She Means Business

Actress-turned-entrepreneur Gugu Zuma-Ncube may be lying low behind the scenes of some of Mzansi’s biggest TV shows, but don’t ever underestimate how hungry she is to create well satiating stories about black people.

- Kemong Mopedi

Ever noticed how almost every new-age entrepreneurial or career story starts off with the person studying something they loathed and then making a detour before committing to a big career blunder? Gugu Zuma-Ncube’s story is no exception. Although drawn to the arts in high school, she was convinced that an LLB degree was more up her alley. But during her first year of study at the University of Cape Town, it dawned on her that law just wasn’t for her. “Finally learning more about what a career in law would entail felt limiting and stifling — I knew I wouldn’t be able to achieve half the things I hoped to,” she explains.

Acting, fortunately, had always featured on her path. “Even during my first year of the LLB programme, I had acted in The Vagina Monologues play at The Armchair Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town that my friends had put together. My younger sister, Thuli, had always wanted to be an actress her whole life so I’d tag along whenever she was in Cape Town to attend the AFDA Open Days.” To cut a long story short, these AFDA visits nudged her in the right direction. “The acting classes felt like oxygen to me and reaffirmed that I was at the right place, and doing the right thing.”

THE SWITCH