Ronnie Govender
Ronnie Govender (1934-2021) [1] was a South African writer and playwright of Tamil descent.
Contents
Biography
Born Sathiseelan Gurilingam Govender in Cato Manor on 16 May 1934, one of ten children, he was popularly known, as Ronnie Govender, also publishing under that name.
After finishing his primary and secondary education, Govender attended the University of Cape Town (UCT), working as a sportswriter for the radical journal New Age to pay his fees. When the newspaper was closed by the authorities, he returned to Durban to train as a teacher at Springfield Training College.
Having begun teaching, Govender also began his career as a writer with the play Beyond Calvary (1962) and in 1964 he, Muthal Naidoo and Bennie Bersee co-founded the Shah Theatre Academy in Durban.
Among the awards he received over the years are the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize the African section for best first book (for his short story collection At the Edge and Other Cato Manor Stories); in 2007 Black Chin White Chin was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize; in 2008 he received the South African Order of Ikhamanga for his contribution to democracy and justice in South Africa through the genre of theatre; and in 2014 he received an honorary doctorate "for his contribution to literature and the arts in general as well as his contribution to democracy, peace and justice in South Africa through theatre" from the Durban University of Technology.
He died on 29 April 2021.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
He is one of the founding members of Shah Theatre Academy in the early 1960s and TECON in 1969.
His most celebrated play is The Lahnee’s Pleasure (first performed 1972 by TECON, published 1977), while later works include Beyond Calvary (19**), Blossoms on the Bough (19**), The Dilemma of the Swami (1986) and one-man dramatizations of his short stories, performed by Charles Pillai under the title At the Edge (1991) and 1949 (1996).
Awards, etc
He was awarded the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in 1997.
The Ronnie Govender Literary Award is named after him.
Sources
Wikipedia [2].
Various entries in the NELM catalogue.
Sunday Tribune, 18 March 2007.
Tribute by his daughter, Pregs Govender, published in Daily Maverick, 14 May 2021 [3].
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