Bio
Thandeka Mdeliswa was a South African actress best known for her starring role as Khanya in the SABC1 drama series iKani. It was her first starring role in television.
She studied acting at Brumilda's Acting Academy and booked her first television role in 2013, starring in an episode of the e.tv drama anthology series eKasi: Our Stories entitled "Imbiza" (Season 5, Episode 11). The episode first aired on 23 September, 2013.
Thandeka returned later in the season to play a different role, in an episode entitled "Church vs Shebeen" (Season 5, Episode 33), in which a well respected pastor finds love in a new girlfriend after his wife left him five years ago.
In 2014 she guest starred in an episode of the SABC1 docu-drama series Ngempela and the following year she starred in the telemovie The Contract, which was part of the Mzansi Magic "Lokshin Bioskop" strand. The movie first aired on 4 July, 2015.
She was also a guest star in an episode of Generations: The Legacy which aired on 11 September, 2016.
In 2018 she starred in another "Lokshin Bioskop" movie on Mzansi Magic, called Imoto Kokufa. The movie is about a young man whose desperation to own a fancy car leads him down a dangerous path when he purchases his boss's wife's stolen car.
Later that year Thandeka landed her first starring role in the SABC1 drama series iKani as Khanya, a young artist who finds out that she is from an isiNdebele family despite being brought up by her aunt as a Zulu. The series premiered on Sunday 30 September, 2018.
Thandeka was shot in Mpumalanga on Thursday, 3 September, 2020, in an alleged case of gender-based violence. She died two days later, on Saturday 5 September, at Steve Biko Academic hospital in Pretoria. She was 34.