Vinette Ebrahim

Vinette Ebrahim (born 21 February 1957) is a South African actress and playwright known for her role as Charmaine Meintjies in the SABC 2 soap opera 7de Laan. She is the sister of actor Vincent Ebrahim.

Early life

Ebrahim is the sister of South African-British actor Vincent Ebrahim. Her brother, eight years her senior, named Ebrahim after himself. and the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees. At the Klein Karoo festival in 2007, she performed in an Afrikaans-language production of Athol Fugard's play, Boesman en Lena.

At the 2013 Naledi Theatre Awards, Ebrahim won the award for Best Performance in a Play in a Leading Role (Female) for My Naam/Name is Ellen Pakkies. The play tells the real-life story of a South African woman convicted of killing her drug-addicted son after enduring years of abuse.

Ebrahim has also written plays, including Die Ongelooflike Reis van Max en Lola, a two-character work she co-wrote with South African playwright and director Hugo Taljaard. Ebrahim based the play in part on her long-time friendship with South African actor Chris van Niekerk. In the play and in real life, the friendship between a gay white man and a Coloured woman persisted, even through the Apartheid era.

In Invisible, she portrayed a homeless woman who once was a resident of Cape Town's District Six.

Ebrahim has also created a one-woman show about her life, Praat Die Storie Smaak Kry (Let's Spice It Up), which she has performed in Afrikaans and English throughout South Africa as part of National Women's Day celebrations.

In July 2019, it was announced that Ebrahim would exit her dual roles of Charmaine and her evil twin sister Vivian because "all potential stories around Charmaine and Vivian have been exhausted". Ebrahim ended her 19-year run on the show on 24 October 2019. She said that she had anticipated her exit for some time, and she disputed the claim that there were no more storylines for her character Charmaine. In 2013, Ebrahim won the Naledi Theatre Award for Best Performance in a Play in a Leading Role (Female) for My Naam/Name is Ellen Pakkies. This prompted significant backlash on social media. While other Afrikaner's chose to leverage the advantages granted to them by structural racism by attempting to boycott 7de Laan .