela Safari Lodge brings a Club Med ethos to the under-canvas safari experience. Vikela Safari Lodge will offer guests stays of up to three nights, with tented suites, twice-daily game drives and a variety of family-focused activities.

“This lodge adds a truly adventurous element to the Club Med experience,” adds Piratoine, who flags the Club Med all-inclusive offering as key to making “the safari experience more approachable for families, first-timers and international travellers looking for ease without sacrificing authenticity.”

The ability to seamlessly switch from beach to bush and back again is sure to appeal to brand fans. What’s emerging is a safari offering that borrows the best of the island playbook — ease, ritual and perfectly timed moments of delight — then drops it into a wild landscape. We’ll start packing our bags.

Wanted

At least, that is the story Baz Luhrmann and his wife and longtime creative collaborator, Catherine Martin, embroidered into tasselled velvet banquettes, marquetry wall panels embellished with flowers, and enough crystal chandeliers to match the clinking of multiple coupes of champagne. This is the cinematic and refined Belmond train carriage they have personified as the evanescent beauty called Celia. A perambulatory world where reality graciously makes way for celluloid dreams.

The carriage is a restored 1932 Pullman carriage reimagined as an intimate private world for just 12 guests. There is a cocktail bar, lounge, dining space, and entertainment area, all wrapped inside a fever dream of 1930s glamour and Shakespearean fantasy.

Luhrmann could never design anything merely functional. This is the man who turned Paris into operatic delirium in Moulin Rouge! and transformed the Jazz Age into a glittering hallucination in The Great Gatsby. Yet it is Martin, the four-time Oscar-winning production and costume designer behind so much of Luhrmann’s visual universe, who gives Celia its emotional texture.

The Celia narrative is embedded in every detail. Purple-velvet seating curves beneath softly glowing glass ceilings. Handcrafted embroideries, bespoke British furniture and intricate wood inlays create the feeling of stepping onto a forgotten stage set. Martin worked with artisans across England, including glassmakers, embroiderers and marquetry specialists, to bring the carriage to life piece by piece. Even the scent drifting through the space was custom-designed to evoke the invisible presence of Celia herself.

What makes the project so compelling is that it never collapses into nostalgia. Luhrmann and Martin understand that glamour without story is simply decoration. The carriage works because it feels inhabited by fantasy. Watching the countryside slip past through the windows becomes cinematic in the truest sense, each landscape framed like a moving shot from one of Luhrmann’s films. Martin herself described the rectangular train window as “a profoundly filmic experience”.

In an era of frictionless travel and algorithmic efficiency, there is something magical about the slowness of it all. Celia belongs to a different imagination of luxury, rooted in atmosphere rather than speed. Cocktails arrive ceremoniously; dinner unfolds like a scene change and by night the carriage transforms from refined dining salon into something moodier and more decadent, with music and performance woven into the experience.

Luhrmann and Martin have not merely designed a train carriage for Belmond. They have designed an escape hatch into fantasy itself.

belmond.com

From the June issue of Wanted, 2026

“All of these identities converge on what I feel defines me most deeply,” she says. “Being a storyteller.”

That definition has taken her far: a Brett Goldin Bursary residency at the Royal Shakespeare Company, two Kanna Theatre Awards, a debut play that sold out in Vienna and Basel — and now, seven sold-out shows across Cape Town and Johannesburg for her production BLING!

Has she allowed herself to say she’s really good at this? She laughs. “I’m not sure if I have gotten to that point yet … maybe I never will.”

But those seven shows gave her something else. “It did cause me enough pause to consider that I might be doing something very right.”

The seed of BLING! was planted not in a theatre but in a Beyoncé and Jay-Z advertisement. Watching their 2021 Tiffany & Co campaign, Ngaba recognised the famous canary diamond, extracted from the Kimberley mines in 1877, not far from where her maternal family is from.

“I remember thinking: I wonder if I will ever get a chance to wear it … or even see it in person? Surely it isn’t such a ridiculous notion … that someone associated with the very place from which it was extracted should be able to wear it?”

The absurdity of that question became the engine of everything. She decided to become the diamond herself.

By the time she was awarded the Market Theatre Barney Simon Residency in 2024, she had already been performing the character of Phatsima Khullinan in public, testing the appetite, building a fearlessness around the idea. The archive deepened the work further — a photograph of her great-aunt Ruth Mompati alongside American political activist Angela Davis at a miners’ workers conference in Namibia.

“I love the process of combing through the archive and creating stories that reflect and refract as the archive does.”

From residency to rehearsal to stage, it “has been nothing short of thrilling”.

BLING! holds colonialism, repatriation and genuine comedy in the same frame. That balance, Ngaba is clear, is a matter of craft — hers and her director Ilana Dlangalala-Cilliers’.

“She directed and designed the show with such fine precision that it all became possible and beautiful to watch. She is immensely talented.”

South African audiences, when the show finally arrived, did not hesitate.

“People at home have completely adopted it as a story of their own and have demanded that it return already.”

As for the people still holding the actual Cullinan?

“Bring back our diamond. Also, bring me to London to perform this show there. It makes perfect sense. Then let’s go even more worldwide — this show is a wide conversation on global mineral history, it resonates just about everywhere.”

The sentiment couldn’t be truer and the industry has taken note: a Best Actress win at the Stellenbosch Toyota Woordfees, followed by a nomination in the same category at the 2026 Kyknet Fiestas — recognition she describes as “confirmation of acknowledgement of years and years of hard work from my peers and people. There is nothing better or more humbling.”

What comes next is more work — performing, researching, writing and what she calls “my bold foray into cinema”. She is open, she says, to all that is meant for her. After a diamond, it turns out, there is everything.

Wanted

As the Encounters Documentary Festival entered its second week in Johannesburg and Cape Town, I watched a range of films that might each be described as “political”, but that vary widely in their methods and moods — and that have different, albeit complementary, ends in sight.

Declaring its ideological credentials in its title, Marxism and Period Pains by Mmabatho Montsho makes an urgent case for the recognition of the many ways in which women’s health and women’s labour are simultaneously ignored, taken for granted and exploited under capitalism. Interviewing women who are (among other pursuits) academics, unionists, school learners, athletes, artists and entrepreneurs, Montsho weaves a tale that is both poetic and polemical.

Making effective use of stop-frame animation and dwelling cinematically on the Edenic image of Eve’s apple — sometimes ironically and sometimes lyrically — the film rejects the originary patriarchal archetype of menstruation as a woman’s “curse” and challenges the everyday dismissal of dysmenorrhoea. It turns instead to solutions to the clash between “the production of eggs” through “the labour of ovaries” and the “productive labour” women must undertake to secure income: destigmatise women’s reproductive health, introduce menstrual leave, and protect workers’ rights.

In Amílcar, the combination of Marxism and poetry takes a different turn. Miguel Eek’s tribute to freedom fighter, farmer and intellectual Amílcar Cabral proceeds in leisurely fashion, splicing archive material with imagistic footage as Cabral’s own words (taken from private letters and soapbox speeches) bring coherence to the picture.

Born to Cape Verdean parents on the Guinea-Bissau mainland, Cabral’s great mission was to unite Lusophone West Africans and to liberate them from Portuguese rule. He was assassinated less than a year before Guinea-Bassau’s unilateral declaration of independence. While Cabral has become an icon of pan-Africanism and is seen as a martyr of anticolonial struggle — like Neil Aggett, subject of The Hour After Midnight, another film on the Encounters programme — Amílcar opts for an elegiac rather than a strident tone in treating his life and death.

Portuguese conquest is in the prehistory of another anticapitalist, anti-imperialist documentary, Olinda’s Golden Arches (directed by Douglas Henrique). This quirky Brazilian short film does not go that far back, but it does start with a brisk tour through the Cold War and reminds us of one of the symbols of its supposed end: the opening of a McDonald’s in Moscow in 1990, when more than 30,000 Muscovites queued up for tasteless hamburgers.

This is necessary context, Henrique argues in his jocular voiceover, for understanding how Brazilian politics in the early 2000s was encapsulated by a mayoral campaign in the coastal city of Olinda. Here, communist candidate Luciana Santos was up against crony capitalist incumbent Jacilda Urquiza. It just so happens that there was also a gastronomic, cultural and economic battle under way, as a McDonald’s franchise was forced on heritage-proud Olinda.

In short, as Henrique tells us, “Great minds think alike — and Jacilda’s was aligned with Ronald McDonald.” Santos won the election. Coincidentally, not long afterwards Olinda became “the first city in the world to bankrupt a McDonald’s”. But, like Hydra’s head, two new branches have since grown there.

If Henrique makes his point through whimsy and rapid-fire humour, Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman adopt the opposite approach to their subject in Nuisance Bear. This slow, beautiful film immerses the viewer in the snowy scenes of northern Manitoba, Canada, where humans and animals find themselves at odds.

Tourists flock to the town of Churchill to go on polar bear safaris. More than 300km up the Hudson Bay coast, Inuit families in the community of Arviat experience polar bears as a daily threat, rather than as the sacred counterparts their forebears hunted and respected. Climate change is pushing the bears south in greater numbers and increasing the likelihood of Avinnaarjuk: “nuisance bears”, adolescents who have been separated from their mothers too early.

There is no comforting end to this story. The film’s Inuit narrator, Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, describes polar bears as visitors who come to us from the past. But their future looks bleak.

Both Jephta and Matsunyane are Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners for Theatre in 2019 and 2023, respectively. And Jephta is the co-editor of Contemporary Plays by African Women (2019) with Yvette Hutchison, published by Bloomsbury for the Methuen Drama Play Collections. At the time of publication, there was a scarcity of published plays by women in Africa. The status quo persists. The editors noted that women playwrights are very productive in creating new works for the stage and are active in many community projects, but there is a significant imbalance in what is published by women in Africa.

This is the literary milieu within which Matsunyane’s book titled Plays by MoMo Matsunyane Vol 1 exists. But it also exists within an environment where South African theatre specialist publishers such as Diartskonageng, a publishing house by Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre 2017 Monageng Vice Motshabi, have an agenda to shift things. In addition to Plays by MoMo Matsunyane, the publisher’s roster includes an anthology of contemporary plays by South African women titled Hauntings, a partnership with The Writers’ Lab SA.

“The publishing of MoMo’s work is a partnership between MoMo and myself, based on years of collaboration and mutual support but defined primarily by a shared compulsion to rebel and to make work driven by resistance as an agenda,” Motshabi says.

Matsunyane’s writing sits in the mode of township theatre, which allows her to provocatively reflect the harsh realities of young women’s lived experiences in a visceral and colourful way. For her, “it is a gritty, raw, beautifully tragic and unfiltered theatrical world which gives us a chance to see how geographical and spatial oppression has had an impact on how we process inherited systemic trauma in today’s world”, she says.

She contributes to a lineage of township theatre playwrights such as Gibson Kente, Paul Grootboom and Selaelo Maredi.

“The publication of black theatre or township theatre plays in South Africa was political in the literary landscape because many of these plays were created for playing rather than for reading. And so, their publication becomes an archival activism because it is important to not only document what they did but make it accessible for transmission into the future,” says cultural scholar and performance artist Nondumiso Msimanga, who contributed a contextual introduction to the book.

“MoMo fits into this type of storytelling tradition, where plays like Have You Seen Zandile? by Gcina Mhlophe also reside. It’s a world of storying and performing that is important to have in publications because, even though Mhlophe’s work is not classified as township theatre, it has become part of the canon of black South African theatre, which values playmaking as much as the written play.”

Many of these plays were created for playing rather than for reading ... so, their publication becomes an archival activism because it is important to not only document what they did, but make it accessible for transmission into the future.

Nondumiso Msimanga, cultural scholar and performance artist

Together with contemporaries like Jefferson Tshabalala, Matsunyane’s employment of township theatre reveals it to be a site for new language development and artistic innovation. She works with the youthful township storytelling form, Maskitla as the framework for her theatre-making and writing process.

“Maskitla is a township storytelling game we played when we were young which has evolved over time. Originally, we’d draw boxes representing houses on the ground and allocate stones to each box. These stones — which represented the different characters, including the narrator — would be moved around according to how the story unfolded. I transpose this model on to stage and my writing,” Matsunyane says.

“It really allowed me as a child to access the scale of my imagination. In my most recent years as a creator, it’s become a valuable tool to uncover story, unpack characters and improvise.”

The plays included in the book are the two one-handers, Penny and Unlearn, as well as the award-winning ensemble production Ka Lebitso La Moya. They work with tragedy and comedy as fluid sides of the same coin. Unlearn (with Matsunyane as writer, performer and director) and Ka Lebitso La Moya (as writer and director) showcase Matsunyane’s vigour in settling into her artistic style. Both plays interrogate young women’s bodies as sites of violence and how the church, with society’s enabling, adds to the damage.

Matsunyane incorporates dark stand-up comedy (another passion of hers) into Unlearn in a gritty and raw script that allows her immersion and improvisation on stage. What could be mistaken as caricature is the visceral texture and colour of township life that is as charming as it is trauma-ridden. The comic-tragedy in Ka Lebitso La Moya weaves in irony and music to drive its dramatic point. In a somewhat Brechtian manner Matsunyane’s protagonists don’t get justice, so you’re left with the discomfort of the realities of the world we inhabit.

Netflix’s much-anticipated series The Polygamist has just premiered and Gumede, who plays the lead role, is running on anticipation and very little sleep.

“I’ve always wanted a role like this,” she says. “People would tell me I was a good actress and I’d think, ‘No, you don’t actually know how good I am yet.’ This is the role that lets people see.”

She has an easy confidence and an open book quality that is disarming and instantly inviting. She tells me it is her default personality setting, learnt early in life. Born in KwaZulu-Natal, Gumede grew up between worlds. Politics, family obligations and circumstances meant a childhood spent moving constantly.

She attended nine schools, including boarding school, where her easy manner and adaptable nature became a survival skill. “When you’ve changed schools that many times, you learn confidence,” she says. “You learn that life is always moving and that you have to move with it.”

It was also a childhood lived against the backdrop of turbulent political years. As the daughter of the late National Freedom Party founder Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi, who previously served as chair of the IFP, she grew up acutely aware of danger.

At the age of nine she discovered she could make herself cry on cue and delighted in convincing adults of imaginary dramas

She recalls overhearing conversations about political violence and worrying constantly about her mother’s safety. “There was a time my mother came home with a bullet hole in her car,” she says matter-of-factly. “Being away at boarding school was scary because I was always wondering what was happening at home.”

Yet it was her mother’s courage that shaped her most profoundly. “She taught me not to take nonsense lying down. She taught me not to be fearful.”

Acting entered her life early. At the age of nine she discovered she could make herself cry on cue and delighted in convincing adults of imaginary dramas. “When my mother believed me, I’d stop and ask, ‘So was that good? Do you think I can act?’”

Her mother saw the spark immediately and encouraged it. By high school Gumede was winning drama competitions and collecting awards. There was talk of law school, as there often is in ambitious families, but acting never loosened its grip.

So she set her sights on the US. At 19 she left for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. It was a leap of faith, not only for her but for her mother, who had watched her rebellious teenage years with understandable concern.

“I’d been giving my mother grey hairs,” she laughs. “I was naughty. Not criminal, just naughty.”

In Los Angeles, however, something shifted. “I focused completely,” she says. “I understood what it cost my mother to send me there. Every dollar mattered.”

Living in California was transformative. The Hollywood dream suddenly became tangible. “You’d see people you recognised from television and realise they’re just human beings. It made everything feel possible.”

It also reinforced her belief in the power of imagination. “Everything I said I wanted to do, I’ve done. It taught me how powerful your words are.”

My acting coach used to say that life problems are acting problems. Every loss, every joy, every experience becomes part of the artist

Gugu Gumede

A chance encounter with veteran producer Dumisani Dlamini convinced her that South Africa still held opportunities. She returned home, determined to build a career before heading back abroad. But life had other plans. Shortly after her return, her mother suffered a devastating stroke. Gumede stayed. “It became clear why I was meant to be home.”

Seven years later, in 2021, her mother died from Covid-related complications. The experience changed Gumede profoundly.

“When you lose someone who is your everything, it changes you.”

That grief, she believes, ultimately deepened her craft. “My acting coach used to say that life problems are acting problems. Every loss, every joy, every experience becomes part of the artist.”

The years that followed were marked by steady work and persistence. From her breakout role on Generations to a succession of acclaimed television performances, Gumede quietly built one of the industry’s most impressive careers. It wasn’t always easy.

“When I started, people would say I only got opportunities because of who my mother was. But I studied this. I trained for this. I worked for this.”

Today, few would question her credentials. Which brings us to The Polygamist. The series explores modern polygamy through the eyes of the women caught inside it. Gumede plays Joyce, whose seemingly perfect life begins to unravel as her husband’s appetite for multiple relationships becomes impossible to ignore. What fascinated her most was that the story refuses to romanticise the situation. “This isn’t really about traditional polygamy,” she says. “It’s about women dealing with the consequences of men’s choices.”

She lights up discussing Joyce’s evolution. “At the beginning she’s soft and trusting. Then you watch her find her power. Her voice changes. Her posture changes. She becomes someone completely different.”

The role resonates personally. Gumede’s own father was a polygamist, as was her maternal grandfather. “So I understood the world.”

What excites her most is seeing women respond to the story. “We usually hear the man’s side. This time we hear all the women’s sides.”

Sunday Times Lifestyle