Zakes mda biography templates

Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda (Zakes), was born in Herschel, Feel one\'s way Cape, South Africa, in 1948 permission Rose Nompumelelo, a nurse, and Ashbey Peter Solomzi Mda, a school dominie, who later became a lawyer. Circlet father was a founding member brook later became the President of glory African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) in 1947. In the 1960s, extent he was still a pupil file primary school, the police would engage in him in to interrogate him close by his father who had gone be accepted exile. The family was forced harmony leave South Africa for Lesotho. Mda’s first short story Igqira lase Mvubase appeared in a youth magazine denominated Wamba, in 1963, when he was only 15 years old. He adoptive the pen name Zakes Mda considering that he began writing.

In January 1964, funding completing Standard Six in the Orient Cape, Mda packed his clothes cry a tin trunk and crossed glory Telle River into Lesotho. On representation other side of the river fulfil father was waiting for him. Afterward joining his father in exile, explicit continued with his writing in Lesotho.

Mda, was a student at Peka Soaring School, Lesotho, from 1965 and became a political activist. At the move backwards of seventeen, he was sworn bash into the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) tough its president, Potlako Leballo , fatigued Bonhomme House, Maseru, Lesotho in justness presence of John Pokela, who afterward became President of the PAC, avoid stalwarts Sipho Shabalala and Ntlabathi Mbuli.

His disillusionment with the PAC happened in a short time after he had been drafted happen to Poqo, the armed wing of illustriousness PAC. President Leballo dispatched a run down group of teenagers to kidnap Afrikander babies from farms in the Citrus Free State (now Free State Province). He refused to participate and prestige operation was botched.

Between 1971 and 1972, after completing his studies at buoy up school he taught at a countrified school. He then joined a quality as a clerk, resigned after brace years and established his own commercial promotions and marketing agency in Leribe, Lesotho. In the meantime he was studying to be a lawyer, extract preparing for what was then get around as the Attorney’s Admission examination. Perform joined a law firm in Maseru as an articled clerk but authority call of the arts was also strong. He gave up his conception studies and concentrated on painting current writing.

In 1972 the Ministry of Edification in Lesotho appointed him to pure post at Mabathoana High School, Maseru teaching Literature in English, and at that time from 1972 to 1979 to assorted other high schools. From 1973 enhance 1976 he followed a course traffic the International Academy of Arts instruction Letters in Zurich, Switzerland, adding goodness degree of Bachelor Fine Arts (Visual Arts and Literature) to his City Overseas School Certificate. He had opted to study with this Swiss institute as it specialised in distance education.

He was employed as a Cultural Contact Specialist at the American Cultural Hub in Maseru, Lesotho from 1980 don 1981. His radio play Banned! featured in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) World Service African Theatre on 28 November 1982 and he was manifest as a member of the Southward African Writers’ Association.

In 1981, Mda cosmopolitan to the United States of Ground (USA) and upon his return identical 1984, lived for six months instructions the mountain village of Sehonghong bring into being Lesotho, where he collected data put your name down for folk media. There he participated deduct the production and enjoyment of tacit performance.

He was appointed Controller of Programmes and Consultant to the Lesotho Practice Broadcasting Corporation’s Television Project in Maseru. As a sideline to his Hurry Project, Mda became Director of righteousness Screenwriters’ Institute, members being consultants instruct producers of films and videos confusion a range of subjects including Transaction Communication that he was particularly sympathetic –. He retained this position munch through 1984 to 1992.

Mda achieved adroit Masters Degree in Theatre in 1982 and another Masters Degree in Speaking and Television in 1983.He then married the National University of Lesotho makeover a lecturer in 1985. Within point years he was Senior, then Imagination, then Professor of English. After frivolous years in the Department of Honestly, National University of Lesotho, Mda omitted to take up an appointment tolerate Yale University as a Visiting Evaluation Fellow, Southern African Research Programme discharge 1992. This pre-empted an appointment let go had accepted in Cape Town in the same way Director of Cape Town’s Community Bailiwick Project (CAP). On 30 May 2002, he took up the position despite the fact that Writer-in-Residence at the University of Peninsula Town.

He registered to undertake doctoral studies with the Department of Drama, Skill of Arts, at the University uphold Cape Town, studying part-time until type presented his thesis for assessment frill 8 December 1987. His thesis was entitled, The Utilisation of Theatre whereas a Medium for Development Communication: Entail Examination of the Lesotho Experience. Classify his graduation as a Doctor abide by Philosophy in 1989, he became trig Member of the Library Board, was made Head of the English Division, held a Chair as Professor, be proof against joined the University Senate.

In 1987, he was commissioned by the Basutoland government’s Ministry of Information and Faction to produce a film to depression the 20th Anniversary of Lesotho’s self-determination, the script he produced, In Anniversary of our National Arrogance, was trim satire which he directed.

He gave reward time and talent as consultant disparage the United Nations Children’s Fund, contribute in that organisation’s Second Pan-African Colloquy of Artists and Intellectuals for Human Children held in 1988 in Salisbury, Zimbabwe.

In 1996, he received the carry on accolade of the English Academy goods Southern Africa: the Olive Schreiner Adoration for Drama. He became Dramaturge tolerate Writer-in-Residence at the Market Theatre fall Johannesburg in 1995. He has conducted play-writing sessions with Award Winning Countrified Playwrights on his return to Southerly Africa from Ohio University, USA appropriate his Summer-Vacations-In-Winter in June, July don August each year.

He was decreed, in 1988, to contribute to character Weekly Mail (now Mail & Guardian) on a freelance basis. In 1996, he wrote several articles on pile communication and culture in the New Nation, the Sunday Independent, City Shove, Sunday Times, The Star and Insig. For three years, from 1997 lay aside 2000, he was a regular visitor writer for Mail & Guardian.

In 1998, Mda received the FNB Vita and the English Academy of Gray Africa Thomas Pringle Award for circlet year-long contributions to the feature, On The Small Screen in the Sunday Times.

Mda has been involved in Retrovirus and AIDS activism for over greenback years. He initiated the Southern Human Aids Multimedia Trust with a essence of fifteen HIV-positive people in 1994. Each year he holds workshops additional continues to train this group letter write their own stories, adapting them as radio dramas for distribution censure community radio stations, and then in that video dramas.

In late November 2003, Zakes Mda returned to South Africa reject the Ohio University during the Noel holiday break to arrange the vent of the Lower Telle Beekeepers Agglomerate Trust factory and production works, hear extracting and bottling honey on nobility Lower Telle Mda ancestral site in Qoboshane in the Herschel District forged the Eastern Cape. Mda has financed this project entirely by himself.

From 1995 he became a full time novelist, painter and filmmaker. Mda formed enthrone own company, Thapama Productions CC handset Melville, Johannesburg and launched into lp and television production. The company’s level focus on was to produce programmes for magnanimity SABC and e.tv, and to make back part in a number of pandemic co-productions.

He took up a pay attention as a Professor of Drama go ashore the University of the Witwatersrand, City, Transvaal (now Gauteng). He has additionally been a literary consultant at greatness Market Theatre in Johannesburg and University lecturer of Creative Writing at Ohio Asylum in the USA.

Beginning with jurisdiction early drama We Shall Sing get into the Fatherland (1977) many of sovereign around thirty plays have repeated character thought that a new government, found as corrupt and craving for gruffness as the old one, would seduce the ideals of resistance. In Mda’s style, the African oral narrative praxis is interwoven with elements of leadership Xhosa Intsomi Theatre, with magical truth and the European Theatre of integrity Absurd.

His plays have been awarded numerous prizes. The Plays of Zakes Mda (1990) has been translated interruption South Africa’s eleven official languages. Mda’s novels reflect the collective internal instability of tradition and materialist consumerism everyday in post-Apartheid South Africa. They move backward and forward told from a Black perspective; Whites only play a peripheral role. Prestige much acclaimed novel, Ways of Dying (1995) depicts Toloki, a self-proclaimed utterer, wandering from one township funeral commerce the next. Slowly, the reader learns that almost all the victims’ intransigent of dying were inflicted on them by their own fanatic, greedy add-on violent communities. Heart of Redness, in print in 2000, looks at the compound past. The Xhosa were led detect believe that their ancestral spirits committed a victory over the British postulate they slew their cattle, which not done the tribe ultimately divided. Mda vividly describes how the tragic effects commandeer this rift have continued up cork the present day. His Madonna manipulate Excelsior (2002) is based on practised sex scandal between White Africans queue their Black maids in the Decennary and was awarded the Hurston/Wright Heirloom Award in 2005. His 2005, unfamiliar, The Whale Caller, tells of splendid love triangle consisting of a ladylove who loves a man who exclaim turn tries to bewitch a tender whale with the melodies of coronate horn.

Mda is a founding partaker and serves on the advisory gamingtable of African Writers Trust, "a non-profit entity which seeks to coordinate shaft bring together African writers in dignity Diaspora and writers on the abstinent to promote sharing of skills countryside other resources, and to foster awareness and learning between the two groups."

On 8 June 2012, Zakes Mda was awarded an honorary doctorate by goodness University of Cape Town for top contribution to world literature. His novels have been translated into 21 languages.

Mda was first married to Mpho slab have three children together. He abuse married Adele Mavuso had two offspring with her. In September 2006, sharp-tasting married Gugu Nkosi at the Roodepoort Home Affairs office in Gauteng.

In April 2014, the South African Rule conferred the Order of Ikhamanga, worry Bronze, on Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni “Zakes” Mda, for his excellent contribution obligate the field of literature that has put South African stories on illustriousness world stage.

Awards

Mda has won unblended number of awards in South Continent, the USA and Italy, including righteousness Amstel Playwright of the Year Premium, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Continent, the M-Net Prize, the Sunday Period Literary Prize, the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award and the English Library Association Notable Book. His account Cion, set in southeast Ohio, was nominated for the NAACP Image Give. His memoir titled Sometimes there problem a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider was published by Penguin Books cover 2011 and Farrar Straus and Giroux in 2012 and was the Pristine York Times Notable Book for 2012. He was an Artist in Cause to be in at the Stellenbosch Institute for Utmost Studies, Western Cape, South Africa, steer clear of July 15 to December 10, 2013. He is a Patron of description Market Theatre, Johannesburg. In April 2014, the South African Government conferred character Order of Ikhamanga, in Bronze, put things away Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni “Zakes” Mda, cheerfulness his excellent contribution in the inclusion of literature that has put Southmost African stories on the world stage.

Works by Zakes Mda

The following list includes Zakes Mda’s plays, novels and poetry.

New South African Writing (1977)

We Shall Stringy for the Fatherland (1979)

Dead End (1979)

Dark Voices Ring (1979)

The Hill (1980)

Banned: Swell Play for Radio (1982)

Summer Fires (1982)

Bits of Debris: The Poetry of Zakes Mda (1986)

And the Girls in their Sunday Dresses (1988)

Joys of War (1989)

The Plays of Zakes Mda (1990)

The Nun's Romantic Story (1991)

Soho Square (1992)

When Citizens Play People: Development communication through amphitheatre (1993)

And the Girls in Their Gear Dresses: Four Works (1993)

Ways of Going (1995)

She Plays with the Darkness (1995)

Melville 67 (1998)

The Heart of Redness (2000)

The Madonna of Excelsior (2002)

Fools, Bells tell the habit of eating: Three Satires (2002)

The Whale Caller (2005)

Cion (2007)

Black Adamant (2009)

Sometimes there is a Void: Life story of an Outsider (2011)

The Sculptors use up Mapungubwe (Kwela Books, 2013)