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About the artist

Visual artist & creator

Sonwabile Mahanjana was born on 3 November 2003 at Johannesburg General Hospital and raised in Protea North, Soweto. From an early age, creativity was less of a hobby than a natural instinct. Long before formal art training, drawing became a way of understanding and engaging with the world.

He attended Modderfontein Primary School, an Afrikaans school with a predominantly white student body, where he remained until Grade 4. During these years, his entrepreneurial spirit emerged alongside his artistic talent. He would draw Dragon Ball Z characters on handmade exercise book covers and sell them to classmates. His mother still laughs when recalling one of his earliest "masterpieces"—as a toddler, he removed his nappy, covered in fresh paint of another kind, and smeared it across a white wall, leaving her with an unforgettable cleanup and a story that has become part of family folklore.

In Grade 5, his family relocated to Randburg, settling in Cresta, a move that transformed his perspective. He enrolled at Robin Hills Primary School, a far more culturally diverse environment with a predominantly Black student population. The change exposed him to different people, ideas and experiences, broadening the way he saw both himself and the world around him.

He later attended Northcliff High School, where his passion for art continued to grow. Rather than fading with age, his fascination with drawing evolved into a serious commitment to visual storytelling. Today, he is pursuing a qualification in Fine Arts, refining both his technical skills and his artistic voice.

A defining moment came in 2025, when he was involved in a serious accident that profoundly altered his outlook on life. The experience stripped away many of the assumptions he had about time, purpose and mortality. It gave him a renewed sense of urgency and transformed art from a personal passion into a calling. From that moment forward, creating was no longer simply something he enjoyed—it became something he felt compelled to do.

Mahanjana believes that art can preserve memory, challenge perception and reveal truths that words often cannot. His practice explores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of being human, creating works that invite reflection rather than certainty. He sees himself not merely as an artist, but as a messenger whose responsibility is to translate observation, experience and faith into images that speak across generations.

Every work is created with the hope that it will outlive its maker, becoming part of a larger conversation about what it means to be human and what we choose to leave behind.