Buyi Zama had grown up in Durban, South Africa, and was travelling the world in the cast of The Lion King, when a chance meeting in an elevator led her to finally make Australia home.
“It was like a romcom kind of story,” she tells The Weekly, smiling. She’d been performing as part of The Lion King ensemble in London, and when the production moved to Sydney in 2003, she was offered the role of Rafiki.
“I was excited to play the role,” she says, “but I was also excited to see Australia. I wanted to see the world – that was my dream.”
Buyi’s chance meeting
She was staying in an apartment in inner-city Sydney.
“Then, one day,” she remembers, “I was with two of my friends in the elevator and we were speaking Zulu. Matt [her future husband] also lived in the building and he stepped into the lift said, ‘Hi,’ and then, ‘Excuse me, what language is that?’ I said, ‘Zulu,’ and he said, ‘Oh, South Africa’.”
Buyi was quietly impressed that he knew where Zulu was spoken but didn’t think much more about him.
“However,” she adds, “he’d noticed that I’d pressed level five. The communal laundry was also on level five, and he found himself with lots of laundry to do in the coming weeks. When he finally bumped into her, he asked what Buyi missed most from home. She told him it was rooibos tea.
Tea and romance
“So, a week or two later,” she chuckles, “he knocked on my door and said, ‘I’ve got the tea, I’ll just go and get it’. I thought he was going to bring me some tea bags, but he went to his apartment and brewed tea in a teapot, and he brought a teapot full of rooibos and two cups. So I had to invite him in, and we had to sit down and drink this tea and talk. He was quite clever.”
Romance followed, but when the production moved on, so did Buyi and the pair lost touch.
“Then,10 years later,” she remembers, “he messaged me on Facebook.” The Lion King was returning to Australia and they reconnected. In 2017, they married.
A cub on the way
When Buyi learnt she was pregnant, Matt moved to America, where she was touring, and their daughter, Kani, was born in Las Vegas.
Buyi was still performing when she was seven months’ pregnant, and when Kani was six months old, all three of them went back on the road. So Kani has more than a little greasepaint in her blood.
Now six, “she does love singing and dancing,” says Buyi, and she dreams of growing up to play lioness, Nala, in the musical. She can’t wait to see her mum in the new production of The Lion King which has just opened in Sydney.
“There’s always hope,” says Buyi
Buyi says she still loves playing her character because “Rafiki is there to remind people that there’s always someone in your corner – to meet you at your lowest point. There’s always hope.”
Buyi has also grown to truly love Australia.
“Even if I hadn’t met my husband,” she says, “I would’ve loved Australia. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s not because Bondi is beautiful or the bridge. It’s the people. There are so many people who have come from so many different places, so it’s not strange, wherever you come from. And everyone is so welcoming. The Australian people are wonderful.”
The Lion King is currently playing at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney.
