Bio
Lebo Mashile has been forging her own creative identity since she emerged on the Johannesburg arts scene in 2002.
She has numerous creative titles including published author, executive producer, actress, poet, independent record producer, corporate and independent event MC, life skills facilitator/speaker and television series presenter.
In 2004, Mashile debuted as a film actress in the Academy Award Nominated Hotel Rwanda, directed by Terry George, which illuminated the tragic 1994 genocide of the Tutsi and Hutu moderates in Rwanda.
Also in 2004, Mashile became executive producer and presenter of the SABC1 documentary series L'atitude, now in it's third season. L'atitude puts the host on a nationwide road trip in exploration and discovery of the position occupied by South Africans, the spaces they inhabit and the roles they play in the landscape of a developing South Africa.
Also in 2004 Mashile toured nationally performing at such prestigious events as Thabo Mbeki's Presidential Inauguration, Poetry Africa in Durban and as a nominee for the South African Poetry Awards.
Mashile performed internationally during the same year as a South African artistic delegate in Kingston, Jamaica and Havana, Cuba in honour and celebration of 10 years of democracy.
She also performed in Bern, Switzerland at the Schlacthaus Festival of South African Contemporary Art and attended Yarri Yarri Phambari Writers Conference in New York City with African American writers such as Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Maryse Conde, Nawal el Saadawi and Patricia McFadden.
In 2005, Mashile published her first collection of poetry, In A Ribbon Of Rhythm. In the same year Mashile self-produced and released a 19-track album, Lebo Mashile Live!, which combines the musical mix of poetry with hip-hop, house and R&B.
The album was released on her independent label, Mashile Productions, and was recorded live with a nine-piece band in addition to studio collaborations with artists such as MXO, Tumi Molekane of Tumi and The Volume and Zubz.
In March 2003, Mashile co-founded the Feela Sistah Spoken Word Collective alongside Napo Masheane, Ntsiki Mazwai and Myesha Jenkins. This foursome was the first poetry collective of its kind in South Africa.
In an interview with City Pulse Magazine Lebo reflects, "Walking into Feela Sistah, none of us knew that two years later we'd be one of the answers of The Weakest Link. We had no idea that we'd become an item of popular culture. We didn't realize that there was such a void, that people were waiting for our voices."
Lebo Mashile was named by Cosmopolitan Magazine as one of South Africa's Awesome Women of 2005.
From May to August 2008 she is the host of the SABC2 ethics game show Drawing the Line, in which two teams attempt to win the audience over to their point of view on a wide variety of morality subjects.