On 30 June 1968, Rebecca Malope was born in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga (then Eastern Transvaal). She became well known after winning the Shell Road to Fame talent search in 1987, with a soulful rendition of the spiritual Sizwe Zako composition, Shine On. When Malope noticed she was not doing well in pop music, she switched to gospel music.
In 1990 she won the OKTV award as the Best Female artist. Despite winning the competition, she struggled to find a recording company until she met Mike Fuller of Fuller Artists Management Enterprise to record her first album Sthembele kuwe.
After her first album she went back home to look for her mother. When she arrived there, she found her mother sleeping in an abandoned caravan in Witbank. Malope then bought her mother a three bedroom house in Spruitview, Gauteng. In 1993, it was estimated that more than one million listeners voted for her as Best Local Established Artist in the Coca Cola Full Blast Music Award Music Show. Rebecca continued with her music career and received an honorary doctorate in 2003 from the University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu Natal – UKZN) for her contribution to music.
SAHO, Rebecca Malope, from South African History Online, Available at www.sahistory.org.za/people/rebecca-malope [Accessed: 25 July 2019].
Ngwenya, K., (2018). Rebecca Malope speaks out about her childhood: ‘I left school in Grade 1’, from Channel 24, Available at www.channel24.co.za/The-Juice/News/Local/rebecca-malope-speaks-out-about-her-childhood-i-left-school-in-grade-1-20180321 [Accessed: 25 July 2019].