The Necessity of Art
In a once-off event, critically acclaimed Chilean-American author and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman will enter into conversation with South African writers and artists about the necessity of art in overcoming oppression and strengthening democracy.
The event, entitled “The Necessity of Art: reflection on writers and artists in defeating oppression and deepening democracy”, sees Dorfman in dialogue with Lebo Mashile and Keorapetse Kgositsile.
The event will be facilitated by Dr Mongane Wally Serote and hosted at The Sanctuary in Freedom Park.
Here we have profiles on the panelists speaking at the event.
Dr Mongane Wally Serote
Mongane Wally Serote was born four years before the National Party came to power and the introduction of apartheid in South Africa. Always conscious of himself in relation to his society, Serote provides a chronicle of and commentary on the apartheid era in his life and writing. A paraphrase of a section from an early poem, “Ofay-Watcher, Throbs-Phase” (1972) – “blacks must learn to talk; whites must learn to listen” ¬– has attained the status of a local proverb. As one of the most prominent South African poets, he is primarily known for the passionate intensity of his work, his uncompromising commitment to political liberation, the breadth of his sympathies, and the tension he maintains between the clichéd image or expression and the startlingly original one.
Apart from his volumes of poetry, he is a novelist of note and has written various short stories. Also an essayist, he has written on the role of culture and literature in the liberation struggle, and his views on the matter are captured in the piece, “Culture, Literature and Liberation” (1990). At the 2007 South African Literary Awards, Serote received the Lifetime Achievement Literary Award, bestowed by the Department of Arts and Culture in conjunction with wRite Associates.
Elinor Sisulu
Elinor Sisulu, born and educated in Zimbabwe, continued her studies in Senegal and the Netherlands in history, English literature, development studies and feminist theory. As an academic researcher for the Ministry of Labour in Zimbabwe in the early ‘80s, she published studies of women’s work and development assistance in the country. This included a major study for the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) that was later published by the Southern African Political and Economic Series (SAPES) Trust in a book entitled Women in Zimbabwe. From 1987 to 1990, she worked for the International Labour Organisation on assistance programmes for the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), when she met and married her husband, Max Sisulu. In 1991 she moved with her family to Johannesburg. From 1991 to 1998, Sisulu worked as a freelance writer and editor, and was assistant editor for SPEAK, a black feminist publication.
From her early childhood days, Sisulu wanted to be a writer, and her interest in writing for children was sparked by her concern about the decline in oral storytelling traditions in African societies. The need for preserving history through stories was her main motivation for writing The Day Gogo Went to Vote, which won numerous awards, including the African Studies Association’s Best Children’s Book award. This story about a child accompanying her grandmother to vote in the 1994 elections has been translated into six South African languages. In 1993, Sisulu was granted a fellowship at Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, to start researching and writing the biography of Walter and Albertina Sisulu. Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime was published in 2002 to critical acclaim, was runner-up in the Sunday Times Literary Awards for the Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction, and was awarded the Noma Award for most outstanding book published in Africa in 2003. Sisulu is currently advising on projects on democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe.
Lebo Mashile
The poet, performer, actress, presenter and producer, Lebogang Mashile, is the daughter of exiled South Africans and was born in the USA in 1979. At the age of sixteen years, she and her parents returned to their home country, and it was while she was studying law and international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg that the desire to work as an artist took hold.
In her work as a life skills facilitator for adolescents – focusing on topics like gender issues, teamwork and sexuality – poetry has been her preferred medium. Mashile regards its expressive power as the most effective tool to bring about those changes in mental attitude that are needed in the aftermath of the socio-political changes in post-apartheid South Africa. “The enemy isn’t really clear in the way it was before. It’s an incredibly sensitive, complicated struggle with many dimensions, but the site for that struggle is inside. ... The language of poetry comes from a place where that transformation has to begin, that sort of intuitive, creative, spiritual searching place that will be the fuel for any kind of transformation process.”
Mandla Langa
Mandla Langa was born in Stanger in Northern KwaZulu-Natal in 1950, and grew up in KwaMashu, a township on the outskirts of Durban, one of nine children. Among his siblings today are Chief Justice Pius Langa and South Africa’s ambassador to Russia, Bheki Langa.
While studying at the University of Fort Hare, Langa became actively involved in the South African Students’ Organisation, and his studies were disrupted by political strikes at the time. In 1976, he was arrested on the charge of trying to leave the country without a permit. Langa subsequently spent 101 days in jail and it was at this time that he began to take his writing more seriously, realising its potential.
Langa joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military arm of the resistance movement, the same year he was released from jail in 1976. He received his training in Angola, and subsequently moved all over Africa, occupying various African National Congress (ANC) posts during this period.
During his time in exile, Langa continued to produce poetry alongside fulfilling his political duties. In 1980, Langa won the Drum story contest for his piece, “The Dead Men Who Lost Their Bones”, and went on to publish two works in 1987 and in 1989, The Tenderness of Blood and A Rainbow on a Paper Sky. In 1991, Langa was the first South African to be awarded the Arts Council of Great Britain’s bursary for creative writing. His writing was his way of connecting with home, which he saw as his “perfect universe”. While in exile, Langa also obtained a journalism diploma in Hungary and London, eager to expose what South African media at that time were unable to, given state censorship.
Since the country’s transition to democracy, Langa has held various prominent positions in the media industry. He was a weekly columnist for the Sunday Independent for a time, and vice-chairperson of the Africa ‘95 Exhibition in London. Langa has also served on the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), having initially been the programme director for television at the national broadcaster.
Keorapetse Kgositsile
Before going into exile in 1961, poet, educator and activist Keorapetse Kgositsile was on the Johannesburg staff of New Age under the editorship of Ruth First. A founding member of the African Literature Association in 1974, together with the likes of Es’kia Mphahlele, Dennis Brutus, Daniel Kunene and Mazisi Kunene, Kgositsile helped establish the African National Congress (ANC) Department of Education and Department of Arts and Culture, in 1977 and 1982 respectively. He also worked in the underground structures of the ANC under the command of its political and military council.
Following on the completion of a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in the creative writing programme at Columbia University, New York, Kgositsile taught literature and creative writing at a number of universities in the United States and in Africa. His poetry ranges from the political and public to the lyrical and confessional, and he believes in the symbiotic relationship between poetry and politics, whereby “the poet articulates the dream of a people to be free and the liberation movement fights to make those dreams a reality.”
Kgositsile is most celebrated for bridging the continent with the African diaspora in North America through poetry, and has served as special adviser to the former Minister of Arts and Culture Dr Pallo Jordan and continues to serve in the same post for the current Minister of Arts and Culture Lulama Xingwana.
Kgositsile was honoured with the South African National Poet Laureate Prize at the 2006 South African Literary Awards.
Don Mattera
The work of Don Mattera is representative of the political and cultural period between the Sharpeville massacre and Soweto uprising. Banned under apartheid South Africa, it wasn’t until Mattera was published in London and Denmark that he became known outside of South Africa’s borders.
Once a gang leader in Sophiatown, where he grew up, Mattera is today a community leader and a renowned journalist. He has published collections of short stories, children’s stories and plays. His renowned poetry anthology, Azanian Love Song, remains a South African classic, and his poems reveal his sensitivity and display his sense of structure and eloquence. There is little public posturing in them. Mattera is the winner of the Steve Biko Prize for his seminal autobiography, Memory is the Weapon. In 1997 he won the World Health Organisation’s Peace Award, an honour bestowed by the Centre of Violence and Injury Prevention.
At the 2006 South African Literary Awards, he was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Literary Award by the Department of Arts and Culture and the Sowetan, in partnership with wRite Associates.
