Regarded as one of South Africa’s leading authors, Zakes Mda (real name: Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda) is a multi-talented writer, whose work has received local and international recognition. Mda first rose to prominence in 1978, when he received the Amstel Merit Award for his play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland. A year later, he won the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award for another his plays, The Hill. His first two novels, She Plays with the Darkness and Ways of Dying, both released in 1995, were literary successes in his native South Africa. The former won the Sanlam Literary Award, while the latter went on to win the 1997 M-Net Literary Award.
In 2001, Mda’s book, The Heart of Redness, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book- Africa, and also received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Madonna of Excelsior, published in 2002, was selected as one of the Top Ten South African Books Published in the Decade of Democracy. Mda’s autobiography, Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider, released earlier this year, was published in South Africa by Penguin, and is due to be released this week in the US by FSG. It was picked by the Guardian’s Alexandra Fuller, as one of her top ten African memoirs.
In this interview, Zakes Mda talks about his writing, and his latest book, Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider.
You are so many things – a writer, painter, academic, composer, farmer and film maker. How do you juggle so many interests? Any favourites?
I don’t compartmentalize my life. I just live it. If on waking up I feel like painting a picture I paint a picture. Then I cook for the kids, and then go to class and teach, and then sit on my porch and watch the birds, then I write a poem. I just do what has to be done when it has to be done or when the mood takes me in a particular direction. I don’t have the stress of juggling anything.
When and how did you decide to become a writer?
I only know that it was before the age of ten. I read books that were readily available at home and comics that I bought. On a sojourn at my grandparents’ estate I listened to folk takes and participated in storytelling. I knew then that I wanted to be a writer.
You have had such an illustrious career. What achievement(s) are you most proud of to this point, and what regrets, if any, do you have?
I am proud of everything. I am also grateful for everything. I have no regrets. I have made many stupid mistakes in my life, and I will continue to make more. But I wouldn’t be who I am without them.
Your memoir came out recently. What inspired you to write it? And, why now?
I wrote Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider because I wanted to come to terms with my life, and with all the stupid mistakes that have made me who I am. I also thought there may be lessons to be learnt. Why now? Well, because last summer I had the urge to write it. I was also fearful that the older I get I’ll forget some of the events that have shaped me.
The book’s subtitle – “Memoirs of An Outsider”- suggests a sense of alienation? Are you referring to your having had to leave South Africa at an early age, and do you still see yourself as an outsider as a result? Why?
In the book, my outsiderness is interpreted in many different ways, many of which are figurative rather than literal. It begins from the time I was born and continues to this day.
Tell us about your current work, teaching at Ohio University, and supporting the Africa Writers Trust. Are you optimistic about the future of African writing in the age of ebooks, Twitter and all?
Writing is writing whatever the medium or the channel. Storytelling did not begin with books and will not end with books. If or when paper books come to an end, there will be other channels for the storyteller. The storyteller is for ever. So, the demise of the book as we know it, if it happens at all, does not worry me at all. I embrace new technologies. I teach creative writing at Ohio University, which is also my alma mater where I did an MFA (Theater) and MA (Telecommunications) thirty years ago, before going for a PhD in my own country at the University of Cape Town. I just like supporting and assisting emerging writers in Africa in any way I can. I spend a lot of time each year in South Africa working with, among others, writers (besides beekeeping in the rural Eastern Cape and working with HIV positive people in Johannesburg). The African Writers Trust, of course, is the brainchild of Ugandan writer Goretti Kyomuhendo, and I am grateful she invited me to serve.
Who are your favorite African authors, and what are some of the best books you have read by an African author?
Yvonne Vera is the love of my life. But there are many other writers whose work excites me – especially those of the younger generation. Unfortunately at the moment I am only exposed to Nigerian and South African writers, though I know wonderful things are happening in other parts of the continent. I love Sefi Atta, Thando Mgqolozana, , Zukiswa Wanner, Siphiwo Mhala, Biyi Bendele, and quite a few others.
What advice would you give any upcoming African writers?
The same old advice that every writer gives. You can only be a great writer if you become a great reader. And then of course, write. And write some more. The more you write the better you become.
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