LITERATURE - The African Mirror

Apr

12

2022

The 100-year-old story of South Africa’s first history book in the isiZulu language

LITERATURE

THIS year marks the centenary of the publication in 1922 of Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (The Black People and Whence They Came), the first book-length history of black people written in isiZulu. Part of the Nguni language group, there are an estimated 12 million isiZulu speakers in South Africa. Its author was Magema Fuze, now seen as a major figure in the body of writings produced in African languages in South Africa, but one who remains too little known outside narrow scholarly circles. Author HLONIPHA MOKOENA, Associate Professor at the Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of…

Mar

02

2021

By The African Mirror

How apartheid denied a Black golf champ

LITERATURE

BARRY COHEN SEWSUNKER “Papwa” Sewgolum began playing golf with a syringa stick but went on to win the Dutch Open and several South African tournaments before the apartheid government banned him. Papwa, the early days Papwa Sewgolum’s parents had come to South Africa in 1860 along with many other indentured Indians from North India via Calcutta to work in the sugarcane plantations on the Natal North Coast. They hoped to make a new life in the land of milk and honey, and prosper, and to get away from their grinding poverty and punishing colonial taxes (which would eventually lead to…

Mar

23

2021

By The African Mirror

Nawal El Saadawi, pioneering Egyptian feminist, in her own words

LITERATURE

Feminists across the Middle East and beyond are mourning the death of trailblazing Egyptian thinker, doctor and writer Nawal El Saadawi who died in Cairo on March 21, 2021. The following interview with El Saadawi was first published on May 24, 2018. EMMA BATHA WHEN the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi was a young child, she wrote a letter to God challenging him to explain why women were treated differently to men. "He never replied," said El Saadawi, who is still as passionate about women's rights. "I told him, 'if you are not fair, I'm not ready to believe in…

Mar

05

2021

By The African Mirror

Learning from the story of pioneering South African writer Sindiwe Magona

LITERATURE

PULENG SEGALO, Professor of Psychology, University of South Africa THE African proverb, “Until the lion can tell its own story, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter,” speaks to the importance of telling one’s own stories. For a long time, African stories and realities were told by colonisers in ways that painted a picture of Africa as backward and uncivilised. It is for this reason that many literary scholars tell the story of colonialism and apartheid through personal autobiographies. One such scholar is Sindiwe Magona. Magona has published over a dozen books for adults, from critically acclaimed…

Mar

29

2021

By The African Mirror

Nawal El Saadawi: Egypt’s grand novelist, physician and global activist

LITERATURE

EGYPTIAN novelist, physician, sociologist and global activist Nawal El Saadawi died on 21 March 2021 at the age of 89. The author of more than 50 books, she told me in one of our many interviews, in 2007, that she self-identified as an African from Egypt, not from the Middle East … I am not from the third world. There is one world, that is a racist, capitalist economic world. I became a feminist when I was a child – when I started to ask questions to become aware that women are oppressed and feel discrimination. ADELE NEWSON-HORST, Morgan State…

Jul

24

2020

By The African Mirror

Dennis Brutus: South African literary giant who was reluctant to tell his life story

LITERATURE

TYRONE AUGUST, Research fellow, Stellenbosch University THIS is an edited extract from a new biography about Dennis Brutus, the anti-apartheid activist, poet and author. Brutus died in 2009. The extract records Brutus’s reluctance to write about his life when he was still alive. But as Tyrone August, author of the biography, writes, it was inevitable that his life story would eventually be told: “Brutus’s life is woven far too deeply into the fabric of the recent history of South Africa.” Dennis Brutus, the South African poet and veteran anti-apartheid activist, lived in Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, during the…

Jul

22

2020

By The African Mirror

Book Review | The ANC Spy Bible

LITERATURE

JOVIAL RANTAO It’s very rare that an intelligence operative - past or present - unmasks themselves and unveils the going-ons in the dark, cloak and dagger lives of spies. Veteran intelligence operative and political activist Mo Shaik has done this and did it with insight and grace. Shaik’s memoir - The ANC Spy Bible - reads like a true spy thriller, full of intrigue, espionage and the dangers associated with the underground life in intelligence. It is rich in detail about his individual involvement in the ANC intelligence structures and their role in the struggle against apartheid. The book traces…

Jul

29

2020

By The African Mirror

How women’s untold histories shaped South Africa’s national poet

LITERATURE

ARETHA PHIRI, Senior lecturer, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University UHURU PORTIA PHALAFALA, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University KEORAPETSE Kgositsile, the South African-born poet who passed away in 2018, lived in exile in the US from 1962 to 1975 and was at the centre of the country’s 1960s and ’70s Black Arts Movement. Informed by his South African and Tswana background, the poet makes a case for multiple inflections of voices, geographies, and histories in the making of transnational black modernity. Analysing his work offers ways in which African poetry can disrupt dominant thinking on Black Atlantic studies, particularly Paul…

Aug

15

2020

By The African Mirror

Remembering Zindzi Mandela, the writer

LITERATURE

NTOMBIZIKHONA VALELA ZINDZI Mandela comes from a family of writers. Although her parents were not writers by profession, this craft was a crucial way of keeping their family together. Mandela was barely 18 months old when her father, Nelson Mandela, was arrested on 5 August 1962 after being a wanted man for his role in South Africa’s liberation movement. His life sentence following the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial in 1964 was served on Robben Island, which meant he could only communicate with his wife, freedom fighter and social worker Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and children through writing letters. These initial circumstances…

Aug

19

2020

By The African Mirror

Like Mother, like Son

LITERATURE

In this chapter extracted from his newly published hospital memoir, “Sound and Fury: The Chronicles of Healing”, SAUL MOLOBI looks forward to spending his weekend break from the Tshwane Rehabilitation Hospital with his mother – they are both disabled and using similar assistive devices… Though I love my Fridays, this is a special one since I will be spending this weekend with my mother, Kadimo Jane Molobi. This shouldn't make me sound like a momma’s boy. I am not. Besides, I grew up hearing all people, including my late dad, fondly calling her ‘mmaKgomotso’ (Kgomotso’s mom) to the extent that…