Shaun de Waal
The Time of the Writer festival, held by the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of Natal, is set to become a regular feature of Durban’s cultural life. This year’s festival, the second, began on March 1 and runs until March 6 at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre.
The opening address was given by author (There’s More to Life Than Surface) and radio personality Kate Turkington. Each evening, three authors take the stage to read from their work and be questioned by an interviewer/presenter and the audience.
The first panel, chaired by Stephen Coan of the Natal Witness, featured New Zealand writer Alan Duff (famous for his Once Were Warriors), Zimbabwe’s Tsitsi Dangarembga (Nervous Conditions – a setwork in KwaZulu- Natal schools) and South Africa’s Johnny Masilela (Deliver Us From Evil: Themes from a Rural Transvaal Upbringing).
All three writers are involved in film production, and Coan asked them about the interface of film and literature in their work. Duff spoke of how the audience ratio of film-goers to book-readers seemed to be about 15 to one, necessitating, for him, the move into film production. He is currently working on the movie of What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, sequel to Once Were Warriors.
It was his disquiet at the fact that so few of New Zealand’s Maori population – the subject of his book – were interested in reading that led to his founding a project called Books in Homes, dedicated to providing reading material without books.
Dangarembga spoke of the importance of indigenous literature in Africa – the need for people to be able to see their lives and places reflected in what is being written.
Ironically, her novel, Nervous Condition, about five Zimbabwean women dealing with sexual and post-colonial oppression, was rejected by two Zimbabwean publishers before being accepted by The Women’s Press in London and going on to become something of a cause clbre.
She took questions from teachers and pupils who had encountered her book on the South African school syllabus, and found that it reflected many of their concerns.
The range of writers present at the festival is almost bewildering – many will have been introduced to South African audiences for the first time. Appropriately for a festival whose theme is “Journeys”, they came from as far afield as Djibouti, the Netherlands, Morocco, and the Cte d’Ivoire, to meet their South African counterparts and readers.
Among the South African writers in attendance are Pamela Jooste, Jenny Hobbs, Gillian Slovo and Etienne van Heerden.
l The programme for March 5 will be presented by Mail & Guardian reviewer Shirley Kossick and features Jooste, Slovo and Swiss writer Claude Darbellay. On March 6, Johan Jacobs will chair a panel including Marlene van Niekerk, and Patrick Erouart-Siad from Djibouti.