Zakes Mda

Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni “Zakes” Mda, (born 1948) is a South African novelist, poet and playwright. He has won major South African and British literary awards for his novels and plays.

He is also the son of politician A. P. Mda.

Zanemvula Mda was born in Herschel, South Africa, in 1948.

and completed the Cambridge Overseas Certificate at Peka High School, Lesotho, in 1969.

He pursued his BFA (Visual Arts and Literature) at the International Academy of Arts and Literature, Zurich, Switzerland, in 1976.

He completed a MFA (Theater) and a MA (Mass Communication and Media) in 1984 at Ohio University, United States.

He completed his PhD at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 1989.

When he started publishing, he adopted the pen name of Zakes Mda.

In addition to writing novels and plays, he taught English and creative writing in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Most recently, he went to the United States, where he became a professor in the English Department at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and the University of Vermont.

As of July 2021, he is a Lecturer in Advanced Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins University.

Mda's first novel, Ways of Dying (1995), takes place during the transitional years that marked South Africa's transformation into a democratic nation.

It follows the character of Toloki.

After finding himself destitute, he invents a profession as a "Professional Mourner".

He traverses the violent urban landscape of an unnamed South African city, finding an old love amidst the internecine fighting present in the townships and squatter settlements.

The Heart of Redness (2000), Mda's third novel, is inspired by the history of Nongqawuse, a Xhosa prophetess whose prophecies catalyzed the Cattle Killing of 1856–1857.

Xhosa culture split between Believers and Unbelievers, adding to existing social strain, famine and social breakdown.

It is believed that 20,000 people died of starvation during that time.

In the novel, Mda continually shifts back and forth between the present day and the time of Nongqawuse to show the complex interplay between history and myth.

He dramatizes the uncertain future of a culture whose troubled relationship with the colonizing force of Empire, as well as their own civil factions, threatens to extinguish their home of Qolorha-by-Sea.

Mda's account of the Cattle Killing draws heavily on that of historian Jeff Peires in his book The Dead Will Arise (Mda acknowledges this at the outset of his novel).

Like Peires, Mda identifies Mhlkaza, Nongqawuse's uncle and one of the key players in the event, with William Goliath, the first Xhosa person baptised in the Anglican church.

Mda is a founding member and (as of 2011) serves on the advisory board of African Writers Trust, "a non-profit entity which seeks to coordinate and bring together African writers in the Diaspora and writers on the continent to promote sharing of skills and other resources, and to foster knowledge and learning between the two groups."

Mda's 2011 book, Sometimes There is a Void, was described by The New York Times as a "gregarious and transfixing memoir": "First fate, then choice, have shaped Mda into a perpetual outsider who partly belongs to the three societies — Lesotho, South Africa and the United States — that have served as his provisional homes. He writes from inside the exile's ambiguous fate, acknowledging that the uprooted life brings new perspectives but at the cost of a haunting fear of inner incoherence. Yet, as his autobiography discloses, on the stage and on the page Mda has found a different kind of continuity through the steadying presence of imaginative belonging. To his credit, in a deeply unsettled life, he has nurtured this capacity to find within the creative act itself new, reviving forms of homecoming."

On 8 June 2012, Mda was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of Cape Town for his contributions to world literature.

His novels have been translated into 21 languages, the translation of Ways of Dying into Turkish being the latest.

In 2013, he became a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature (alongside Ama Ata Aidoo, Dele Olojede, Ellah Allfrey, Margaret Busby and Kole Omotoso).