UCT graduates Thami Mbongo and Nicholas Pauling have been named as the winners of the 2008 Brett Goldin Bursary award, founded in honour of the actor murdered two years ago.

Mbongo is the winner of the 2007 Aardklop Best Actor award for Lara Foot Newton's Karoo Moose - shared with the ensemble cast - and was also nominated as best supporting actor in the 2007 Fleur du Cap Awards. Township Talks, which he wrote and directed, is currently at the Ikhwezi Theatre Festival in the Baxter Sanlam Studio.

Pauling was nominated as Best Actor at last year's Fleur du Cap awards for his performance in the title role of Amadeus. He took over the role of Guildenstern in Shakespeare's Hamlet, just days after Goldin was killed.

The two were chosen from a shortlist of nine actors selected from 103 applicants countrywide. The adjudicating panel included Janice Honeyman, Cape Town-born Sir Antony Sher and Denise Goldin, mother of the late actor.

The Brett Goldin Bursary was founded by the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, the Actors Centre in Johannesburg and the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town.