Zanemvula Lizito Gatyeni Mda

(Zakes). (1948-) Playwright, academic, painter, novelist, and poet. Born in Herschell in the in the Eastern Cape, early schooldays in Soweto, finally completed the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate at Peka High, Lesotho (1969) . Completed a BFA in Visual Arts at the International Academy of Arts and Letters, Zurich Switzerland, then obtained both an MFA in Theater and an MA Mass Communication from at Ohio University, Athens Ohio (1981-84). In 1989 he completed his PhD at the University of Cape Town. His thesis on the utilization of theatre as a medium for development, based on his Lesotho experiences, was published as When People Play People (***,1993) and has become a standard handbook on the subject in South Africa. After teaching literature in English at various schools in Lesotho, some experience with the American Cultural Centre in Lesotho and the Lesotho Broadcasting Corporation, he became a University lecturer (and progressing to full professor) in English at the National University of Lesotho (1985-1992).Between 1993-1995 held a variety of fellowships, including at Yale and the University of the Witwatersrand. Since then he has been full time writer, painter and filmmaker, based in Johannesburg. He wrote his first play (Dead End) as a schoolboy in Lesotho. Other plays include You Fool, How Can the Sky Fall? (performed 1995), Dark Voices Ring (performed 1979, published 1979, 1981), We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (performed 1978, published 1981), The Hill (performed 1980, published 1981, 1990), And the Girls in Their Pretty Dresses (performed 1988, published 1996 in the collection Four Works), The Nun’s Romantic Story (performed 1995, also published 1996), Broken Dreams (a health education play developed with the cast in 1995, to tour townships). He has won the Amstel Merit Award for We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (1978), The Amstel Playwright of the Year Award for The Hill (1979), the Christina Crawford Award (of the then American Theater Association) for The Road (1984), and the Olive Schreiner Prize (Drama) of the English Academy of South Africa for The Nun’s Romantic Story (1996). Some of his plays have been translated and performed in Russian, French and Spanish.

Sources

Horn in Mda, 1990;

Schauffer and Raghunath, 1999.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zanemvula-kizito-mda

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