UKZN Press

UKZN Press congratulates its author, Mxolisi Nyezwa, who was announced as the winner of the English Academy’s Thomas Pringle Award for poetry earlier this week.

Nyezwa is author of the collection New Country, published by the Press earlier this year. You can read a sample from New Country here.

More from the Daily Dispatch and The Herald (plus: watch a video of Nyezwa reading at the second link):

MXOLISI Nyezwa, of New Brighton in Port Elizabeth, won the 2009 Thomas Pringle Award for Poetry.

The announcement was made by Pringle Award chief adjudicator Dr Amitabh Mitra, of the East London Hospital Complex, at the Book SA Ban’quet last Saturday.

Nyezwa, author of New Country, was awarded R2 000.

• Read the complete article

“I am very grateful for the recognition of my work,” said Nyezwa, who also received an award from Rhodes University this year.

The interior of his tidy office in Motherwell, Port Elizabeth contrasts sharply with its appearance from the outside – a blue container among the shacks which dominate the area.

“From here I am fighting for the preservation of black poetry”, said Nyezwa, who has devoted his life to poetry, writing and teaching other people how to do so.

“Writing is a way to come to terms with contradictions people experience in every day life,” he said, pointing to the children playing with refuse bags outside.

• Read the complete article and watch a video of Nyezwa reading “In a quiet place”

Book details

• New Country by Mxolisi Nyezwa
  EAN: 9781869141691
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Thanks to Amitabh Mitra, chair of the Thomas Pringle Award for poetry, for the helpful links

UKZN PRESS is pleased to announce the appointment of Debra Primo (centre, with blue folder) as the new Publisher as from 1 July 2009. She brings with her a wealth of experience and knowledge of the academic publishing industry.

Debra matriculated from Paterson Senior Secondary School in Port Elizabeth. She completed an undergraduate B.A. degree at UWC, and an LL.B. at UNISA. She started her career teaching Sociology at Khanya College in Cape Town, and then moved into the publishing industry.

Debra’s publishing career started at Juta Law in 1998, with publishing legal texts – left for a brief two year stint to join Heinemann to gain experience in educational publishing – and then rejoined Juta Law until July 2009.

The Press is grateful to Glenn Cowley’s contribution over the years, and wishes him well for the future.

Coming this June from UKZN Press

Denis Hurley was a courageous opponent of South Africa’s apartheid regime for 50 years, dubbed “an ecclesiastical Che Guevara” by a South African official and “guardian of the light” by Alan Paton. He was a champion of the reforms and “spirit” of Vatican II, who was controversial  for his views on birth control, married priests, and women’s ordination.

In short, Archbishop Hurley was one of our greatest South Africans. This biography – Guardian of the Light by Paddy Kearney, reveals what gave him that stature: his integrity, fearlessness, gentleness of spirit and his magnanimity.
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Dramatically escalating prices of raw materials, driven by rapid industrialisation in China and other countries of the global South as well as by looming world shortages, had for the few years preceding the financial meltdown and global recession of 2009 promoted a new scramble for Africa’s natural resources. It signalled a brisk turnaround in prospects for what The Economist had dubbed the “hopeless continent” as recently as 1999. However, while average growth rates across the continent have increased, the implications for Africa’s development were and remain at best dubious.
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Critics of liberalism in Europe and North America argue that a stress on “rights talk” and identity politics has led to fragmentation, individualisation and depoliticisation. But are these developments really signs of ‘the end of politics’?

In From Revolution to Rights in South Africa, Steven Robins argues for the continued importance of NGOs, social movements and other civil society actors in creating new forms of citizenship and democracy, producing a complex, hybrid and ambiguous relationship between civil society and the state, where new negotiations around citizenship emerge.
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Ways of Writing is the first volume of essays devoted to a critical appraisal of Zakes Mda, the award-winning South African novelist and playwright.

In his plays and novels, which draw on both Western and indigenous performance traditions, Mda engages with the history of southern Africa during and after apartheid. Writing from a position of exile, as well as from within his native country, he examines the lives of ordinary people and the ways in which they come to terms with the effects of apartheid.

Mda has distinguished himself not only as a playwright and novelist, but also as a literary and cultural theorist and activist. He is a significant voice among the many in contemporary South Africa that exploit innovative forms to explore a culture in transition.
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Peace versus Justice?: The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa offers fresh insights on the so-called ‘justice versus peace’ dilemma, examining the challenges and prospects for promoting both peace and accountability, specifically in African countries affected by conflict or political violence.

Editor Chandra Lekha Sriram’s book draws on the expertise of many insider analysts, individuals who are not only authorities on transitional accountability processes, but who have participated in them, whether as legal practitioners or commissioners. While the primary focus is on processes in Africa, many of the contributors also draw on lessons from earlier processes elsewhere in the world, particularly Latin America.
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Since the democratic elections in 1994, there have been concerted efforts to redress race and gender inequalities in South Africa. Learners and teachers have responded in their own ways to change and this nuanced analysis reveals their struggles to realise gender equality by living gender differently.

In distinguishing short-term interventions to change behaviour from institutional approaches which seek to transform school structures, Towards Gender Equality offers a new framework for understanding gender-equality initiatives. The book was compiled by an authorial team consisting of Robert Morrell, Debbie Epstein, Elaine Unterhalter, Deevia Bhana and Relebohile Moletsane.
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The question usually asked about Africa is: “why is it going wrong?” Is the continent still suffering from the ravages of colonialism? Or is it the victim of postcolonial economic exploitation, poor governance and lack of aid? Whatever the answer, increasingly the result is poverty and violence.

In Africa: the Politics of Suffering and Smiling, Patrick Chabal approaches this question differently by reconsidering the role of theory in African politics. Chabal discusses the limitations of existing political theories of Africa and proposes a different starting point, arguing that political thinking ought to be driven by the need to address the immediacy of everyday life and death.
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Siphiwo Mahala confessed to journalist Charlotte Fairfax, halfway through their interview on his novel, When a Man Cries, that he numbers among the men who do.

“I do cry. I am, after all, a human being,” he told Fairfax (who had wanted to lead with the question, but thought better of it). Then he tacked on to this fairly pedestrian observation one of the pause-making insights for which he has become known, since the novel’s publication: “Those who don’t cry might prove their strength in devastating ways.” How true.

More Q, A and insight here:
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