Zikhona Ngqula Named One of the Mail & Guardians Top 200 Young South African’s 2026

Zikhona, a PhD candidate at EHS, said she was shocked when she got the email notifying her she had been selected as one of the Mail & Guardians Top 200 Young South African’s for 2026. “I don't want to say I thought I was just doing my PhD research, because now I know, looking back, it did affect more people than I anticipated.” 

She was recognised in the Climate, Environment & Energy category with the recognition highlighting her engaged research approach that combines science, public policy, and community voices. Her research focuses on pollution in the Diep River catchment and Milnerton lagoon, where she is in the final stages of writing her thesis. Zikhona shared that an important part of her research is about “rethinking how we govern or manage this already damaged landscape. It's not really about restoring it to its glory in simple terms, but rather how do we live alongside this damaged landscape.”

Answering these questions comes down to understanding people’s different ways of living around polluted water and doing citizen science. “It's really including the residents, the people who engage and live alongside an affected water body” said Zikhona.

In conversation on grounding her research in justice and the lives of residents, Zikhona shared how studying at EHS had pushed her to move beyond the status quo discourses on water management: “I was not going to include environmental justice because of my background in policy; my language has always been sustainability and not habitability.”

Sharing how EHS made her re-think her previous training, she continued:  “not to say I didn't care about the environment, but it was never from this approach. I got to know about the One Health approach because of EHS, because I know with my research, it impacts humans, it impacts animals, it impacts the environment. 

Zikhona’s commitment to water justice has roots beyond the EHS classroom. Coming from a hometown where taps run dry, she gained an interest in the communal relations of water that happen around the taps that still flow. For her water is a “living entity” with multiple rationalities beyond those which we take for granted. 

This thinking was honed at EHS through the graduate courses offered to PhD and Master students. Particularly, Zikhona emphasised the valuable intellectual challenge of the courses:

“EHS is there to make us think holistically. So even engineers, I would tell them go to EHS, just do that Researching the Anthropocene course. It will be tough, but it will change the way you think.”

Looking forward, Zikhona is passionate about using her new platform to continue the work of making her PhD research accessible and impactful for the communities she works with. Determined not to produce a text that sits on the shelf, she remains committed to taking her knowledge to the decision-making spaces that need it and amplifying the voices of those living in the landscape.