CONTRIBUTORS
From Alice to Zama
Alice Meyer’s
PhD explores the ability of poetry to act as a voice of radical political critique in post-Apartheid South Africa. Meyer focuses on experimental and avant-garde poetry with a view towards tackling the complex relationship between poetic form and socioeconomic power. Meyer’s study is particularly pressing given that the poets she has chosen to highlight are largely overlooked by the commercial publishing industry and mainstream academia. While her project pays specific attention to post-Apartheid South Africa, Meyer ultimately sees her research as relevant to other postcolonial and developing milieus in which the formal battles of artists and writers can constitute a resonant mode of protest against an unequal world system.
Allan Kolski Horwitz
grew up in Cape Town. Between 1974 and 1985 he lived in the Middle East, Europe and North America, returning to South Africa in 1986. A member of the Botsotso Jesters performance poetry group, he is currently co-ordinator of Botsotso Publishing and the Botsotso Ensemble. He has previously worked in the trade union and social housing movements as an organizer and educator and is active in the local civic movement and South African Jews for a Free Palestine. He lives in Johannesburg. His solo books of poetry are entitled Saving Water, There are Two Birds at My Window, The Colours of Our Flag and What the Hell. His short fiction is contained in three collections – Un/common Ground, Out of the Wreckage and Meditations of a Non-White White.
Alon Skuy
is a photojournalist born in Johannesburg, South Africa now based in Miami, Florida. After completing a course at The Market Photo Workshop, he began working as a photographer for some of the country’s largest publications. He later moved on to be Chief Photographer of the Sunday Times and The Times in South Africa, focusing on issues relating to inequality, conflict, resilience and life on the fringes of society. Skuy’s career has been defined by his depth and range as a news and documentary photographer. He is noted for his coverage of the 2012 Marikana Massacre, his long term work around the scourge of xenophobic violence, and his intimate portrayal of sub culture. Skuy is the recipient of numerous local and international awards, including recognition by the World Press Photo Foundation, and multiple awards from the Picture of the Year International (POYI). He is the recipient of 9 Standard Bank Sikuvile Awards, and multiple Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards in the photography category. For more than a decade, Skuy has documented xenophobia in South Africa, and together with photographer James Oatway, published a book on the subject in 2021, entitled [BR]OTHER. The book received an Award of Excellence during the 80th Pictures of the Year International Awards, in the Photography Book of the Year category.
Ayanda Billie
is a writer/poet – born in the township of KwaNobuhle, Uitenhage Kariega, where he still lives. He sometimes facilitates creative writing workshops for the youth. He also founded a local book club to grow a reading and writing culture in his community and is the co-founder of Mandela Bay Book Fair. Ayanda holds an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. He has published three collections of poetry: Avenues of my Soul (Swii Arts), Umhlaba Umanzi (Imbizo Arts) and KwaNobuhle Overcast (Deep South). His poems have appeared in Numsanews, New Coin, Ityhini, Carapace, Kotaz, Timbila, Illuminations and on several online literature journals. In 2019 he won the South African Literary Award for his isiXhosa collection Umhlaba Umanzi. His English collection of poetry KwaNobuhle Overcast also won the South African Literary Award in the Poetry category in 2021.
Bila Vonani
(b. 1972) grew up in Shirley Village, Limpopo province, South Africa, from where he used to walk fourteen kilometers daily to Lemana High School in Elim. He is a poet, essayist, cultural activist, founding editor of the poetry journal Timbila, publisher of Timbila Books, curator of the Vhembe International Poetry festival, and founder of Timbila Writers’ Village, a rural retreat centre for writers. He has been instrumental in promoting marginalized poets and has become an iconic figure among the poets of his generation in South Africa. His poetry continues the tradition of South African resistance poetry of the 1970s and 1980s, blended with postmodernist experiments. He is the author of eight storybooks in English, Northern Sotho, and Xitsonga for newly literate adult readers; two children’s books; co-compiler of two dictionaries with M. M. Marhanele, Tihlùngù ta Rixaka (2016) a monolingual Xitsonga dictionary; and a bilingual English-Xitsonga dictionary, Xilamulelamhangu (2025) and is currently a lecturer in English at the University of Limpopo. He holds an MA in creative writing (cum laude) from Rhodes University. His poetry books include No Free Sleeping (1998) (with Donald Parenzee and Alan Finlay); In the name of Amandla (2004); Magicstan Fires (2006); Handsome Jita (2007), and Bilakhulu! Longer Poems (2015). Bila is married to Gudani with four children, namely, Mhlahlandlela, Samora, Masase and Khensani.He is also the much loved Guest Editor of this issue of herri.
Bongani Madondo
is a photography theorist and poetry critic. He is the author of I’m Not Your Weekend Special, a book on the African pop star, Brenda Fassie, and Sigh, the Beloved Country, among others. His monograph, Will U Take Me As I Am?: Half-a-Century of Grace Jones As Self Fetish was published in the 10th Anniversary if Berlin Biennial catalogue. In 2022 he curated Dance For Me, a photography exhibition on the photo family album of Stimela’s band leader and part of Paul Simon’s Graceland, Ray Phiri.
Carsten Rasch
is a Cape Town-based cultural entrepreneur whose eclectic career has spanned music, film, and writing. His 2019 memoir, Between Rock & a Hard Place, offers a vivid account of his experiences in the South African underground music scene, chronicling his adventures as a drummer and promoter during the rebellious 80s. In recent years, Rasch has focused on writing about music and music history with an emphasis on syncretic genres and countercultural movements. He has contributed to publications such as the Sunday Times, Vrye Weekblad, LitNet, Guardian, News24 and Herri, exploring the intersection of music and social change. Currently, Rasch is writing a second memoir titled En Route to the Palace of Wisdom; co-writing a book (with Fred de Vries) documenting South African protest music from the 1930s to 1994, tracing the genres, artists and songs that defied authority; and researching the history of the Mascarene Islands for a book on travel and music.
Charla Smith
has a PhD in Philosophy. Her thesis was titled A Feminist Rereading of the figure of Winnie Mandela. Her interests include violence, masculinities and meaning making. Recent articles include:Smith, C. ‘Do You Think I Can Kill You? ’Exploring Intimate Femicide in South Africa and Why Intimacy Hurts So Much and Smith, C. On thinking about interpersonal violence and the impotence of force.
Dathini Mzayiya
was born in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa in 1979. After studying advertising and marketing at the Advertising College of South Africa, Cape Town, in 1999, he enrolled at the Peninsula Technikon (Pentech), Bellville, Cape Town, in 2000, where studied graphic design and advertising. He then registered for the Advanced Programme in Visual Arts at the Community Arts Project (CAP), Cape Town, in 2001. At CAP, he was taught drawing and painting by Joseph Gaylard and Sarah Schneckloth. Since then, he has shown his work, not only in South Africa, but in various parts of the world, notably Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Ethiopia. He has also participated in international projects, including a project for the South African Human Rights Media Centre in Liberia and Kenya, where he worked with survivors of torture and war. Using oil paint and charcoal, Mzayiya’s critical art depicts the socio-political landscape of the postapartheid, with particular focuses on racialised structural violence and the plight of the poor and downtrodden. His expressive paintings and drawings generally reflect disillusionment with a contemporary South Africa described by some as the ‘rainbow nation’, and his subjects range from bosses, landlords, the police and security guards to the homeless, beggars and job seekers. Mzayiya is a founding member of Western Cape branch of the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA); Africa South Arts Initiative (ASAI); CitySkin, a public space design firm; and Gugulective, an arts, culture and open education collective intent on making “the history and legacy of apartheid visible again and to combat it with artistic methods.”
David wa Maahlamela
a poet born in 1984, is from Namakgale and grew up in Mankweng, in South Africa’s Limpopo province. He is the author of Moswarataukamariri (Timbila, 2008) and Sejamoledi (Unisa Press, 2012), as well as a co-author of Ditlabonyane (Maskew Miller Longman, 2012) and editor of Tša Borala (Timbila, 2014). His poetry appeared in over a hundred journals and anthologies worldwide. He has chaired the Pan South African Language Board and the National Arts Council’s literature advisory panel. He has also been the director of the Poetry Africa International Festival and an associate professor in creative writing. Maahlamela holds an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in African Languages from Rhodes University.
Dimakatso Sedite
is a qualitative researcher, writer of poetry and author of Yellow Shade (Deep South, 2021). She has a keen interest in exploring social history of Batswana and Basotho, particularly in the Free State. She has written several book reviews, highlighting works by South African authors. She holds an M.A. in Research Psychology from the University of Witwatersrand.
Dominic Daula
is a Lecturer in Musicology in the Department of Music and Musicology at Rhodes University, where he has received the honour of being made an Andrew W Mellon Early Career Scholar. He is also the recipient of an NRF Thuthuka Grant for a creative project on the piano music of Hubert du Plessis. Dominic is secretary to the editorial board of Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa (Taylor and Francis) and is also a member of the Journal’s editorial board. Dominic is active as a pianist and harpsichordist, and has recently performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Cape Town (as part of Welgemeend Art Month and at the UCT Summer School) and Makhanda. He studied at the University of Cape Town under James May and Franklin Larey, and at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester under Richard Ormrod.
Dougie Oakes
is in his fourth decade as a journalist and writer, having written extensively in South Africa for the then Argus Printing and Publishing Company and Independent Media. He has specialised in sport politics, and features and leader writing. He was also commissioned by Reader’s Digest to conceptualise, edit and, to a large extent, write a book on South African History. The Illustrated History of South Africa – the Real Story sold almost a quarter-of-a-million copies in South Africa and about 40 thousand copies in other parts of the world.
Enock Shishenge
is a South African teacher, poet, critic and activist rooted in student politics, trade unionism and the arts environment. Born in Jim- Jones village, Limpopo, and now based in Ivory Park, Gauteng, he writes in both Xitsonga and English and his voice rises from the ghetto streets, echoing the pain, pride and defiance of a people who refuse to be silenced. A committed Pan‑Africanist and humanist socialist Shishenge regards himself as a revolutionary watchdog existing in the depths of his own conscience.
Fortunate Jwara
is a writer, literary scholar and a PhD candidate at Nelson Mandela University. Her research focuses on experimentation and erotic representations in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, Yvonne Vera’s Butterfly Burning and Stacy Hardy’s Because the Night
Gavin Steingo’s
research examines sound and music as fundamental features in the construction of global modernity, with research specializations in African music, sound studies, acoustic ecology, and music and philosophy. Methodologically, my work is united by a mode of inquiry where theory, history, and ethnography form part of a shared constellation. I am also affiliated with the programs in Media and Modernity, African Studies, and Jazz Studies.
Goodenough Mashego
is an independent political analyst, writer, poet, historian and language activist. He is an author of several books across genres, most notably Journey With Me (poetry), Taste of My Vomit (poetry), Just Like Space Cookies (poetry), How To Sink The Black Ball (essays), Diary of St Peter (experimental), Pilate’s Angels (novel), Z & Other Stories (short stories) and The Playbook (novel). His latest novel, Sinner On The Cross will be out in 2026. Outside solo projects Mashego is widely published in tens of poetry anthologies, journals and a plethora of online platforms. In 2016 his Saving Endangered Species (SES) award-winning play, The Last Show was staged at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles, USA. Two of his scripts have been made into television films by Mzansi Magic; and one was produced into a radio drama by SAFM. Mashego is also an Apartheid survivor and pro-Palestinian activist who wholeheartedly believes that, like it was the case with apartheid, nomakanjani, someday soon, ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’. He was born when Balthazar John Vorster was Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa.
Hugo ka Canham
is a writer and professor at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa. His work is located along the fault lines of black studies, African feminism, African and queer theorisations. He studies the phenomenology of living at the margins of human value, suffering and death. His work is invested in detonating the binaries between the human and the natural, multispecies world. It may be understood within the transdisciplinary framework of Black Planetary Studies. His essays and short stories can be found in a range of publications. His latest book, Riotous Deathscapes is published by Duke University Press and copublished by Wits University Press.
Ian Osrin
is a Johannesburg-based record producer, audio engineer, and composer with over four decades at the heart of South African music. He is the founder and owner of Digital Cupboard Studios, one of the most storied recording facilities in the country and — when it opened in 1988 — one of the first fully digital studios in South Africa, and quite possibly anywhere within 10,000 miles. Before striking out on his own, Osrin spent five years working at the largest music studio facility in Johannesburg, training in the US along the way. He founded Digital Cupboard partly as a response to the growing affordability of digital equipment — early kit included a Yamaha DX7 synthesiser and a Roland MC500 sequencer running alongside an Otari 8-track — before the studio evolved into a full-service recording facility situated near the historically significant Sophiatown area of Johannesburg. Over five decades, Digital Cupboard has been the recording home of some of the most significant artists in South African music: Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Mahotella Queens, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Stimela, Jabu Khanyile, Simphiwe Dana, Zonke, Prophets of the City, Zasha, and Mattafix, among many others. The studio’s output has been recognised with multiple SAMA (South African Music Awards) trophies — the local equivalent of the Grammys — including the inaugural Producer of the Year and Album of the Year awards. Beyond the studio, Osrin has composed music for film, with credits including Masinga – The Calling, Life, Above All, and Forgiveness. More recently he channelled his deep knowledge of South African musical tradition into Zulu Porridge, a loop pack released via BandLab — the name a nod to mbaqanga, the Zulu word for everyday cornmeal porridge and a genre that served as the musical daily bread of a generation.
Ignatia Madalane
is a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Arts at Stellenbosch University, affiliated with the Africa Open Institute. She holds a Master of Music (Research) degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and has published in national and international journals. She is also an emerging author whose short stories include My Brother’s Spirit, Rest in Peace (English Academy Review, co-authored with Nhlanhla Maake) and Not on the List (herri). Her research and creative work explore ubungoma, African spiritual practices, music, identity, genre, performance, culture, and healing practices.
Jesús Sepúlveda
studied at Liceo Experimental Manuel de Salas and then at the Metropolitan University of Sciences of Education (UMCE) in Santiago de Chile. His first collection Lugar de origen (1987), written when he was a teenager, is a work representative of a generation rising up against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. He is the author of eighteen books, including his green-anarchist manifesto The Garden of Peculiarities (2002), collections of his selected poems, Poemas de un bárbaro (2013) and Poço de seda (2022), a critical study of Latin American poetry, Poets on the Edge (2016), and the essays Poetic Reason in the Age of Digital Control (2023) and Realidades multidimensionales (2025). His most recent poetry collections are Espejo de los detalles / Mirror of Details (2020) and Pax Americana (2023). His third collection Hotel Marconi (1998) was made into a film in Chile in 2009. His work has been translated from Spanish into twelve languages and published in more than twenty countries, leading him to participate in many poetry festivals and readings throughout the world. Sepúlveda was born in Santiago de Chile and currently lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he teaches at the University of Oregon.
Jurgen Meekel
is an audiovisual artist, filmmaker, and designer who studied Audiovisual Art at the Rietveld Academy after initial training in graphic design. Working across disciplines, his practice encompasses installation, sculpture, animation, graphic and motion design, cinematography, post-production, VFX, and sound. Recent projects include AV projection designs for theatre productions. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, with work held in the collection of the Utrecht Central Museum for Modern Art. He has been teaching filmmaking at the Wits School of Arts since 2010. Through moving-image and sonic landscapes, his art practice and published research explore the intersections of science and art. He is also part of the design team of herri.
Kaganof
is publisher and curator of herri.
Kelwyn Sole
is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Cape Town. He has published numerous articles on South African, postcolonial and modernist poetry, fiction and theories of literature, as well as nine individual collections of poetry. His work in both fields has been widely published and anthologised and has received a number of awards.
Kemang Wa Lehulere
was born in Cape Town. He has a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (2011). Wa Lehulere’s artistic practice reacts to the historical legacy of South Africa, using performative acts with objects and materials familiar to South African society, to carve, dig, break, erase or reconstitute. A presentation of Kemang Wa Lehulere’s installation I cut my skin to liberate the splinter was on show at Tate Modern, London. Previous solo exhibitions have taken place at Pasquart Art Centre, Biel (2018); Deutsche Bank KunstHalle (2017) and the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). Wa Lehulere was the winner of the inaugural Spier Contemporary Award in 2007, the MTN New Contemporaries Award in 2010, and the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in 2012; he was one of two young artists awarded the 15th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel in 2013, won the first International Tiberius Art Award Dresden in 2014 and was the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Arts in 2015. In 2017 he was Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year, the recipient of the fourth Malcolm McLaren Award and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize. Wa Lehulere was a co-founder of the Gugulective (2006), an artist-led collective based in Cape Town, and a founding member of the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg.
Kgafela Oa Magogodi
is a stand-up poet, storyteller, essayist, columnist, spoken word theatre director and university lecturer. Magogodi has studied African Literature and he holds a Master’s degree in Dramatic Arts with Wits University. He currently teaches literature in the English Department, University of the North West, Mafikeng Campus. Magogodi is the co-producer of I Mike What I Like (Jyoti Mistry, SA), a film which was born from the spoken word theatre piece he wrote. The film, in which he is the lead, has featured in international film festivals globally, and it also forms part of film studies in various university arts departments. He features prominently in national and international films like Giant Steps, Blue Notes For Bra’Geoff (Aryan Kaganof, S.A) and in Streetball (Dimitrus Wren, USA). Published works include two books of poetry and short stories: thy condom come (2000), outspoken (2004).
Kneo Mokgopa
is trying their best. When I was younger, I grappled with the world as it could be. As an adult, I’ve had to contend with the world as it is. In the main, I’m a project manager for Flow Communications, working with organisations that want to change the world. I still get to explore ideas, I’m still writing, making and thinking, but things are different. That naivety has faded, sure. But so too have the delusions of grandeur and martyrdom. I now see how there are no good guys and bad guys, just people trying their best.
Kopano Ratele
is professor at the University of Stellenbosch and head of the Nhu Space. His books include Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity (2022) and The World Looks Like This From Here: Thoughts on African Psychology (2019). Ratele was Guest Editor of the African Psychology Theme Section of herri 10.
Kwanele Sosibo
studied journalism at Durban’s ML Sultan Technikon before working at Independent Newspapers from 2000 to 2003. In 2005, he joined the Mail & Guardian’s internship programme and later worked as a reporter at the paper between 2006 and 2008, before working as a researcher. He was the inaugural Eugene Saldanha Fellow in 2011 and is one of the founding members of The Con.
Laing de Villiers
has been working for the last decade as a socio-behavioural researcher in public health, focusing on understanding lived experience and gender related issues in health and social spheres amongst hard-to-reach groups of people. In 2026 he started as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Psychology Department and Nhu Space at Stellenbosch University, exploring mythopoetic men’s work, rites of passage experiences and gender transformative interventions for men in the South African context.
Linda Ndlovu
is a Departmental Head of English at a High School in Soweto. His creative work has been published in the following: Timbila, Botsotso, New Coin, Global Fire, TurfWrite, Africa Pulse, Donga, Carapace, Fidelities, Kotaz, Teesta, Throbbing Ink, Words of Attrition, To Breathe Into Another Voice: A South African Anthology Of Jazz Poetry. Publications in IsiZulu include: Anthology Editing – Isivivane Sokusa. His own Poetry Anthology – Impiselo. He has contributed poems to the following: Inxeba Lembongi and Izinyosi, both poetry anthologies. He has written and recorded Zulu praise poetry for Izingane Amakhosi (South African Maskandi group).
Louis Chude-Sokei
is a writer and scholar who is currently Professor of English and the George and Joyce Wein Chair of African American and Black Diaspora Studies Program at Boston University. His books include the award-winning, The Last Darky: Bert Williams, Black on Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (2005), The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (2015) and the acclaimed memoir, Floating in A Most Peculiar Way (2021).Chude-Sokei also has a significant profile in the arts. He has collaborated with numerous artists and performers, including iconic Berlin electronic artists, Mouse on Mars with whom he produced the celebrated album Anarchic Artificial Intelligence (2021). The legendary Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company adapted his work for their 2023-2024 touring show, Curriculum II. Chude-Sokei is founder of the international sonic art/archiving project, Echolocution, and was lead artist/curator of “Sometimes You Just Have to Give it Your Attention,” a sound art/sonic archiving project which won the prestigious Kulturstiftung Des Bundes Award from the German Federal Cultural Foundation in 2020. The album of sound recordings and installations from that project was released in 2024. He was a curator of Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Afrofuturism Festival and is currently an advisor to the Guggenheim Museum’s Art and Technology Initiative in partnership with LG Electronics. His work was central to the official German Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, where he also contributed a sound installation entitled “Thresholds,” which lent its title to the Pavilion itself. In 2025 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in General Nonfiction.His forthcoming book is Machines of Flesh and Blood: Race and the Making of Artificial Intelligence (Viking/Random House, 2026).
Lucas Ledwaba
is an author, publisher, journalist, editor, photographer and documentary filmmaker. He is the founder and editor of the media agency Mukurukuru Media. Ledwaba is a two-time winner of the CNN/MultiChoice African Journalist Award (2010 and 2013) for his coverage of the battle against HIV/Aids and his coverage of the Marikana massacre. After starting his foray into journalism with a brief stint as a trainee at the Soshanguve Community Radio in 1994, Ledwaba has worked as a reporter and news editor at various publications including Sunday Times, Sunday World, Sunday Sun, City Press, IT Web, ThisDay, DRUM magazine and The Sowetan. His work as both a freelance writer and photographer has been published widely both locally and internationally on various publications including The Daily Maverick, African Times, News Africa Magazine, Scottish Heritage Magazine, Mail&Guardian, New Frame, Inside Politics, Inside Education and numerous others. Ledwaba’s writing focuses on issues of social justice, human rights, rural development, land reform and land rights, travel, tourism, the arts, culture, heritage and history among other issues.
Lynthia Julius
was born in Springbok and raised in Kimberley. She holds a honours degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of the Free State. She received a South African Literary Award for her debut poetry collection, Uit die kroes. In 2023 she received the prestigious Jan Rabie Marjorie Wallace bursary.
M. Ayodele Heath
is a graduate of the MFA program at New England College. Recipient of fellowships to Cave Canem, Summer Poetry at Idyllwild, and the Caversham Center for Writers & Artists in South Africa, his poems have appeared in journals such as Crab Orchard Review, The New York Quarterly, Poem City, Callaloo, Mississippi Review, Mythium, Chattahoochee Review, Timbila: a Journal of Onion Skin Poetry, storySouth, and the anthologies Poetry Slam: the Competitive Art of Performance Poetry; My South: a People, a Place, a World All Its Own (Rutledge Hill Press, 2005) and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V (Texas Review Press, 2012). His awards include: a 2009 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize in Poetry and an Atlanta Bureau for Cultural Affairs Emerging Artist grant. His first book of poems, Otherness, was published in 2011 (Brick Road Poetry Press). He is editor of the anthology, Electronic Corpse: Poems from a Digital Salon (Svaha Paradox, 2014).
Makgatla Thepa-Lephale
is a literacy activist with over 2 decades of experience in community development. She is an avid reader and book reviewer with a strong interest in African literature. She has served as a judge for short story competitions, including the Bushbuckridge Arts Festival. She has also contributed as an adjudicator for the Limpopo Department of Sports, Arts and Culture. Awards. She is the founder of the Ponelopele Reading Club and Library, a rural initiative promoting reading. Makgatla is an author of children’s book, Mmapelo and the library.
Makhosazana Xaba
is an anthologist, essayist, poet, short story writer and translator. Izimpabanga Zomhlaba is her 2024 isiZulu translation of Frantz Fanon’s 1961 The Wretched of the Earth. The 2021 collection The Art of Waiting for Tales: Found Poetry from Grace – a novel – is Xaba’s innovative take on literature wherein she presents Barbara Boswell’s 2017 novel of 22 chapters Grace, in 71 found poems. In 2021 the anthology Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Women Poets, 2000 – 2018 became the co-winner of the NIHSS Awards in the Non-Fiction Monography category. Xaba’s debut poetry collection these hands was published in 2005 by Timbila Poetry Project.
Malaika Mahlatsi
born and raised in the township of Soweto, is a researcher and water governance expert. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Geography at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, focusing on gendered geographies of gentrification. She is the bestselling author of Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation and Corridors of Death: The Struggle To Exist In Historically White Institutions. She is the Head of Research and Policy in the Gauteng Provincial Treasury (Office of the MEC) and a research consultant for various public and private sector organisations.
Malika Lueen Ndlovu’s
words have featured on pages and stages, locally and internationally for almost 30 years. She has published 2 plays: A Coloured Place and Sister Breyani, 6 poetry collections (Born in Africa but (1999), Womb to World: A Labour of Love (2002), Truth is both Spirit and Flesh (2008), Invisible Earthquake (2009), CLOSE (2017) and Griefseed (2025). Malika co-founded /curated numerous multimedia poetry events for festivals and platforms, including the Africa Centre’s pioneering Badilishapoetry.com podcast, WEAVE and the And The Word Was Woman Ensemble, writers’ collectives, also chairing the HSS Awards fiction panel from 2017 to 2025.
Dr. Margaret E. Walker
is a graduate of the University of Toronto (Musicology/Ethnomusicology) and the Royal Conservatory of Music Professional School (Piano Performance and Pedagogy) and she joined the School of Music at Queen’s in 2006. Her teaching and research cross disciplinary boundaries, and include ethnomusicology, historical musicology, historiography, music teaching and learning, and dance studies. Dr. Walker won the School of Music Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015. Until recently, Margaret’s research focused solely on the North Indian classical dance called kathak. Her monograph, India’s Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective (SOAS Series in Musicology, Ashgate, 2014), critically deconstructs the nationalist received history and has become a foundational source in South Asian ethnomusicology and dance history. In 2018, Margaret’s research took an anticolonial turn, focusing on curriculum and pedagogical choices in higher education. Her article “Towards a Decolonized Music History Curriculum” was published in the Journal of Music History Pedagogy where it has been read more than 5000 times. She has since then co-edited Vol 39.1 of Intersections with Dr Robin Attas in a special theme edition on “Decolonizing Music Pedagogies” led a SSHRC-funded team project entitled “Changing Colonial Narratives in Eurocentric Music History,” and published an article on antiracist pedagogy and university music history in MUSICultures Vol 50.1.
Mark Waller
is a freelance writer and translator who lives with his family in Pretoria. A dual Finnish and UK national, he has long-standing ties with South Africa, stemming from anti-apartheid work in Helsinki in the 1980s and subsequent visits to cover the transition to democracy. He has also collaborated closely with the Polokwane-based Timbila Poetry Project since the early 2000s.
Maropodi Hlabirwa Mapalakanye
was born in Dindela, Edenvale in Johannesburg. He started drama and public performances in 1972 while still in primary school. A seasoned actor, writer, poet, cultural administrator, voluntary worker and political activist, he died of cancer in late 2001. His short stories have been included in the anthologies Unity in Flight (Botsotso Publishing, 2001) and Post-Traumatic (Botsotso, 2003).
Martin Jansen
is the Director/Editor of Workers’ World Media Productions. He previously worked for the Labour Research Service as its head of Education and Media Unit. Prior to that he was a trade unionist with the COSATU-affiliated Chemical Workers Industrial Union (1985-1995). Martin has a long history of student, youth and community activism. He is the former board chairperson of Cape Town TV, a community TV channel of the greater Cape Town community. He holds a master’s degree in communications and development (Malmo University, Sweden). He wrote, produced and directed the award-winning documentary film, Freedom Isn’t Free – The Freedom Charter Today. He has been an executive member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) since 2006.
Maserame June Madingwane’s
mind was filled with ideas which she wanted to share with ordinary people, but in her own words, “my hand keep failing me. Forever procrastinating”. She completed a journalism diploma in 1991 and wrote articles, short stories, poems and book reviews, which were published in Drum, Bona, Tribute, New Contrast, Timbila, Botsotso and Thyini. “I write well when I’m angry and most of what I write is filled with tears, hatred, violence and sadness.” June would have liked to devote her life to writing good short stories and poems but her living conditions deprived her of that. She worked for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Tshwane and she couldn’t find enough time to write. Maserame completed her MA in Creative writing at Rhodes University, focusing on short stories. She started the Jozi Book Club where readers, writers and critics met and shared experiences, insights and had fun. She also diligently organised the Timbila readings in Joburg. Maserame is the author of the children’s book, The Naming of Kea and the handmade book Diphatsha tsa kola – Pieces of a crown (Caversham Centre for Artists and Writers, 2001). She lived in Yeoville, Joburg, until her death in 2017, aged 51.
Matiyin
is a full stack web developer specialized in making custom web experiences. He has more than 30 years of IT experience, working in the fields of 3D animation, art direction and executive management of video games before switching to web development more than 15 years ago. With roots in Amsterdam, Matiyin is a free roaming world citizen and based everywhere the web goes
Max Makisi Marhanele
was born in 1947 in a rural missionary settlement called Barota in Limpopo. He grew up at Olifantshoek (Holofani). He is a highly regarded poet, playwright, lexicographer, grammarian, and former headmaster of two high schools, namely, Akani and Bankuna. With lots of teaching experience and a BA degree from the University of the North (now University of Limpopo) under his belt, he has published numerous poetry and short story anthologies in his native Xitsonga language. These include Swihundla swa Makwangala (Secrets of the Furthest Past), which won first prize in 2006, awarded by the Limpopo Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. Other books by Marhanele include the poetry collections Swifaniso swa Vutomi; Vumunhu bya Phatiwa, Marhambu ya Nhloko, a play Byokota Madlayisani; Rihojahoja ra Vutlhokovetseri and a language textbook Xingulani xa Ririmi. Together with Vonani Bila, the two poets compiled Tihlungu ta Rixaka – a monolingual Xitsonga dictionary, and Xilamulelamhangu – English/Xitsonga bilingual dictionary. In 2023, Marhanele was awarded the degree of Doctor of Language Practice, Honoris Causa by the Tshwane University of Technology. Marhanele currently lives with his wife, Merriam, in Nkowankowa township.
Menzi Ka Gudu Maseko
is a Thongocentric (Nguni-Spirit Centred) writer, translator, and futuristic agitator from the Black Power Pan Afrikanist school of thought. He has worked as Artistic coordinator and creative economy facilitator at Arts centres, community based institutions and in the corporate sectors. He is a founding member of Izimbongi Zesimanje (Nowadays Poets) and Slam Poetry Operations Team as well as a former Rastafari priest, teacher and rebel. Becoming a father of Triplet boys has mellowed his activism (he is founding member of the Afrikology Institute, Black First Land First and Ikhambi Natural Healing) but re-focussed his work to include Indigenous Knowledge Systems building, sorghum and hemp farming and new world building.
Ming Di
is a Chinese poet based in the US. The author of nine books of poetry in Chinese and one in collaborative translation, River Merchant’s Wife (2012), she has compiled and co-translated New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, Empty Chairs: Poems by Liu Xia, The Book of Cranes, and New Poetry from China 1917–2017. She has also co-guest-edited three issues of Mānoa. For her translation of English poetry into Chinese, she received the Lishan Poetry Award and the 10+ Translator Award in 2021 in China.
Mphutlane wa Bofelo
is a political scientist whose scholarship examines the intersections of politics, governance, and development in Africa. As poet, essayist, and playwright, his work brings the personal, political, and spiritual into dialogue-woven through African aesthetic traditions and animated by the improvisational rhythms of jazz.
Mzi Mahola
was born in 1949 as Mzikayise Winston Mahola. Mzi Mahola is his nom de plume. Mahola started writing poetry by 1969 at Healdtown Training College. In the 1970s he became a member of the Black Consciousness Movement and joined Isihlobo, a non-racial youth group. He was detained and interrogated for his political activities and writings. The Special Branch confiscated his first poetry manuscript in August 1975 and he lost interest in writing for three years until he joined COSAW, the Congress of South African Writers. His poetry has been published in local and international journals, magazines, and websites, and in anthologies like It all begins and In the Heat of the Shadows. Mahola conducted many poetry workshops in various venues around the country. His first poetry volume Strange Things (Snailpress 1994) was selected to represent South Africa in the World Book Fair in Geneva in 1995. His second poetry book of verse, When Rains Come (Carapace 2000) won the Olive Schreiner Literary award for 2000-01 under the auspices of Wits English Academy. In 2004 he represented South African writers in Glasgow in a symposium between writers of the two countries to celebrate South Africa’s tenth anniversary of democracy. In 2006, Mahola took part in the International Africa Poetry Festival. In Dancing in the Rain (UKZN Press 2006) Mahola laments the loss of the cultural values of respect and humanity and yearns for reconnection with the rhythms of nature and rurality. He expresses a general disillusionment with ‘man’s rotten morals, ‘ and is critical of the different standards that apply to rulers and ‘commoners.’ Mahola also wrote Dancing with Hyenas (2021) and Heroes of the Struggle (2022). Mahola was one of the first Black poets in the Eastern Cape whose passion for writing and reading inspired scores of township youth. An array of remarkable poets he mentored include Mxolisi Nyezwa, Ayanda Billie, Mzwandile Matiwana, Dolla Sapeta and Mangaliso Buzani. He died at home in Zwide, in the Eastern Cape, on 26 August 2023. Mahola ranks as one of South Africa’s most seasoned and profound poetic voices.
Mzoxolo Vimba
is the co-founder of “Black Thought Symposium”; a collective that operates as an open source for art, politics and academia, “#artistsinrevolution”; an institution that uses art as a sustainable tool of protest which has led to a recent street name change in Braamfontein Johannesburg. Vimba is a founder of “Studio Sunday Best”; a member of Business and Arts South Africa (BASA), which operates as a collaboration network and archive portal that helps artists with curatorial development, professional practice and making a living out of their creative practices. As an artist, Vimba’s work has had moderate but notable impact having shown in group exhibitions South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ghana. His photography is in private and public collections including Wits University’s Gender Equity Office and the South African National Museum’s Art Bank.
Mzwandile Matiwana
(1967-2009) was born in Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha. From an early age he was surviving on the street, and by the age of 10 he was arrested for the first time, for theft. His whole life was spent in and out of prison. He started writing poetry as a teenager and began publishing his poems in Kotaz, and then in New Coin, Timbila, Botsotso, Fidelities and other literary magazines. Zwai wrote poems in English and IsiXhosa. His poetry collections in English are i lost a poem (Deep South, 2004) and Betrayal (Timbila, 2012).
Nduduzo Makhathini
grew up in the lush and rugged hillscapes of umGungundlovu in South Africa, a peri-urban landscape in which music and ritual practices were symbiotically linked. The church also played a role in Makhathini’s musical understanding, as he hopped from church to church in his younger days in search of only the music. Through his mentor Bheki Mseleku, Makhathini was also introduced to the music of John Coltrane’s classic quartet with McCoy Tyner. Active as an educator and researcher, Makhathini is the head of the music department at Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape. In addition to producing albums for his peers (such as Thandiswa Mazwai’s Belede and Tumi Mogorosi’s Project Elo), Makhathini has released eight albums of his own since 2014 when he founded the label Gundu Entertainment in partnership with his wife and vocalist Omagugu Makhathini. Those albums earned him multiple awards and include Sketches of Tomorrow (2014), Mother Tongue (2014), Listening to the Ground (2015), Matunda Ya Kwanza (2015); Icilongo: The African Peace Suite (2016), Inner Dimensions (2016), and Reflections (2016). His 2017 album Ikhambi was the first to be released on Universal Music South Africa and won Best Jazz Album at the South African Music Awards (SAMA) in 2018. His Blue Note debut Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds was named one of the “Best Jazz Albums of 2020” by The New York Times, and was followed by In the Spirit of Ntu in 2022, and uNomkhubulwane in 2024.
Dr Nelson Ratau
is a South African literary scholar, writer, and poet whose work explores African literature, postcolonial and decolonial theory, and cultural studies. He holds a PhD and Master’s in English (Literature), an Honours in English (Language and Literature), and a BA in Communication & Marketing. He has published extensively on Ben Okri, examining African worldviews, myth, and aesthetic transfer, including his forthcoming book Every Worldview is Superstitious: Reflections on the African Worldview in Ben Okri’s Works (2026). His poetry collections include It Begins Here (2019) and Barefoot and Bright: Loss, Love and Ancestral Light (2026), which engage themes of grief, memory, and African spirituality. As a researcher, editor, and consultant, Dr Ratau contributes to advancing African-centred scholarship while mentoring emerging scholars. He is also committed to teaching and decolonising the study of English literature in South Africa, foregrounding African voices, epistemologies, and cultural knowledge in the classroom.
Nieville Dube
is a Gonzo journalist from Johannesburg whose work blends raw observation with personal immersion. Writing in the tradition of first-person and participatory journalism. He places himself inside the story, documenting politics, urban culture, and everyday life through a subjective and often provocative lens. His work captures the energy and cutting contradictions of Johannesburg, its streets and conversations. Through lived experiences Nieville’s stories explore the city not just as a place, but as an ever changing character.
Dr Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang
is a mother, wife, and award winning writer. Her latest book is titled – Coal, Courage and Change: the Rise of Exxaro (Xarra Books 2025).
Nompumelelo Motlafi-Francis
is a political scientist, historian, former poet, and short story writer. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg. Her love for storytelling (this time, of the non-fiction variety) underpins her research into black communities’ contentions with colonial-apartheid legacies and their bearing on present-day structural, cultural, epistemic, and gender-based violence in post-apartheid South Africa.
Oscar Hemer
is Professor of Journalistic and Literary Creation at Malmö University. An established author and editor with a background in arts journalism, Hemer’s diverse body of work ranges from fiction to academic writing to experimental literary anthropology. He is also the co-editor and translator of the collected works of Jorge Luis Borges into Swedish. He founded the Masters programme in Communication for Development at Malmö, and he is a member of the Rethinking Democracy (REDEM) research platform.
Obinna Obioma
is a Nigerian born Visual Artist, Photographer and Art Director based in New York, USA although he shuttles between Abuja, Nigeria, London, U.K for commissioned work and Personal Projects. Over the years, his work has metamorphosed from simple portraiture to having its defined style, theme, motives and direction. His work is centered on individuality and identity, using his African heritage as an anchor, inspiration and motifs for most of his work. Obinna’s works have garnered international acclaim, won several awards from the likes of Canon and have been featured in prestigious publications such as BBC, Marie Claire, ArtConnect Magazine, Vogue Italia, The Guardian, and OkeyAfrica.
Palesa Mokwena
(born in Pretoria 4/6/1990) is a visual artist and poet. She holds a Master’s degree in Art History (Cum Laude) from Rhodes University and works as a part time lecturer. Mokwena is currently pursuing her PhD studies at Stellenbosch University and her work mainly focuses on Black Existentialism in visual culture. Her interests include Black Feminism/Womanism, The Black Consciousness Movement, African Spirituality and Performance Art.
Philani A. Nyoni
is a Zimbabwean-born writer of prose, poetry, drama and film. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including, most recently, The Testament of Black Jesus. He is the founding editor at Elane Arts, a publishing consultancy based in Bulawayo. Philani’s work has been translated into at least six languages, published in at least fourteen countries, and has received over a dozen literary awards.
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
worked as a television screenwriter between 2000 and 2010. In 2008 she wrote Original Skin with Robert Colman, who directed the one woman show, which toured South Africa and Germany. Her poetry collections are Taller than buildings (2006), The everyday wife (Modjaji 2010) and ice- cream headache in my bone (Modjaji 2017). She co-edited The Poems of Keorapetse Kgositsile 1969-2018 (University of Nebraska Press2023) and edited the Atlanta Review 2026 special edition on South African women poets. Her scholarly work has appeared in Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on South African Poets (UKZN Press, 2019), Notes from the Body: Health, Illness, Trauma (UKZN Press, 2023), The Creative Arts: On Practice, Making and Meaning (Dryad Press 2024), and Fragments d’un temps suspendu: 44 lettres d’ecrivains sur le confinement (2025). She studied Journalism at Rhodes University and theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris, before completing a MA at Lancaster University and a PhD at Wits university, where she now lectures Creative Writing.
Pule Lechesa
is the much-celebrated author of a phalanx of literary-critical books, and exquisite monographs on distinguished wordsmiths. Lechesa’s books include Bolaji at his pomp, The awesome literary legacy of Dr Maphalla and Queens of the Firsts. According to Professor Nhlanhla Maake, Lechesa is the ‘‘backdrop upon which Sesotho writers shine’’.
Rafieka Williams
is a Writer and Social Activist from Cape Town with an unquenchable thirst for truth and a deep love for Africa. With a Post Graduate degree in Journalism from the University of the Witwatersrand, she continually strives to grapple with the meaning of identity in an ever changing global context.
Raphael d’Abdon
is a poet, short story writer, teacher, researcher, editor and translator. He is the author of four poetry collections, the poetry editor of BKO Literature & Poetry Magazine, and South Africa representative of Africa Haiku Network (AHN). His poems are widely anthologised, and appear in various journals including New Coin, New Contrast, Transition, Illuminations, Juxta, Muse India, and The Mamba. His latest work is Poetic Inquiry as Research. A Decolonial Guide (co-edited with Heidi van Rooyen), Policy Press, 2025. He is currently translating Etienne van Heerden’s novel The Long Silence of Mario Salviati into Italian, which will be published in 2026 by CH3 Press (title: Il Tagliapietre).
Riaan Oppelt
teaches English Literary and Cultural Studies at Stellenbosch University, where his film classes are where he feels happiest. He writes about Afrikaaps literature as well as the struggle for authenticity in the digital age. He is the primary songwriter and founder of Aldano, an alternative, original rock band from Cape Town formed in 2005. The second Aldano album, Home or Away will be released in 2026; it is a double album reflecting on South Africans expatriating and South Africans and others who call Mzansi home while the world, somewhere, is always at war.
Richard Pithouse
is the Political Coordinator for the Progressive International, a distinguished research fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies in Dublin and New York, an international research scholar at the University of Connecticut, and an extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape.
Rick de Villiers
is a writer and educator. He is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of the Free State, an Iso Lomso Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, and a fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He has written widely on modernism, South African literature, and experimental fiction. His is the author of Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation (EUP, 2021) and is currently at work on a new monograph, Ctrl Z: Narratives of Undoing. His first novel, Blot, will be out with Batis Books later this year. He keeps a Substack on unusual literary devices.
Robert Berold
Robert Berold has published four books of poetry, and written or edited several other books ranging from memoir and biography, to a collection of interviews with poets, to a how-to farming handbook. His Deep South press deepsouth has been publishing poetry for 25 years has published four books of poetry, and written or edited several other books ranging from memoir and biography, to a collection of interviews with poets, to a how-to farming handbook. His Deep South press deepsouth has been publishing poetry for 25 years.
Rolando Vázquez
is a teacher and decolonial thinker. Rolando is “Professor of Post/Decolonial Theories and Literatures, with a focus on the Global South” at the department of Literary and Cultural Analysis & the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). He is regularly invited to deliver keynotes on decoloniality at academic and cultural institutions. Since 2010, he co-directs with Walter Mignolo the annual Maria Lugones Decolonial Summer School, now hosted by the Van Abbemuseum. In 2016, under the direction of Gloria Wekker, he co-authored the report “Let’s do Diversity” of the University of Amsterdam Diversity Commission. Vázquez’s work places the question of the possibility of an ethical life at the core of decolonial thought and advocates for the decolonial transformation of cultural and educational institutions. His most recent publication is “Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary” (Mondriaan Fund 2020).
Rolfes
makes stuff, taps away at her computer keys, plays with paint and other things. Gazes out of the window and dreams and is part of the herri team.
Prof Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
is an historian and decolonial/postcolonial theorist. He is currently Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis on Africa at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and member of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the same institution. In addition, Prof Ndlovu-Gatsheni holds several professorships including Professor Extraordinarius in the Department of Leadership and Transformation (DLT) at the University of South Africa (UNISA); Professor Extraordinarius at the Centre for Gender and African Studies at the University of Free State (UFS) in South Africa. He is also founding Head of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI) and the founder of the Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN), both at the University of South Africa, and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). Professor Ndlovu-Gatsheni has over a hundred publications to his name, which bear testimony to his global scholarly influence.
Sam Mathe
is an award-winning South African journalist, publisher, archivist, researcher, poet, historian and author with a particular interest in the history of South African theatre, music and literature. He’s the founding editor of Jazz Life Magazine and contributing author of South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs (2010), Brenda Fassie: I’m Not Your Weekend Special (2014), Joburg Noir (2010) as well as Culture and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa (2021). His book of South African musical biographies, From Kippie to Kippies: Group Portraits of SA Artists is published by Themba Books. His second book, a volume of poetry is titled When You Are Gone & Other Poems (2013). It was inspired by Covid-19 and lockdown. His latest book, Tsietsi Mashinini – The Elusive Hero of Soweto is due to be released by NB Publishers in June 2026.
Sandile Ngidi
is a poet who was born in Vryheid in northern Kwazulu-Natal and grew up at Amahlongwa near the Umkhomazi river on the south coast of Durban. Writing first discovered Ngidi in 1983 but it was only a few years later that he began to embrace it with the arms of elephants. He believes young South African writers like himself, while immersing themselves in the pacy and sexy stylistic influences of today, need to link their work to the cultural and artistic umbilical cord that is Mother Africa. He believes art has a higher purpose and a commitment that goes beyond the thrill of applause and endless invites to the cocktail circuits. In 2003 Ngidi finished a stage drama entitled I Hate Living A Lie, inspired by the life and times of Nat Nakasa, a black journalist who committed suicide in New York in 1965.
Sean Jacobs
is a professor and director of the graduate programme in international affairs at The New School in New York City, and founder of Africa Is a Country.
Sihle Ntuli
is a South African poet and editor. He is the 2025 recipient of the Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellowship at A Long House, where he edited the chapbook RADIANCE. His editorial and literary review work spans several major publications, including Peppercoast Lit, Ubwali, Acta Classica, and New Contrast. His most recent release is the much celebrated bilingual poetry collection Owele (uHlanga 2025).
Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana
was born on the 22nd of May 1972 at Grey Hospital in King William’s town. He is qualified with a BSocSc (HONS) in sociology from the University of Cape Town and also a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from the same university. He is presently registered for a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Rhodes University. He is a former deputy director at Statistics South Africa, where at different portfolios both nationally and provincially he assumed strategic roles. He is presently working as a research curator for Amazwi South African Museum of Literature. Sithembele is a multi-award winning South African poet, essayist and novelist. He serves as a member of the National English Language Body (where he is chairing the Literature, Film & Media subcommittee) for the Pan South African Language Board. During 2024 he won the most prestigious South African Literary Award in the poetry category. At different moments, he has also won the Eastern Cape Literary Award and the AVBOB award for one of its national competitions. His debut novel, The Faint-Hearted Man was published by Buchu Books in 1991 and was longlisted for the Noma Award for publishing in Africa. His debut collection of poems was published by Lovedale Press in 2003 and consequently was in the prescription list for Grade 11 in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. He has most recently published five books through Mwanaka Media and Publishing: Dark Lines of History that won him South African Literary Award for poetry, Iziyaca, Ntombentle: Selected Poems, The Kaleidoscope Of Life: Essays On Identity And Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Imagined : A Long Poem.
Stacy Hardy
is a writer, researcher, and editor whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, the individual, and society. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand University.
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka
is a multidisciplinary artist, editor, publisher and producer with over 70 individual books and curated anthologies published in US, Northern Ireland, UK, Cameroon and Zimbabwe. He has 4 music albums, with new album, The Choice is not Mine (2024) recently released and his music is playing in at least 18 radio stations in US, Canada, UK, France, Israel, Brazil and Australia. He has produced hundreds of paintings and drawings, thousands of photographs, some exhibited, published and sold. His pieces have also appeared in over 500 journals in over 35 countries and his books and writings are translated into at least 11 languages.
Thaddeus Metz
hails from the United States, where he received his PhD from Cornell University in 1997. He first visited South Africa in 1999 and relocated there in 2004, initially lecturing at Wits and later UJ. He joined the University of Pretoria in 2020. Prof Metz has published more than 300 scholarly books, chapters, and articles. Many of them take an analytic approach to the meaning of life, philosophy of religion, African morality, human rights, biomedical ethics, the proper function of a legal system, the role of a university, and a range of related topics in value theory and moral-political philosophy. Some of Prof Metz’s recent books are A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the Continent (Oxford University Press 2022) and God, Soul and the Meaning of Life (Cambridge University Press 2019). Recognition for Prof Metz’s research includes him having been designated one of ‘The World’s Top 50 Thinkers’ by Prospect Magazine (2020) and been awarded an ‘A1’ rating from the South African National Research Foundation (2019).
Thaio Abraham Lekhanya
is a qualified public relations practitioner, fashion stylist, and writer working across fashion, art, and entertainment. His work explores culture through storytelling, blending critical insight with a refined creative eye. With a deep love for fashion and art, Thaio brings narratives to life through words, image, and style. He has served as Creative Director for Previdar Magazine, contributing to the publication’s editorial vision and visual storytelling. He has also studied performing arts at the Market Theatre, a foundation that informs his sensitivity to performance, character, and narrative depth. Thaio continues to engage global conversations around fashion, the arts, and contemporary identity.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
was an anthropology professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. He authored and edited several books, journal articles and op-eds highlighting his interest and passion in understanding the present world, understanding what it means to be human, and helping to bring about social and environmental change. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo in 1991. Eriksen was a well decorated scholar with honorary degrees from Charles University in Prague (2021), the University of Copenhagen (2021) and Stockholm University (2011). He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2022, he received the Vega Gold Medal from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography. He was awarded the University of Oslo Research Prize in 2017 and the Research Council of Norway’s Communication Prize in 2002. Thomas passed away on 27 November 2024.
Thulile Gamedze
is a Johannesburg-based cultural worker engaged in text, textile and history. She has published extensively in art and academic platforms in areas from Southern African art, to the aesthetics of radical movements, the politics and poetics of water, and pedagogical practices of the undercommons. Her artistic practice extends her research in embodied histories of labour and wear, through the medium of secondhand fabric.
Prof Tinyiko S. Maluleke
is an elected member of the Academy of Science for South Africa, and a B1, internationally acclaimed, NRF-rated researcher. Maluleke has published more than one hundred peer reviewed articles including peer reviewed essays in books. He has published several dozen Op-Ed pieces, supervised ten master’s students and fourteen doctoral students to completion. Recently, Maluleke published his reflective memoire – Faces and Phases of Resilience. A Memoire of a Special Kind. In his roles as a member of the National Planning Commission and co-chair of the Eminent Persons Group, Prof Maluleke joins a group of experts and distinguished South Africans who work in the interface between policy formulation and scientific research, in the service of the national and global pursuit of sustainable development. On three separate occasions, he has also served as a judge for the highest non- fiction book prize in South Africa – the Sunday Times Allan Paton Book Prize – as well as the National Institute for Humanities non-fiction book prize.
Vernon (Vernie) Alexander February
poet, writer and literature scholar, died on 24 November 2002. Vernie had worked at the African Studies Centre in Leiden for more than thirty years before returning to his native South Africa in January 2002. Born in Somerset-West in South Africa’s Cape Province, Vernie came to the Netherlands as an exile in the 1970s and was awarded a PhD at the University of Leiden in 1977 for his thesis entitled Flagellated Skin, A Fine Fetish. In addition to his work at the ASC, he was also a guest lecturer from 1990 onwards in the Afrikaans Department at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville, South Africa. He published poems in Afrikaans and in English including collections entitled O Snotverdriet (1979) and Spectre de la Rose (1982) and co-edited Een Kwestie van Identiteit (1986), a compilation of stories by black South African writers. He produced two titles for an ASC series of monographs: Mind Your Colour (1981, new edition 1991) and The Afrikaners of South Africa (1991), and following a conference in Leiden in 1992 about the status of Afrikaans and the Dutch language, he edited many of the papers in a volume entitled Taal en Identiteit (1995).
Vuyisile Msila
was born in Port Elizabeth. From 1984-1987, he studied literature at Vista University. Vuyisile writes poetry and prose and he has won a number of literary awards. These awards include the Drum Short Story Competition, the FNB/Vita English Academy Poetry in Translation Prize and the ERA/Sales House Short Story Contest. His published works include So Long a Night (a novella). Vuyisile is the editor and founder of Echoes, a literary journal published by Siyomba Arts of South Africa.
Walter Mignolo’s
research and teaching have been devoted, in the past 30 years, to understanding and unraveling the historical foundation of the modern/colonial world system and imaginary since 1500. Briefly stated, Mignolo’s research has been and continues to be devoted to exposing modernity/coloniality as a machine that generates and maintains un-justices and to exploring decolonial ways of delinking from the modernity/coloniality. Among his books related to these topics are: The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (1995); Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality, and the Grammar of Decoloniality (2007); Local Histories/Global Designs:Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (2000); and The Idea of Latin America (2006), translated into Spanish, Korean and Italian. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analysis, Praxis, co-authored with Catherine Walsh, was published in 2018 and in 2021 he published The Politics of Decolonial Investigations. The political dimension of his work, in the past fifteen years has been increasingly devoted to the public sphere where he has worked with artists, curators, and journalists, to write op-eds, give interviews (in English and Spanish), and to co-organize and co-teach summer schools in Middelburg, Bremen, UNC, and Duke. Mignolo was awarded the Katherine Singer Kovaks prize (MLA) for The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1996) and the Frantz Fanon Prize by the Caribbean Philosophical Association for The Idea of Latin America (2006).
Wamuwi Mbao
is an essayist and cultural critic. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Stellenbosch University. He writes on literature, pop culture, and politics and is a literary reviewer for the Johannesburg Review of Books. His short story ‘The Bath‘ was named as one of the 20 best short stories written during the two decades of South Africa’s democracy. He is co-convenor of the FicSci science writing project, and co-editor of the FicSci anthologies Flow (2023), and Night Sky (2024). He is also the editor of Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poetry of Decolonization (2021).
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.
Zama Madinana
is a South African poet, based in Johannesburg. His work has appeared in The Shallow Tales Review, Kalahari Review, Efiko, Libretto, Brittle Paper, Olney, and other literary publications. Zama’s work focuses mainly on love, politics, and social issues. In 2021, he won the third prize of the Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.His full-length poetry collection, ‘94 was published in June 2023, and it was longlisted for South African Literary Award in 2024. In addition to regular performances and readings in Johannesburg and across South Africa, he has performed his poetry in various countries including Botswana, Mozambique, and Lesotho.