Panashe Chigumadzi | |
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 Panashe Chigumadzi - TEDxSoweto 2014 | |
| Born | 1991 (age 32–33) Harare, Zimbabwe |
| Education | Harvard University - doctoral student |
| Alma mater | University of the Witwatersrand |
| Notable work | Sweet Medicine (2015) These Bones Will Rise Again (2017) |
| Awards | K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award |
| Website | www |
Panashe Chigumadzi (born 1991) is a Zimbabwean-born journalist, essayist and novelist, who was raised in South Africa.
Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1991, Chigumadzi grew up in South Africa. [1]
She has published her writing in a variety of media. She has been a columnist for The Guardian , [2] Die Zeit , The New York Times , [3] The Washington Post , [4] New York Review of Books [5] [6] and Chimurenga . [7] She was a founder of VANGUARD, a magazine designed to give space to young, black South African women interested in how queer identities, pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness intersect. [8] At the start of her career, Chigumadzi worked as a reporter for CNBC Africa. [9]
Chigumadzi draws on the history of Zimbabwe in her work, by exploring national and personal histories and identities. Her first novel, Sweet Medicine, was published in 2015, winning the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award. [10] Her 2017 narrative essay These Bones Will Rise Again drew on Shona perspectives to explore the concept of the "Mothers of the Nation" and interrogating perceptions of Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana in Zimbabwe. [1]
While studying and writing on the legacies of Zimbabwe's struggle for independence, Chigumadzi also writes about modern identities for southern Africans. She has written on the complexities of identity dismantling the notion of a colourblind, post-Apartheid South Africa, through a reclamation of the term "coconut". [11] She is outspoken about the need for decolonisation at national and at personal levels. [12] Her 2019 essay "Why I'm No Longer Talking to Nigerians About Race" discussed her experience at the Aké Arts and Book Festival on a panel discussing whether Black Lives Matter has relevance in Africa. Chigumadzi argued that, yes, in a continent with such different experiences of racialisation under colonialism, it did. [13]
In 2015, Chigumadzi was Programme Curator of the first Abantu Book Festival. [14] In addition to her writing on literature and literary criticism, she regularly appears on BBC World Service radio. [15] She is also a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [16]
In late‑2021, Chigumadzi wrote on the concept of the Ubuntu philosophy for The Guardian and how restoration is a necessary part of reconciliation in post‑colonial societies such as South Africa. [17] Indeed:
In other words, despite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. [18] Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. [17]
Chigumadzi's work has been studied widely, particularly within post-colonial studies. Her writing on the use of charms in Sweet Medicine led to further studies on healthcare and traditional practices in Zimbabwe. [25] Her focus on strong female characters living in economic precarity has been explored in terms of their religious beliefs and the reflection they may give to contemporary life. [26]
Chigumadzi grew up in South Africa. She studied at the University of the Witwatersrand; while there she was part of the "Transform Wits Movement", which called for significant changes to southern Africa's universities. [27] As part of her doctoral study at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, [28] she has written about the Rhodes Must Fall protests she witnessed at the University of the Witwatersrand. [29]
Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognised as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great benefit to humanity".
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Antjie Krog is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book Country of My Skull. In 2004, she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape as Extraordinary Professor.
Kabelo Sello Duiker was a South African novelist. His debut novel, Thirteen Cents, won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region. His second novel, The Quiet Violence of Dreams, won the 2002 Herman Charles Bosman Prize. He also worked in advertising and as a screenwriter.
Zoë Wicomb is a South African-Scottish author and academic who has lived in the UK since the 1970s. In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for her fiction.
Country of My Skull is a 1998 nonfiction book by Antjie Krog about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It is based on Krog's experience as a radio reporter, covering the Commission from 1996 to 1998 for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The book explores the successes and failures of the Commission, the effects of the proceedings on her personally, and the possibility of genuine reconciliation in post-Apartheid South Africa.
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Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
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