Eastern Cape home fires burn bright in award-winning novel

Like a ray of sunshine, Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani ' s memory of her rural Eastern Cape childhood fires her novel Buried in the Chest, which has just won Jacana ' s 2024 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award.

Speaking from her new home in the US, MbunyuzaMemani said yesterday she was born in the Dutywa village of Ngxakaxa and vividly remembered her early years there.
"My village was immersed in open spaces with gardens, hills, trees and plants.
"Today, I love breathing in, and touching and feeling textures. I imagine running my hand on the bark of trees.
"Landscapes and the environment help me bring life to the stories I tell.
"In my novel, the village which raises Unathi is called Moya. It's named after its winds. The winds are disruptive but the villagers live with them."
She said for as long as she could remember in Ngxakaxa, an elderly lady had lived alone next door to her family's house.
"At certain times during the year, her garden would be alive with sunflowers.
"I used to enjoy looking at them. My sister would say sunflowers know sadness.
"Now, there are sunflowers in Buried in the Chest."
Mbunyuza-Memani said she was always happy to talk to people about Ngxakaxa, and to regale her students at Southern Illinois University, where she teaches English, with descriptions of the place and the people.
"I love my village and the community there.
"Sometimes I write a character with traits that remind me of 10 different people from home.
"I squeeze those characteristics into one person.
"Growing up, I walked to the river. We'd fetch water and wash our clothes there.
"Those activities are in my novel. "
Years before she sat down to write the book, she was able to use this rapport with the environment when she was hired in 1999 straight out of the then-PE Technikon to work on the landmark Trees for PE Project.
She said she had gone from high school at St James in Cofimvaba to tech, and had no work experience, but she had loads of energy, and project manager Sue Spies, with whom she is still friends, took her on.
"' Spiesy ', as I call her, shaped my work ethic.
"And like any place where I have lived, PE is in my DNA, my imagination and my stories.
"Without me studying in Gqeberha, there's no current me. I'm not married to Yanga and we are not raising two teenagers — a girl, Liya, 16, and a boy, Daza, 13."
Mbunyuza-Memani said her novel was rooted in SA's predemocracy period of apartheid, and told the story of Unathi, how she was raised by her gogo, and how she journeyed through lesbian and interracial love.
"The village of Moya and the absence of mothers there comes from the impact of women seeking work in the cities.
"But there are other layers folded in, like the role of villagers in gendered responses to pregnant, unmarried young girls and women.
"I thought a lot about the absence of repercussions and the muted negative talk when boys father a child.
"This is not the treatment girls receive when they are pregnant and become young mothers.
"But most of all Buried in the Chest is the story of Unathi's search for her mother, Mavis."
Mbunyuza-Memani said after her stint at Trees for PE, and now newly married, she had enrolled at the University of Port Elizabeth, and had emerged with her first master's degree.
After her move to the US, she acquired two more master's degrees in English literature and creative writing, and a doctorate in mass communication and media arts.
She said she had plenty of plans for her future.
"Before I exit the world, I want to be a truck driver.
"I admire the work truck drivers do hauling food and car parts and letters and clothes and furniture and everything else humans want.
"I've worked as a receptionist, a secretary, a spokesperson, a part-time teacher, and now an English professor.
"But I've also been unemployed and despondent."
She said her message to young people was to roll with the punches.
"It is OK to not have the rest of your life figured out by the time you're 16, 18 or 21.
"Still, try to have a plan.
"Don't be five years older and be tied to how you thought and behaved years ago.
"Have fun. Cry about rejections, disappointments and pain.
"Find a way to move past, move on, and move up.
"Dream new dreams, irrespective of your age."
She said she tried to "live my life through questions".
"I ask a lot of questions because I am curious, and because I don't immediately gravitate towards norms.
"I also ask myself a single question every night: What do I know now that I didn't know when I woke up? It's a way to plan for tomorrow."

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Poets making mark at China writers’ conference ‘There are many talented writers in the commission. What is painful is that there is little encouragement for writers’

Two award-winning Nelson Mandela Bay poets are putting their best foot forward as they represent the region at a poetry conference hosted by the China Writers' Association.

  New Brighton's Mxolisi Nyezwa and Mangaliso Buzani are among the more than 70 poets from Brics countries gathered in Hangzhou, in east China's Zhejiang province, to exchange ideas, insights and cultures from July 17 to 25.

  The two are sharing their lived experiences in the metro and love for nature through poetry.

  Ithembelihle Secondary School alumnus Nyezwa, 56, said he was proud to be representing the province on the trip and stressed how platforms for poets were lacking in SA.

  "I was so excited when I was selected because, as poets, opportunities like these are scarce. They might be frequent in the musical sector but as authors there are not a lot.

  "It shows us that it is not a waste of time being a writer.

  "Going to China does not happen every day.

  "There are many talented writers in the commission.

  "What is painful is that there is little encouragement for writers. Poetry could grow even more in the future in our province if there were platforms to cater for writers," Nyezwa said.

  The Rhodes University creative writing masters holder played a crucial role in the growth and sustainability of poetry in SA and in the 1980s was a member of the Congress of South African Writers.

  His poetry is mostly inspired by the effects of apartheid in his community.

  "There are some of the painful things that we have seen; some of those things were done by the youth that we grew up with.

  "It was not easy.

  "Some even got hurt and we were referred to as a lost generation," Nyezwa said.

  Buzani, 46, said this was his first opportunity to travel beyond Africa and he applauded the organisers for understanding the importance of upholding culture and heritage through the arts.

  "I never believed that poetry would allow me to see other countries, because it was not easy to be where I am today.

  "I would pray for opportunities like these, so that I could show people that my work has a significant contribution to society and it serves to heal people," Buzani said.

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How life, loss and running the popular Facebook group The Village made former Cosmo editor Vanessa Raphaely a better mum

It's just one of those days . . . Her dogs won't stop barking, there's wet washing drying on a clothes horse in her home o ce and she's just realised she's double-booked herself and should be in a meeting with someone else. 

"It's my attention de cit disorder," Vanessa Raphaely groans about the scheduling mix-up. "And menopause doesn't help."

 It's a scenario many frazzled members of her popular Facebook parenting group, The Village, can relate to – the endless juggling and multitasking, the days when balls get dropped.

During her time as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine it might've sent her into a spin but now, older and wiser, Vanessa (59) just rolls with it.

 All the chaos is quickly forgotten as she ops into a chair next to a blazing fire in the lounge of her beautiful home in Higgovale, Cape Town, her dogs settled at her feet and a copy of her new book, We Were Perfect Parents Until We Had Children, on a table beside her.

Written in collaboration with author Karin Schimke, it's a compilation of the best advice shared by the 60 000 members of The Village and covers just about every parenting dilemma under the sun, from setting boundaries and getting kids to help out with chores to how to cope with issues such as cellphones, vaping and dating.

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Life Lessons: How to fail and win

Content By ALAN KNOTT-CRAIG

 

It started as a personal reflection. Almost like a diary where I thought about all the memorable moments of my life (mostly setbacks) and the lessons learnt (mostly painful) and then wrote them down in the same way I would tell the story on a stage — brutal honesty laced with self-deprecating humour.

  

It wasn't hard writing my story. What was hard was that, while jotting down my narrative, I realised that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't always in the right in my life, and some of the hits I've taken were well deserved.

  

In other words, it was humbling, and I learnt a lot about myself.

  

In short, writing a memoir is an excellent exercise in self-reflection. Which is useful if you use the lessons to course correct in your life.

  

One of my mentors, Jannie Mouton, once said to me: "When you're a private company, it's like you're playing rugby on the B fields with no lights and no spectators. When you're listed, there's fans and lights and TV cameras. There's no hiding. You play better!"

  

It's the same for a private memoir versus a published book. Writing it for my eyes only was a fun, but sloppy exercise. Once I'd made the decision to make it public, I really applied my mind. I really had to think about what I was saying. I really had to think about what I'd learnt in my career.

  

In short, it was an excellent furnace in which to sharpen and harden my personal life lessons.

  

Credit for my final decision to publish must be given to Francois van Niekerk, another mentor, the founder of Mergon. Anyone who knows Van Niekerk, knows that he's not the type to willy-nilly hand out compliments, even less so encourage cheeky young souties like me to publish a book about myself!

  

Once he'd nudged me, I thought to myself: Maybe this is a story that others want to read. So a friend introduced me to a publisher, and bada-boom bada-bing: I was swept up in (yet another) adventure.

  

I'm probably close to the halfway mark of my life. I'm extremely grateful to my excellent parents, and for the many opportunities I've been given in my life.

  

Not all of those opportunities led to success. Many in fact led to failure (and pain). Regardless of whether I won or lost, every time I've taken the path less travelled, I've learnt new stuff, and the experience has contributed to my life of adventure.

  

This book is another path less travelled. It's a way to find others that resonate with my thinking. A way to find my tribe (assuming I have a tribe!). Only one way to find out.

Life Lessons: How to Fail and Win by Alan Knott-Craig is published by Tafelberg.

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Journalist Nicky Greenwall releases thrilling debut novel

It's scary sending a book out into the world. 

After all the effort that has gone into bringing it to life, it's now over to the readers and there's nothing the author can do but wait.

That's the situation Nicky Greenwall is in right now – as an entertainment journalist and former TV presenter, she's developed thick skin and has trained herself not to worry too much what others think of her. 

But as the author of a new novel, it's impossible not to care.

"It feels vulnerable to put pieces of myself into the work," she says.

Her new novel, A Short Life, is a domestic thriller about two car accidents that take place on the same stretch of winding road in Cape Town. One of them is fatal and six friends' lives will never be the same again.

"The reader is encouraged to work out if the accidents are connected, and if so, what the consequences might be for the characters at the heart of the story," Nicky said.

She says the story had been percolating in her brain for a while but she initially wrote a completely different novel, which was rejected.

"is spurred me to enrol in a series of Curtis Brown Creative online writing classes. That's when the central conundrum of A Short Life bubbled up again and I knew I had to 'go there'."

For Nicky the hardest thing about writing her debut novel was not knowing how she was going to pull it all together at the end.

"I didn't know the exact ending when I started writing it. I knew the theme, I knew most of the characters, but the story sort of grew into itself as I wrote. It's hard sometimes to let things ow and not try too hard to control everything."

She hopes that once readers open the book they won't be able to put it down, but also that it will give them lots to think about long after they've finished the last chapter.

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