Biography

For nearly thirty years, Sindiwe Magona has been authoring the lives of South Africans from a broad range of ethnic and economic backgrounds. Her probing and poignant stories, poems, articles, and plays examine the ever- thorny challenges within the apartheid and post-apartheid world.

Her first published works, To My Children’s Children and Forced to Grow, coming on the cusp of the new democracy, provide further evidence to the local and global community of the influence of prejudice but not its victory.

With a particularly acute perspective of woman’s issues in strife-ridden South Africa, Magona’s expansive genre of literary works reveal the anguish of the domestic worker who daily beats back the wolf of poverty from her door as found in the award-winning short story collection Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night; the mother attempting to bridge the seemingly insurmountable cultural and linguistic chasm to explain why her son killed an innocent woman in Mother to Mother; the professional woman who battles against the scourge of AIDS brutally seeking access to her bed in Beauty’s Gift; or the young Xhosa girl blossoming under the loving gaze of her dedicated father in her latest novel Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle.

Magona’s creativity seems to know no bounds as she composes across multiple mediums. Her poetry collection Please, Take Photographs allows the reader to ruminate on tantalizing bites of prose. Similarly, her plays tackle cutting edge social and political issues, such as the concern for the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis found in her first published play Vukani! Her successful one woman play I Promised Myself a Fabulous Middle Age is a rollicking romp illustrating through her ever-present humour and vivacity the collywobbles of her life.

Following the literary success of Mother to Mother, Magona partnered with the supremely talented actress Thembi Mtshali and equally talented director, Janice Honeyman to craft the novel into an internationally acclaimed drama which continues to stir audiences from around the world. Even with all of these multiple offerings, Magona has invested boundless effort in writing exceptional children’s stories for both the school and public market. The Best Meal Ever is a beautifully illustrated tale taken from her autobiography Forced to Grow about a young mother sustaining her children with dreams of a steaming pot of stew. She has also written literally hundreds of insightful and fun tales that have been incorporated into primary children’s readers.

Given her vast oeuvre, Magona and her works deserve the attention of an ever-increasing audience. Hers is a voice that lights a candle in the darkness to show the way for others to see through the eyes of a mired history into a future filled with hope and promise. She is an opportunity not to be missed.

This celebration of her work is long overdue.

Halala! Nomabali!

Professor Dianne Shober