Sekai Irene Nzenza Kanhutu is a Zimbabwean writer, cultural critic and politician. [1]
Sekai Irene Nzenza Kanhutu is a Zimbabwean writer, cultural critic and politician. [1]
She was born in rural Zimbabwe, where she trained as a nurse, before doing additional nursing studies in England and subsequently going to live in Australia. [2] She held senior positions in Melbourne and Los Angeles. [3]
Her semi-autobiographical first book, Zimbabwean Woman: My Own Story, was published in 1988. Her book Songs to an African Sunset (1997) describes her return to her family's village in the early 1990s. [4] [5] She has a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Melbourne. [6] [7]
Sekai wrote a weekly column for The Herald newspaper from 2011 to 2018, [8] often returning to the theme of Zimbabweans reclaiming their cultural heritage and village roots. She entered politics as the Member for Chikomba East in Zimbabwe's 2018 harmonised elections. [9] She was appointed as Zimbabwe's Minister of Public Service Labour and Social Welfare on 7 September 2018. [10]
Frances Ruth Shand Kydd was the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales. She was the maternal grandmother of William, Prince of Wales and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, respectively first and fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. Following her divorce from Viscount Althorp in 1969, and Diana's death in 1997, Shand Kydd devoted the final years of her life to Catholic charity work following her conversion to Catholicism.
Renée Rebecca Geyer was an Australian singer who was an acclaimed jazz, soul and R&B musician. She released 15 studio albums with Moving Along (1977) and Tenderland (2003) both reaching number 11 on the Australian charts. Geyer's singles success as a solo artist in Australia were with "It's a Man's Man's World", "Heading in the Right Direction" and "Stares and Whispers" in the 1970s and "Say I Love You" in the 1980s. The latter also reached number one in New Zealand. The singer was an internationally respected and sought-after backing vocalist, whose session credits include work with Sting, Chaka Khan, Toni Childs, Joe Cocker, Neil Diamond, Men at Work and Trouble Funk.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. She has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2022, Dangarembga was convicted in a Zimbabwe court of inciting public violence, by displaying, on a public road, a placard asking for reform.
Joice Runaida Mujuru, also known by her nom-de-guerre Teurai Ropa Nhongo, is a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 2004 to 2014. Previously she had served as a government minister. She also served as Vice-President of ZANU–PF. She was married to Solomon Mujuru until his death in 2011 and was long considered a potential successor to President Robert Mugabe, but in 2014 she was denounced for allegedly plotting against Mugabe. As a result of the accusations against her, Mujuru lost both her post as Vice-President and her position in the party leadership. She was expelled from the party a few months later, after which she formed the new Zimbabwe People First party.
Stella Chiweshe was a Zimbabwean musician. She was known internationally for her singing and playing of the mbira dzavadzimu, a traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. She was one of few female players, and learned to play from 1966 to 1969, when other women did not.
Ruby Charlotte Margaret Hunter, also known as Aunty Ruby, was an Aboriginal Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist, and the life and musical partner of Archie Roach.
Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey was a West Indian writer, socialist activist, newspaper editor and politician of the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. She is best known for her first novel, The Orchid House (1953), based on her own early life, which in 1991 was turned into a Channel 4 television miniseries of the same name in the United Kingdom.
Lily Brett is an Australian novelist, essayist and poet. She lived in North Carlton and then Elwood/Caulfield from 1948 to 1968, in London 1968–1971, Melbourne (1971–1989) and then moved permanently to New York City. In Australia she had an early career as a pop music journalist, including writing for music magazine Go-Set from May 1966 to September 1968. From 1979 she started writing poems, prose fiction and non-fiction. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, her works include depictions of family life including living in Melbourne and New York. Four of her fictional novels are Things Could Be Worse (1990), Just Like That (1994), Too Many Men (2001) and You Gotta Have Balls (2005).
Laura Elena Harring is an American actress and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss USA 1985 and later began acting in television and film. She is best known for her dual roles as Rita and Camilla Rhodes in the 2001 movie Mulholland Drive. She is also known for her roles in other movies, including The Forbidden Dance (1990), John Q (2002), Willard (2003), The Punisher (2004), The King (2005), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), Ghost Son (2007), The Caller (2008), Drool (2009), Sex Ed (2014), and Inside (2016). She also played Carla Greco in General Hospital (1990–1991), Paula Stevens on Sunset Beach (1997), and Rebecca "Becca" Doyle in The Shield (2006).
The Cabinet of Zimbabwe is the executive body that forms the government of Zimbabwe together with the President of Zimbabwe. The Cabinet is composed of the President, the Vice-Presidents, and ministers appointed by the President. Until 1987, the Cabinet was chaired by the Prime Minister; it is now headed by the President.
Sekai Holland is a Zimbabwean former politician who served as Minister of State for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration in the administrations of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Sekai has been involved in campaigning on a number of human rights issues, including those relating to Aboriginal Australians, apartheid in South Africa and the women's rights and democracy in Zimbabwe.
Adam Shand is an Australian writer and journalist.
Celia Winter-Irving, was an Australian-born, Zimbabwean-based artist and art critic who wrote extensively on Zimbabwean art, especially Shona sculpture, when she lived in Harare from 1987 to 2008.
Grace Akello is a Ugandan poet, essayist, folklorist, and politician. She is the Uganda Ambassador to India.
Barbara Makhalisa, also known by her married name as Barbara Nkala, is a teacher, Zimbabwean writer, Ndebele translator, novelist, editor and publisher, one of the earliest female writers published in Zimbabwe. She is the author of several books written in Ndebele, as well as in English, of which some have been used as school textbooks. Barbara is married to Shadreck Nkala. They have three adult children and six grandchildren.
Virginia Phiri is a Zimbabwean feminist writer.
Irene Staunton is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor, researcher and writer, who has worked in literature and the arts since the 1970s, both in the UK and Zimbabwe. She is co-founder and publisher of Weaver Press in Harare, having previously co-founded Baobab Books. Staunton is the editor of several notable anthologies covering oral history, short stories, and poetry, including Mothers of the Revolution: War Experiences of Thirty Zimbabwean Women (1990), Children in our Midst: Voices of Farmworker's Children (2000), Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe (2003), Women Writing Zimbabwe (2008), Writing Free (2011), and Writing Mystery & Mayhem (2015).
Relations between the UK and Zimbabwe have been complex since the latter's independence in 1980. The territory of modern Zimbabwe had been colonised by the British South Africa Company in 1890, with the Pioneer Column raising the Union Jack over Fort Salisbury and formally establishing company, and by extension, British, rule over the territory. In 1920 Rhodesia, as the land had been called by the company in honour of their founder, Cecil Rhodes, was brought under jurisdiction of the Crown as the colony of Southern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia over the decades following its establishment would slowly be populated by large numbers of Europeans emigrants who came to form a considerable diaspora, largely consisting of Britons but also smaller groups of Italians, Greeks and Afrikaners. A settler culture that had already existed since the time of company would come to cement fully and the white population began to identify as Rhodesians, often in conjunction with British/Afrikaner/Southern European identities of their ancestors. Southern Rhodesia would go on to participate heavily in both the First and Second wars, providing soldiers and military equipment to the British war effort.
Holly Lawford-Smith is a New Zealander-Australian philosopher, author and associate professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne.
Stella Madzimbamuto was a South African-born Zimbabwean nurse and plaintiff in the landmark legal case of Madzimbamuto v Lardner-Burke. Born as Stella Nkolombe in District Six of Cape Town in 1930, she trained as a nurse at South Africa's first hospital to treat black Africans, earning a general nursing and a midwifery certification. After working for three years at Ladysmith Provincial Hospital, she married a Southern Rhodesian and relocated. From 1956 to 1959, she worked as a general nurse at the Harare Central Hospital. In 1959, her husband, Daniel Madzimbamuto, was detained as a political prisoner. He would remain in detention until 1974, while she financially supported the family.
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