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Zakes Mda

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The Time of the Writer Festival returns with a bold hybrid vision, using literature to challenge power, amplify voices and reconnect communities across borders

How the Time of the Writer Festival is taking the stories to the people

The Time of the Writer Festival returns with a bold hybrid vision, using literature to challenge power, amplify voices and reconnect communities across borders

John Kani during the masterclass.

Kani and Mda take centre stage at Iphulo Drama Festival

John Kani and Zakes Mda are leading masterclasses at the Iphulo Drama Festival, inspiring theatre, writing and directing talent across the Eastern Cape

Paid a pittance: The artist’s path is never linear, but it has over the years become increasingly unsustainable. Photo: Unsplash

The cost of creativity

South African artists keep dying poor while their work enriches others. The Copyright Amendment Bill could finally change that – if it ever becomes law

Voice of the voiceless: Pumeza Matshikiza, who hails from the Eastern Cape and has graced opera stages around the world, has become an ambassador for Women and Men Against Child Abuse. Photo: Decca/Simon Fowler

Opera singer Pumeza Matshikiza on joining the global fight against child abuse

Renowned soprano Pumeza Matshikiza steps off the stage and into advocacy, using her art and influence to fight child abuse

Killing it: Multimedia artist Nakhane has excelled in a range of creative activities, including music, acting, novel writing and directing a short film

Nakhane is a lot of things — but not a pop star

The acclaimed multimedia artist Nakhane continues to explore the themes that have made them a rare talent across many creative fields

Striking: Cion: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero was choreographed by Gregory Maqoma.

Diary: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero, BMW Art Generation, live scores to silent films

Your essential dose of art and culture

A stage, a graveyard, a place of mourning. Image: John Hogg

The endless darkness of mourning: ‘Cion: Requiem of Ravel’s Boléro’ returns

A tour de force of 20 dancers from Gregory Maqoma’s Vuyani Dance Company, and 18 singers as fellow mourners, Cion unpacks the centuries of incessant mourning by black people

Vusi Kunene and Thulani Nyembe seemed unrehearsed in their portrayal of ‘The Man’, a condition that may improve with further performances. (Lungelo Mbulwana)

Review: ‘The Mother of All Eating’ suffers an unworthy restaging

The Market Theatre’s latest incarnation of Zakes Mda’s play is found sorely wanting

Don’t Miss:Your guide to in-person and virtual events

Art, theatre and literature events to feed your soul this long weekend

We Wanted a Revolution – Black Radical Women, 1965-85 (Duke University Press)

The List: A peek at the Stevenson library

Stevenson gallery staff took to Instagram to share a small selection of literature guiding their “respective journeys towards listening, learning and confronting bias”

Historical novel tests notion of nation

The past explains the present but not the future because ‘that tiny chaos’ makes the future opaque

Philosophy of dignity: Zakes Mda draws on Mandingo religion. (Joanne Oliver)

History plus myth means dignity

Mda’s latest novel paints a picture of how the West, then and now, refashions the other to validate its own preconceptions

Blurred: ‘You Fool How Can the Sky Fall’ asks the audience to weigh up the good and the bad of the fallen leaders of a fictitious African country. Photo: Iris Dawn Parker

1995 play still relevant today

The president and his fawning ministers are being interrogated about corruption. Sound familiar?

Anguish: Talented novelist Kabelo Sello Duiker took his own life on January 19 2005

The art of darkness

The trope of the anguished artist romanticises the acute mental suffering that afflicts some of those who find an escape in creativity

The president’s political adviser states that “Mda seems to be inconsistent in a sense that he fails to take an optimistic view of the post-2019 elections dispensation”.

Zakes Mda’s attack on Zuma is far-fetched and ludicrous

Every leader in this democratic dispensation understands that they are not above the organisations that nominated them, says the president’s adviser.