By Abdi Ali
Published May 7, 2021

Athambile Masola is a blogger, poet, researcher and lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s English Department.As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc around the world, disrupting cultural and familial rituals for mourning, gathering and coming to terms with death, Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) of University of Cape Town is lining up a series of lectures highlighting what role African artists can place in tackling the pandemic.

ICA, through its 2021 Great Texts/Big Questions lecture series that features acclaimed writers, artists, and academics like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Zukiswa Wanner and Lebo Mashile, responds to the complexity of grief and grieving around Africa and the world in the time of Covid-19.

Loss upon Loss is the theme of the series that shall be offered May 12 – June 17, 2021 between 1:00 PM and 2:15 PM.

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“This year’s series will be a lunch-time series, with each lecture running on a Wednesday from 1:00 PM to 2.15 PM. The only exception is the final lecture by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, which will take place on a Thursday, June 17, at 6:00 PM,” ICA says in a statement. “The entire series will take place online via Zoom.”

Saying COVID 19 has in its wake left loss upon loss–lives, jobs,careers, financial security–ICA says this has added a new vocabulary–Zoom memorials, virtual funerals followed with alarming speed, deep cleaning, lockdowns, social distancing, masks–to our everyday speech.

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Zukiswa Wanner is the author of four novels, four children's books and two books of nonfiction.“The vision for the series draws from the concept of ‘ambiguous loss’ – a term that academic and therapist Pauline Boss coined in the 1970s to name and describe a rupturing of human relationships without closure or clear understanding,” ICA says. “Ambiguous loss has since been applied widely across the world in approaching forms of grief that cannot be resolved. In the context of the pandemic, the term provides a possible starting point of collective recognition and reckoning, and opens pathways to healing.”

Here is the lecture schedule and the topics to be tackled by every speaker from May 12 when the event begins and June 17 when it concludes:

  • Wed 12 May @ 1pm: Zukiswa Wanner, Creativity in the face of crisis
  • Wed 19 May @ 1pm: Yewande Omotoso, Death: unfathomable, inevitable
  • Wed 26 May @ 1pm: Athambile Masola, Grieving: surviving imiphanga through a black aesthetic
  • Wed 2 June @ 1pm: Lebo Mashile, Crisis catalysing creativity as rituals and as resistance
  • Wed 9 June @ 1pm: Percy Mabandu, A Call to artistry: Catharsis, and creative grammars against grief, and
  • Thursday 17 June @ 6pm: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Title to be announced.

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Lebo Mashile is a celebrated South African poet, author, performer, and producer. ICA also presents the profiles of the speakers it is featuring in its 2021 Great Texts/Big Questions lecture series:

  • Zukiswa Wanner is the author of four novels, four children’s books and two books of nonfiction. She has been a columnist for True Love (SA), The Star and Nation (Kenya), New African and Mail & Guardian and has written for publications like the New York Times and The Guardian. As a publisher, Wanner counts among her authors Mukoma wa Ngugi from Kenya and Angolan writer Yara Monteiro. She is the founder and curator of Artistic Encounters, Afrolit Sans Frontieres and Virtually Yours. In 2020, Wanner became the first African woman to win the Goethe Medal, an official decoration by the German government conferred to non-Germans for outstanding service for international cultural relations. She was also selected by New African as one of Africa’s 100 Most Influential Africans and by literary journal Brittle Paper as the 2020 African Literary Person of the Year.

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Yewande Omotoso is an architect, with a Master's degree in creative writing from the University of Cape Town.

  • Yewande Omotoso is an architect, with a Masters in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel Bomboy (2011 Modjaji Books) won the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize. Yewande was a 2015 Miles Morland Scholar. Her second novel The Woman Next Door (2016 Chatto and Windus) was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Literature Prize. Her third novel An Unusual Grief (Cassava Republic) is forthcoming.
  • Athambile Masola is a blogger, poet, researcher and lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s English Department. Her research is largely focused on black women’s historiography, life writing and cultural production in the newspaper archive. Her PhD was a an exploration of Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang’s memoirs. She will be publishing a collection of poetry written in isiXhosa with Uhlanga Press (provisional title, Ilifa). Her writing has been published in academic journals, newspapers and online blogs. She is the founder of Asinakuthula Collective which hosts the Maxeke-Mgqwetho Annual Lecture.

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Percy Mabandu is a South African writer, artist, and communications professional.

  • Lebo Mashile is a celebrated South African poet, author, performer, and producer. A sought-after speaker and social commentator, Mashile has shared her creative work in 28 countries to date. She is the author of the play Venus Vs Modernity: The Life of Saartjie Baartman (2019), the Noma Award-winning collection In A Ribbon of Rhythm (2006), and Flying Above the Sky (2008). She has also produced the albums Lebo Mashile Live! (2006) and Moya (2017). Her acting credits include the film Hotel Rwanda, stage adaptations of K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams and Pamela Nomvete’s Ngiyadansa, as well as Threads, a fusion of poetry and contemporary dance. Mashile has spent 16 years working in television and media as a TV presenter, content creator, and voice-over artist.
  • Percy Mabandu is a South African writer, artist, and communications professional. He is the author of the book, Yakhal’inkomo – Portrait of a Jazz Classic. He is interested in life at the intersection of art, jazz, and political economy. Mabandu’s arts journalism, both in print and broadcast, has been published globally on platforms like NewFrame, Departures Magazine, Mail & Guardian, SAfm, and many others. He lives in the City of Tshwane.

 

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  • Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature at UC Irvine, is on the short list for the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature, for xxx(add phrase or blurb here from award announcement; Chancellor quote? Christine writing and getting approved quote). Ngugi, whose name is pronounced “Googy” and means “work,” is a prolific writer of novels, plays, essays and children’s literature. Many of these have skewered the harsh sociopolitical conditions of post-Colonial Kenya, where he was born, imprisoned by the government and forced into exile. His recent works have been among his most highly acclaimed and include what some consider his finest novel, “Murogi wa Kagogo” (“Wizard of the Crow”), a sweeping 2006 satire about globalization that he wrote in his native Gikuyu language. In his 2009 book “Something Torn & New: An African Renaissance,” Ngugi argues that a resurgence of African languages is necessary to the restoration of African wholeness. “I use the novel form to explore issues of wealth, power and values in society and how their production and organization in society impinge on the quality of a people’s spiritual life,” he has said.Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the most significant, prolific and influential thinkers of our time. He burst onto the literary scene with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala in 1962. In a highly productive literary period, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote additionally eight short stories, two one act plays, two novels, and a regular column for the Sunday Nation under the title, “As I See It”. The novel Weep Not Child was published to critical acclaim in 1964 followed by a second novel, The River Between (1965). His third, A Grain of Wheat (1967), was a turning point in the formal and ideological direction of his works. His first volume of literary essays, Homecoming, appeared in print in 1969. These were to be followed, in later years, by other volumes including Writers in Politics (1981 and 1997); Decolonising the Mind (1986); Moving the Center (1994); and Penpoints Gunpoints and Dreams (1998). Sharply critical of the inequalities and injustices of Kenyan society, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was arrested and imprisoned without charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison at the end of 1977. His memoir, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary (1982), is an account of those experiences.

Virtual African Lecture Series Responds to Losses Caused by Coronavirus After Amnesty International named Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o a Prisoner of Conscience, an international campaign secured his release in December 1978. However, the Moi Dictatorship barred him from jobs at colleges and universities in Kenya. In exile, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o worked with the London based Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya (1982-1998). In 1992 he became Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, and from there moved to his present position at the University of California.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’ohas continued to write prolifically. He is the recipient of numerous honours, including the 2001 Nonino International Prize for Literature, as well as 10 Honorary Doctorates.