BREAKING. Young actress Shoki Mokgapa dead at 34 after committing suicide.

The actress Shoki Mokgapa has died. She was 34.

The talented actress commited suicide according to MLA, the agency representing her.

The talented young actress who graduated at the Johannesburg-based AFDA film school with a bachelor’s degree in live performance made her South African TV debut in the SABC3 series The Lab, and a decade later appeared this year in the new local drama series The Docket that started on SABC3 recently and that was filmed last year.

In-between she's made several TV appearances in series ranging from the second season of Ashes to Ashes on e.tv, Intersexions, Swartwater and Those Who Can't on SABC2, to the British BBC series, Silent Witness.

Her most recent TV appearance was in the American drama series The Looming Tower on Amazon Prime Video.

Shoki Mokgapa won a Safta award in 2017 as Best actress in a feature film for her role in the Afrikaans film, Sink for which she also won the Best Actress award at the kykNET Silwerskerm Filmfees. 

Other notable film roles include appearances in the Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom film and Nothing for Mahala.

On Twitter on Wednesday afternoon Clive Morris Productions, producers of The Docket, said "we are extremely sad to hear about the passing of Shoki Mokgapa. Everyone here at CMP loved working with her and she will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family at this time."

MLA, the agency representing her says in a statement that "after a long struggle with clinical depression and anxiety she took her life on Tuesday 25 September at the age of 34. She was a brave woman who had been seeking help but the disease proved to be stronger that her".

"Her family and friends are currently together, going through the process of mourning and burial. They celebrate their daughter and appreciate all the love that her fans and peers have extended to them".

A memorial service for Shoki Mokgapa is planned for Tuesday 2 October.


If you or someone you know needs help with suicide, anxiety or depression, call the Suicide Crisis Helpline at 0800 12 13 14.

Riveting new SABC3 series, The Docket, from Clive Morris Productions, sees Hlubi Mboya lead the crime-busting Ravens.

Hlubi Mboya is bursting back on television tonight in the new local drama series, The Docket, on SABC3 at 21:30 in which the actress known for her iconic role as Nandipha in Isidingo, leads an elite, fictional crime-fighting unit called The Ravens as the only woman in a high-stakes, high-adrenalin team.

The 13-episode series from Clive Morris Productions, created by the veteran uber-producer Helen Smit, revolves around Colonel Ntsiki Motshe (Hlubi Mboya), leading a fictional South African high-profile crime fighting unit, trying to solve cases CSI-style that are loosely inspired by real-life, high-profile South African crime stories.

While the squad members have been chosen for their outstanding investigation skills, they’re also battling the glare of the media eye, with Motshe who has to try and deflect, answer and come up with quotes while everything happening behind-the-scenes is often very different from what is being presented to the media.

Tonight’s first episode is loosely inspired by the shock-hijacking and murder of the reggae star Lucky Dube in 2007 that made international headlines, with Sean Robert Daniels as head writer of the series. 

The series and first episode starts a year after the formation of The Ravens, and they’re investigating the case of famous musician Kgosi who is murdered.

Besides the stress of the work, the harrowing cases and crime-solving that veer into unexpected territory and resulting in unbelievable plot twists, gender dynamics also come to the front since Hlubi Mboya’s character is the only woman in a male-dominated team – where she is also the boss.

Part of the team are Colonel Marlon van Wyk (Duncan Johnson), Brigadier Funani Twala (Seputla Sebogodi), detective Terry Jahib (Ashish Gangapersad) and detective Neil Hall (Brendon Engelbrecht). 

Can The Ravens catch the perpetrators of crime without causing PR nightmares? Can South Africans from literally all walks of life, flung together under dangerous circumstances, work together to solve sensitive crime cases?

Cases in The Docket range from a farm attach to campus rape, a possible cannibal chef, a named business man run over in the street, an “alien abduction”, an old man abducted from a nursing home, fossil theft, a judge murdered in a hotel room and bank robberies.

Throughout the first season and beyond the case of the week, there is also an overall mystery The Ravens are trying to solve – the Endless: an enigmatic serial killer that even start to threaten the team members of The Ravens as they keep getting closer and closer to possibly unmasking and catching him.