Born in Sudan to Ethiopian parents, Saba arrived in Australia with her mother when she was 9 years old. She left high-school at the end of year 12, joined the army, and became an officer—she hated it but stayed for 5 years and was in the first era of women in the Australian army to go into combat.

Her mother, Tekebash, was born under the rule of the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. Tekebash became a refugee in Sudan at the time of the rebellion during the transition in the 1990s from communism to a democratic government.