There are those who recognise, sometimes before anyone else does, that an artist needs not only a stage, but a door that opens; not only an audience, but someone willing to make the spaces in which art can breathe.

 

Dr Ismail Mahomed, you are – and have been (and are!) – one of those people.

 

Through your many years of service to the arts, and through your work as Director of the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, you have helped to create openings where there might otherwise have been walls; possibilities where there might have been silence.

 

You have understood that the work of culture is not only to present what is already known, but to make room for what is still becoming.

 

For dance makers in South Africa, across the African continent and beyond, you have helped create platforms upon which bodies, stories, questions and dreams could gather. You have made space for artists to take risks, to challenge, to disturb, to delight, to remember and to imagine.

 

And in doing so, you have helped us understand something fundamental:

 

That a platform is never simply a stage.

 

It is an act of belief and faith.

 

Across the years here at University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative arts, through festivals, programmes, collaborations and countless encounters, your leadership and your work has helped to weave connections between artists, communities, and countries. You have been a bridge-builder, a door-opener, a provocateur of possibility and, above all, a steadfast believer in the necessity of the arts.

 

For JOMBA!, your contribution belongs to the longer choreography of the festival — a choreography made not only of dancers and dances, but of those who have helped to hold the space, nurture the vision and ensure that the dance could continue.

 

Tonight, as we gather at the opening of the 28th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, we pause to honour a remarkable journey and an extraordinary contribution.

We celebrate not only what you have done, but what your work has enabled.

 

The artists and dancers who found a stage.

 

The voices and dancing bodies that found an audience.

 

The artistic conversations that crossed borders.

 

The possibilities that became real because you helped us make space.

 

Dr Ismail Mahomed, with deep gratitude, admiration and affection, we present you with the 2026 JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience Lifetime Achievement Award.