Mongane Wally Serote is a South African poet and writer. He became involved in political resistance to the apartheid government by joining the African National Congress (ANC) and in 1969 was arrested and detained for several months without trial. He subsequently spent years in exile, working in Botswana, and later London, England, for the ANC in their Arts and Culture Department, before eventually returning to South Africa in 1990. He was inaugurated as South Africa's National Poet Laureate in 2018.
The poetry of South Africa covers a broad range of themes, forms and styles. This article discusses the context that contemporary poets have come from and identifies the major poets of South Africa, their works and influence.
Yvonne Vera was an author from Zimbabwe. Her first published book was a collection of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), which was followed by five novels: Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002). According to the African Studies Center at University of Leiden, "her novels are known for their poetic prose, difficult subject-matter, and their strong women characters, and are firmly rooted in Zimbabwe's difficult past." For these reasons, she has been widely studied and appreciated by those studying postcolonial African literature.
White Zimbabweans are Zimbabwean people of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these Zimbabweans of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers. A small minority are either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Afrikaners from South Africa or those descended from Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigrants.
Christopher Anthony Russell Duckworth was a Rhodesian cricketer who played in two Tests for South Africa in 1957.
John Harcourt "Jackie" du Preez was a Rhodesian cricketer who played in two Test matches for South Africa against Australia in 1967.
Milton High School is a government all-boys high school located in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It was the first government all-boys school established in Bulawayo. It was founded in 1910 and is named after Sir William Milton, administrator of the British South Africa Company. The school's motto is Greek and derived from the Biblical excerpt from Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 16:13, written by St. Paul to Corinthians in the face of Roman imperialism, and the Authorized Version translates it as "Quit ye like men". Milton school's connection with St. John's is perpetuated in the new church in Rhodes Street where the central light of a stained glass window in the east transept in memory of an old boy, Alfred Perry, depicts the school's crest and motto.
The Southern Rhodesia Communist Party was an illegal, underground communist party established in Southern Rhodesia which was formed in large part due to the minority settler rule, which had an immensely repressive structure. It emerged in 1941 from a split in the Rhodesia Labour Party. The party consisted of a small, and predominantly white, membership. During the parties existence it had links to other communist parties such as the Communist Party of South Africa and the Communist Party of Great Britain. The party disappeared in the late 1940s, with the exact date of its dissolution not being known. Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing author of various works including “The Grass is Singing,” is the most well known member of the Southern Rhodesian Communist Party.
Rowland Molony is a British poet and novelist.
The history of the Jews in Zimbabwe reaches back over one century. Present-day Zimbabwe was formerly known as Southern Rhodesia and later as Rhodesia.
For the South African triathlete, see Megan Hall.
The Ingrid Jonker Prize is a literary prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry. It was instituted in honour of Ingrid Jonker after her death in 1965.
The 9mobile Prize for Literature was created by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013, and is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published fiction books. Awarded annually, the prize aims to serve as a platform for the discovery of new creative talent out of the continent and invariably promote the burgeoning publishing industry in Africa. The winner receives a cash prize of £15,000 in addition to a fellowship at the University of East Anglia.
Douglas Reid Skinner is a South African writer, editor, translator and poet. He was born in 1949 in Upington, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.
Sydney Clouts (1926–1982) was a South African poet. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and emigrated to London in the early 1960s. His book One Life gained its own volume in the New Coin Poetry Magazine in 1966. This debut poetry collection One Life won him the Ingrid Jonker Prize in 1966, for the best debut of Afrikaans or English poetry. It also won him the Olive Schreiner Prize for new and emergent talent of English Literature.
Julius Sekai Chingono (1946-2011) was a writer from Zimbabwe. He wrote poetry in Shona and English.
Zimbabwean literature is literature produced by authors from Zimbabwe or in the Zimbabwean Diaspora. The tradition of literature starts with a long oral tradition, was influenced heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and acts as a form of protest to the government.
Colin Style was a British-Zimbabwean poet and writer. He was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for best published collection in English in Southern Africa, 1977 with Baobab Street (1977).
N.H. Brettell was a British-Zimbabwean poet and writer. His poetry collection, Bronze Frieze: Poems Mostly Rhodesian was published by Oxford University Press in 1950. The South African poet Douglas Livingstone remarked that Brettell was the best poet writing in the region. Brettell was awarded the Book Centre / P.E.N. Centre of Rhodesia Annual Literary Prize in 1972 and 1978.
