Africa-Day

Jackson Kaujeua

Jackson Kaujeua (born 1953 in Keetmanshoop, Namibia) is a Namibian songwriter, composer and gospel singer. He spent eighteen years of his life as a political exile and devotes his musical creativity to the cause of Namibian independence and for equality. With hits such as “Winds of Change” and “Gnubu Nubus”, Kaujeua came to international attention and became a symbolic figure of the Namibian struggle for freedom. In 1990, Namibia gained indepence from the occupation by South Africa that had existed since the First World War.
Kaujeua grew up in the small Namibian village of “Huns” near Keetmanshoop. At the Otjimbingwe mission school, Kaujeua discovered his passion for the gospel music of singers such as Mahalia Jackson and broke off his training to be a pastor. “The words were all about human rights. Then it was clear to me: I wanted to do protest songs.” He writes and sings in San, Xhosa, Otjiherero and English.
Publications.
Tears over the deserts, Autobiography (1994)
CDs: Ombura (2008)
A Hand Full Of Namibians (Sampler, 2004)
Prizes: 
Nominiert für verschiedene Kategorien des Namibian Sanlam Music Awards (2008)

Keorapetse Kgositsile

Keorapetse Kgositsile (born 1938 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is not only a poet and political activist, but was also one of the first members of the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1960s and 70s. From 1962 to 1975 he lived in exile in the USA. As a central figure among African-American poets, he was instrumental in bringing Africa into the limelight in the 1970s, as well as gaining much attention for poetry as performance. He was one of the first to overcome the gulf between African poetry and Black poetry in the USA, thus becoming one of the most important poets in the Pan-African movement. With his unique, penetrating voice he bewitches his listeners; his poetry, ranging from clear political message to private lyricism, has many connections with jazz. He is also currently working as an advisor to the South African Ministry of Culture.
Publications:
If I could sing (2002), This Way I Salute you (2004)
Prizes:
National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Award (1970), Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Poetry (2000), Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English Literature ( 2005 ), New York Council of the Arts, Harlem Cultural Council and Rockefeller Foundation Awards.

Kgafela oa Magogodi

Kgafela oa Magogodi (born 1968 in Johannesburg, South Africa) studied music, African literature and film and now teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He is one of South Africa’s most important poets and its best-known spoken word performer, as well as working as a jazz musician and theatre director. Numerous international stage appearances have made him known throughout the world. His work combines rap lyrics with social observation and political commentary. He challenges and provokes with his honest and sometimes shockingly graphic language. From his performance “I Mike What I Like” came the film of the same name which has been shown at festivals all over the world. As well as poetry, he also writes stories and film scripts. In 2004 Kgafela oa Magogodi was an artist-in-residence at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.
Publications:
Thy Condom Come (New Leaf 2000)
outspoken (Laugh-it-off 2004)
CD: I Mike What I Like (Laugh-it-off 2004 und Film Resource Unit, 2006 (DVD))

Jack Mapanje

Jack Mapanje (born 1944 in Malawi) debuted as a poet in 1981 with his collection “Of Chameleons and Gods”, which was subsequently banned in Malawi in 1985 for being “unsuitable teaching material”. In 1987, shortly before taking up a writer in residence fellowship in Zimbabwe, he was arrested and spent four years in prison in Malawi without trial. After his release he went with his family into exile in Britain, where he still lives and teaches. He did not return to his homeland until he visited in 2003 to do his first reading there. Mapanje’s poetry is concerned with his experience of being a prisoner in Malawi, political regimes, the hypocrisy and prejudice of racist thinking and religious persecution. Mapanje’s voice is full of bright irony, his tone full of anger; a hypnotic poetry of bold narrativity.
Publications:
Of Chameleons and Gods (1981)
Oral Poetry from Africa (1983)
The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993)
Skipping Without Ropes  (1998)
Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002)
An African Thunderstorm & Other Poems (2004)
Beasts of Nalunga (2007)
Prizes:
Rotterdam International Poetry Prize for Of Chameleons and Gods. Wole Soyinka accepted the prize on behalf of the prisoner (1988).
African Literature Association Fonlon-Nichols Award (2002)

Acerca del poema de David Constantine (Jack Mapanje, Malawi)

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Chiwoniso Maraire

Chiwoniso Maraire (born 1976 in Olympia, USA) is famous for her combination of traditional sounds with elements of rock music. Her unique sound makes her one of the most astounding artistic personalities in Southern Africa and Zimbabwe’s most well-known singer. Chiwoniso grew up in the USA and Zimbabwe and has her roots in the traditions of the Shona people, in which the mbira, a kind of piano played with the thumbs and forefingers, is the most prominent instrument. But she also draws her inspiration from the urban music culture of the United States, from soul to hip hop. Her commitment to Africa and the rights of women and children is tireless and she is fighting courageously against the current predations of the Zimbabwean government against its own people. Her current album, “Rebel Woman”, is a vigorous lyrical statement on the catastrophic political and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s leadership. Fearless lyrics and inventive sounds combine in Chiwoniso’s attempt to contribute to a better future for Zimbabwe. Chiwoniso is currently working on a third solo CD with Keith Farquhuarson.
At the end of August, Chiwoniso Maraire left Zimbabwe to enable her children to grow up in a more peaceful environment and to be able to pursue her artistic career. Nevertheless, she insists that “Zimbabwe is my heart and my soul.”
Publications (CDs):
Ancient Voices (2000)
Timeless (2005)
Rebel Woman (2008) 

Chiwoniso - Wandirasa

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Keamogetsi Joseph Molapong

Keamogetsi Joseph Molapong (born 1972 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a poet, actor and dramatist. He has been publishing poetry in English since 1990. Molapong was a founding member of the “Kitso Poets”, a group devoted to practising and teaching performance poetry as a way of educating the population and combating illiteracy. The Kitso Poets take part in workshops and festivals and appear regularly on radio and television. In his melodic poetry, Molapong mainly criticises the inequalities and injustices in post-colonial Namibia.
Publications:
We Opened the Door and Saw Ourselves (1998)
The Black people I know (2002)
Come Talk Your Heart (2005)

Gankhanani Moffat Moyo

Gankhanani Moffat Moyo (born 1980 in Lusaka, Zambia) is a young Zambian multi-talent. He has already published three volumes of verse, appeared on the radio and led workshops on African poetry, theatre and contemporary narrative at the University of Zambia. He has appeared in Helsinki already in various performance poetry, dance and theatre events. Moyo is the editor of the literary magazine “Echoes of Tomorrow”, which has more than 10,000 readers throughout the world. In 2001 he started the “Young Writers’ Association” in Zambia. His poetry plays with sounds, with rhythms and alliterations. He deals with everyday life, describing his impressions in musical language, criticising and accusing and creating a new and better world with his optimistic words.
Publications:
Orgasm (due in June 2009)
Songs from my Soul: poems (2008)
Anthologies: Imagination of Poets. An Anthology of African Poems (2005)

Iain Gregory Robinson, a.k.a Ewok

Iain Gregory Robinson, a.k.a Ewok (born 1981 in Durban, South Africa) is the shooting star of the South African hip hop scene. He is a poet, Battle Rap Champion (Indaba 2004), slam poet, graffiti artist, actor and musician. His poetry is passionate, pointed and precise, with strong hip hop elements. Ewok’s fascinating word-plays, thrilling images, hard-hitting visions and critical observations are praised throughout the country. “To watch Robinson perform is to watch a man in command, a man possessed.”  (Sunday Tribune).
Publications:
Customized Hype, 2007
CD: Higher Flyer for Hire, 2007
Prizes:
Pick of the Festival Prize at the Musho! One Man/Two Man Play Festival in Durban (2007)
various Hip Hop and Slam Freestyle Battle prizes between 2004-2007
5th placed in the Poetry International Festival World Slampionship in Rotterdam (2005)
Battle Rap Champion, Indaba (2004).

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers Foto: gezett

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (born 1966, Johannesburg, South Africa), daughter of an Australian mother and a Ghanaian father, was adopted into a white family in Apartheid South Africa, a fact she first learnt at the age of 20.

“I felt as if the colonised and the coloniser were fighting each other inside my brain”, she says in an interview. But also: “as a mixed race African and adoptee I feel, paradoxically, oppressed and completely free”.

Sharpened through this paradoxical biography, her work raises questions of ethnic heritage, of exclusion and identity, in the most urgent and personal way. Her poems are enraged and melancholic, but also funny, and are often ironically self-reflexive in their social criticism: “Freedom Songs” that are easy neither on themselves nor the reader.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers studied journalism in Grahamstown, and in the late 90s studied acting in Paris. She spent some time in Los Angeles before returning to Johannesburg, where she did street theatre and completed a screenplay. Since then she has written numerous scripts for TV series, and in 2005 also wrote a play, “Where the Children Live”.

In 2006 her first book of poetry was published, “Taller than Buildings”, and in 2010 she followed up with “The Everyday Wife”. In 2009 she was Writer in Residence at the Villa Vollezele in Belgium, and in 2011, along with other awards, received the South African Literary Award.

 

Publications

Taller Than Buildings, Centre for the Book 2006
The Everyday Wife, Modjaji Books 2010