The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver

Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni “Zakes” Mda Awarded for:

His excellent contribution to the field of literature that has put South African stories on the world stage. His craft of telling stories preserves our cultural history.

Profile of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni “Zakes” Mda

Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni “Zakes” Mda was born in 1948 in Herschel in the Eastern Cape. He is a renowned novelist, poet and playwright. He has won major local and international literary awards for his novels and plays. Mda studied in South Africa, Lesotho and the United Kingdom (UK). In addition to writing novels and plays, he has taught English and creative writing in South Africa and the UK.

Currently, he is a professor in the English Department at the Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and the University of Vermont.

Mda is a founding member and currently serves on the advisory board of the African Writers Trust, an entity which seeks to coordinate and bring together African writers in the diaspora and writers on the continent to promote the sharing of skills. In 2012 Mda was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town for his contributions to world literature. His novels have been translated into 21 languages, with the translation of Ways of Dying into Turkish as the latest.

Mda uses history, for instance, to shift back and forth between the present day and the time of Nongqawuse to show the complex interplay between history and myth. He dramatises the uncertain future of a culture whose troubled relationship with the colonising force of Empire, as well as their own civil factions, threatens to extinguish their home of Qolorha-by-Sea.

His creativity has made South Africa proud and has put its literature on the forefront of the global literary landscape.