[2] Starting in the 1961 during apartheid, Nkonyeni and others who wanted to change their lives using the stage met with Athol Fugard and formed the Serpent Players.
[5] She said, “I was the first black person to perform on that stage and when that door opened, I never shut it.”[6] Nkonyeni received a Diploma in Conflict Management from Lewisham College in London, England, in 1999.
[8] Nkonyeni was in the international films Red Dust (2004) with Hilary Swank, Catch A Fire (2006) with Tim Robbins, and as Forest Whitaker's mother in Zulu (aka City of Violence, 2013).
[18] President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a Special Provincial Funeral Category Two for her because of her outstanding work in the arts and culture in South Africa.
We really appreciate it and are hugely indebted to people of her calibre and the role that she has played under very difficult conditions, sometimes using art to communicate a message and also to fight the injustice of the then government of the day.