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  • KZN Literary Tourism
  • KZN Literary Tourism
  • KZN Literary Tourism
  • KZN Literary Tourism
  • KZN Literary Tourism

Midlands Writers

Monday, 08 February 2010

We are currently developing a Midlands Writers trail and are in the process of selecting our writers.  Some suggestions so far include: Imraan Coovadia, Wilbur Smith, John van de Ruit, Jenny Hobbs, Jonny Steinberg, John Conyngham, Kobus Moolman and Craig Higginson. 

Other possible writers, through their work on Nelson Mandela and reference to hiscapture site in the Midlands, include Lewis Nkosi and Fatima Meer.

Have we left anyone out? 

 

Sol Plaatje Award for Poetry

Friday, 05 February 2010
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ENDURING FOOTPRINTS by PHYLLIS NAIDOO

Monday, 18 January 2010
Image“I make no apology for the many NAMES. Some reading this account were confused by the names. Blacks even in the “new South Africa” are a nameless phenomenon. They are statistics. Some statistics leave out the majority of our people… blacks are ghosts in our society. I tried in a small way to remedy that.”
[Phyllis Naidoo, Le Rona Re Batho - We are also People, p. 6]

Did you know that  President Zuma received only 10 cards while on Robben Island, and that they were all sent by Phyllis Naidoo?

Did you know that Zuma’s  senior  wife, Sizakele  Khumalo, to whom he always gives priority,  drank wintergreen in the 1970’s as a protest against  her  parents, who prevented her from marrying Zuma? Her  action resulted in a disability that has left her childless.  Zuma could not marry Sizakele as he was arrested, and was away in Robben Island for 10 years. Although he did not pay lobola, she remained loyal to him, and they were reunited when Zuma was released.

When we saw Zuma mount the Union Buildings steps with her on the day of his inauguration, many of us knew little of the suffering of this valiant woman behind the scenes for 35 years.  
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Spud – Learning to Fly by John van der Ruit

Monday, 11 January 2010

ImageFollowing on from its best-selling predecessors, Spud and Spud – The Madness Continues, the third instalment of Spud Milton’s schoolboy diaries charts his diabolical stagger through adolescence and the mayhem that ensues during his year in boarding school as a senior. Spud, now 16 and in his own words “practically a man in most areas”, has to cope with a vindictive arch enemy, a garrulous Malawian, and the crazy antics of his friends – the group of misfits known to all as the Crazy Eight. Along the way he also has to deal with eccentric school masters, an unpleasant discovery concerning fried fish and Wombat (his grandmother), and the trials and tribulations of his semi-arid love-life. In coping with these and other challenges thrown up by boarding school, Spud leads the reader on a hilarious journey through teenagerdom, complete with his own candid observations of his physical, sexual and social development. Spud’s teenage angst is set against the background of 1992 South Africa, where, despite the unmistakable scent of radical change in the air, Spud fears the return of “a government of twelve seventy-five-year-olds in safari suits” and is determined to convince his conservative parents to Vote Yes for Change in the upcoming referendum. South Africa’s bumpy road to redemption mirrors Spud’s comic journey as he finds his way through another trying year and takes his first cautious steps towards manhood.

 

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For Dennis Brutus - a poem

Friday, 08 January 2010

I first met Dennis Brutus in the early 1980’s when I attended an African Literature Conference, held in the United States. Being in exile, he was happy to meet a fellow South African. He remembered my husband,  Herby,  as they were at  Fort Hare together.  We were very happy to renew our friendship when he came back to South Africa after 1994. He would speak of “the return of the native” - an amusing reference to one of Thomas Hardy’s novels.  Dennis was a consummate patriot and a world citizen – he did not give up fighting for a just democracy, both locally and globally.   

 

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