South African Traditional Museum Lifetime Achievement Award

In 2015, Dr Esther Mahlangu received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the South African Traditional Museum.

The award recognised her role in elevating traditional South African art forms onto the national and international stage, and her decades of work keeping Ndebele painting a living, evolving practice. The honour came in the same year as her eightieth birthday and a solo exhibition at the UCT Irma Stern Museum.