‘The greatest possible feeling of failure’: Nomzamo Mbatha opens up about time at UCT

As her tv show Shaka iLembe breaks television records and experiences success, actress and producer Nomzamo Mbatha opened up about past failure in a radio interview.

Mbatha, who portrays the character of Queen Nandi, Shaka’s mother, sat down with Radio 702’s Relebogile Mabotja in a feature of her show called The Upside of Failure where guests talk about their past disappointments that have propelled them to later success.

Dealing with failure at UCT

“I think UCT for me was a very tough period. The first year at UCT was extremely hard,” says Mbatha who was at the university through a bursary, which added to the pressure of performing at the highest academic level.

Mbatha went to university with a bag of distinctions from matric, but had a reality check when results from her first economics test came back. “You get there and it’s the first time you write an economics test and it’s the first time you see a 35% in your life, you’re ashamed because everyone at home is calling [asking] ‘how’s school?’,” a dejected Mbatha said.

“I’m surrounded by kids whose parents are paying, I have to perform to stay there because if I don’t it gets taken away and there’s the chance that I get to go back to KwaMashu, but I had told myself that I’m not going back there.”

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“It was a defining period of my life. I say this all the time, outside of being in the business of believing in myself, I’ve been in the business of saving my life, for as long as I can remember.”

“I lost my footing. KwaMashu was no longer a safe space for me, my grandmother was no longer a safe space for me. I was in a foreign place, in a foreign land and it just messed up my self-esteem. That was the greatest possible feeling of failure,” said the former Isibaya actress.

In 2018 Mbatha graduated from UCT, receiving her accountancy degree and attended the graduation ceremony in Cape Town.

On the day of her graduation she wore a dress that had the South African Depression & Anxiety Group’s toll free number printed on it. It also featured on pictures of the people that she’s lost in her life. She also added the words ‘resilience, courage and overcome’ on the dress.

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Re-parenting the inner-child

“I just remember in primary school and going into high school, just always a high achiever. But I had an independent life, my achievements were my own, my family didn’t know all the stuff I was doing at school,” says Mbatha.

The actress-turned-producer goes on to explain that she sang in the school choir, joined youth parliament and travelled to Kenya through NPO Save the Children.

“All my father knew was that I was getting my As, 80s, 90s and that’s it, that’s all that mattered to him. But I guess having a life outside of school was very much my own achievement. I was all about that, I loved being the A-student, I loved that my teachers loved me, not that I tried to behave, I was always a person who was very serious about her life.”

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Mbatha was raised by her paternal grandmother and her father as her mother worked far away. She says her relationship with her mom got stronger after her father’s passing. But she shared how she’s had to deal with some of her childhood trauma as an adult.

“I thank Covid, because I got to re-parent my inner-child a lot,” said Mbatha. “I don’t think I was emotionally supported as a child. I think I was loved, I think my father adored me, all his friends still say that to this day.”

“Looking back now and having to experience the trauma of losing people in my life and losing my father at 14 years old, being his caregiver as a 14 year old… those kinds of things being thrust upon you as a child are things that will affect you. Your childhood is being stolen away, not because people are malicious around you, it’s because we’re using what we have, it’s all we know.”

Being an intuitive child that had to shoulder responsibility at a young age has made her the person she is today, the actress said. “That was a very huge contributor to the person that I became and the person that I am now. I don’t tell my friends when I’ve achieved something.”

Mbatha shared that her achievements outside of home weren’t celebrated in her household; instead the compliments came from teachers at school. When Mabotja quizzes her about dealing with this contradiction in validation, Mbatha says “At home, I feel like they know my true sense. They know my heart, they know Zamo.”

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