Grant Scheme Winners 2014
Dawn Kennedy got her first writing job at age 19 as a film reviewer with the Bristol Post. After graduating with an honours degree from Bristol University in English Literature and Philosophy she traveled in Asia for three years before settling in Cape Town, South Africa. Since living in Cape Town she’s worked as a journalist in many different capacities: Feature writer for the Cape Times; Arts writer for The Sunday Independent; Features Editor of Oprah magazine and Editor of Sync ‘Up, and Co-Editor of 021 magazine. Over the years, she has written freelance articles on both hard and soft news topics. Dawn’s great passion in life is for narrative journalism – where news, features and creative writing collide. Her book project entitled ‘Saving South Africa’s Cycads’ is both a thriller and a botanical love story that explains the value and rarity of South Africa’s cycads and their threat from poachers.
Dr Mzukisi Qobo was born in Langa and grew up in Khayelitsha. He is a recognised thought leader on political economy, leadership issues, and global politics. Mzukisi has spoken to audiences both in South Africa and abroad. He has also advised executives in the mining and financial services sectors on regulation, policy, and stakeholder engagement. Until recently he lectured international political economy at the University of Pretoria. Previously he worked at the Department of Trade and Industry where he was chief director responsible for developing South Africa’s trade policy. Mzukisi is currently a Senior Research Associate with the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation at the University of Pretoria. Mzukisi is co-author of The Fall of the ANC: What Next? He is currently working on a book on Transformational Leadership in South Africa, with a grant support from ANFASA. Mzukisi’s columns appear fortnightly in the Business Day. He holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, UK; MA from the University of Stellenbosch; and BA from the University of Cape Town.
Dr Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa is a senior lecturer in the department, with research and teaching interests in comparative government; African peace and security; Democracy, Governance and Peacebuilding; International Relations and International and Regional Organizations. He graduated with a DPhil from the University of the Witwatersrand. Prior to joining Rhodes, Gwinyayi served as: a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa; Senior Researcher at the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town; Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Wits University; Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Africa’s International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand; Visiting Scholar at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo and as a Research and Publications Officer at the Centre for Defence Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. He is co-editor of Region Building in Southern Africa: Progress, Problems and Prospects, (Zed Books, Wits University Press, 2012) and Peacebuilding, Power and Politics in Africa, (Ohio University Press, Wits University Press, 2012) and has researched and published widely on peace, security and development issues in Africa. His book project ‘Swords into Ploughshares: Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration’ is a critical comparative reflection on the DDR histories of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.
Pierre de Vos is the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town. De Vos studied at the University of Stellenbosch, Columbia University (New York), and the University of Western Cape, where he held a professorship. De Vos has published widely on issues of constitutional law, from the enforcement of social and economic rights, non-discrimination law and citizenship rights. He is the co-editor of the leading textbook on Constitutional Law in South Africa, entitled “South African Constitutional Law in Context”. His blog,www.constitutionallyspeaking.co.za, offers constitutional perspective on social and political issues of contemporary South Africa and is widely read and syndicated on the Daily Maverick, one of South Africa’s leading online news platforms. He is chairperson of the Board of the Aids Legal Network and a board member of Triangle Project. His project ‘Forget about forgetting: Memory and the intepretation of South Africa’s Constitution aims to engage in a difficult sometimes painful but brutally honest engagement with his own apartheid past, to link these discussions and reflections with analysis of the previous provisions of the South African Bill of Rights and thus to promote a better understanding of the bill of rights among politicians, judges, lawyers and informed members of the public.
David B. Coplan is Professor Emeritus in Social Anthropology at the University of The Witwatersrand. He has been researching and writing about South African performing arts and media since 1976. He is the author of numerous publications, including most notably In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre (1986), revised, enlarged and published in a second edition in 2007. Prof. Coplan is also a specialist in the ethnographic history and performance culture of the Basotho of southern Africa. His related works include In the Time of Cannibals: the Word Music of South Africa’s Basotho Migrants (Chicago 1994), and the film Songs of the Adventurers (Constant Spring Productions 1986). Prof. Coplan appears frequently on South African radio and television as an arts, culture, and media commentator. He has also written extensively for the popular press and a general readership beyond academic publishing. Prof. Coplan lectures frequently on media issues at scholarly conferences, to the general public, and to the private sector. He will be producing a book on the popular premier Jazz venue in Mellville Johannesburg called the Bassline. His book entitled “Music makes the new Johannesburg: Last night at the Bassline a multimedia tribute” will be a multi-voiced narrative of musical life and achievement in Johannesburg under democracy.
Mpumi Bikitsha was born in Langa, Cape Town on the 25 October 1945. She is a widow with three chidren and 5 grandchildren and enjoying a busy retirement. She holds an Honours degree in Social Anthropology, having majored in Psychology and Social Anthropology from UCT. She moved from Cape Town to Johannesburg in 2000. Her last job before retirement in 2005 was with the National Research Foundation. It is here that her love for research was revived. The inspiration to take up the project on African Choral Music Composers has been kept alive with an undying passion and an undeterred spirit. Work towards what she perceives as the second volume to the current is already underway. This project is getting more and more exciting and challenging, a challenge that needs to be taken on.
Dr. Dale T. McKinley is an independent writer, researcher and lecturer as well as political activist, based in Johannesburg. He is a long time social and political activist and has been involved in social movement, community and political struggles for over three decades. Dale holds a PhD. in Political Economy/African Studies from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), USA. He occasionally lectures at university level and is a regular speaker at various civil society and academic social and political conferences and events. Dale is the author of three books and has written numerous book chapters, research reports, journal/magazine and press articles on various aspects of South African and international political, social and economic issues/struggles. Additionally, he is a regular columnist for the South African Civil Society Information Service and contributor to the South African print media as well as regular commentator on radio and television. Dale has been (and remains) actively involved in several political and social movements. Picking up from where he left off in his 1997 book on the ANC.This book project ‘ANC in power: A critical analysis of 20 years of democracy’ seeks to provide a critical political biography on the ANC in power since 1994 until the present.
Busisiwe Ndlovu is currently employed by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) based in Eshowe KwaZulu Natal as a programme Coordinator, She works with a group of 87 community based counsellors specialising in door to door HIV counselling and testing and TB screening. She is studying Communication Science with UNISA as well. Busisiwe has been passionate about writing since she was a child and intended to study Journalism. Unfortunately her father felt that Journalism is not suitable for a girl. This is the first time she writing formally and is very excited. Her book project ‘Silenced’ tells a story of a 13 year old girl who was raped, her tongue cut out and eyes gouged out. This book looks at the events that followed in her family, the stigma in the community and how the perpetrator’s family suffered.
Daluxolo Maloantoa is the Features Writer at AfriPOP! Magazine. After being awarded a scholarship by The Sowetan newspaper, Herdbouys McCann Ericksson to study at the AAA School of Advertising, he qualified as a copywriter in 2002. He has worked for a leading advertising agency in Johannesburg for five years. In 2007 he took up the opportunity to embark upon an exchange programme to England. While in England he studied for a Community Media certificate with the Community Volunteer Service Media Clubhouse. He became arts journalist with Ipswich-based youth magazine IP1 magazine and began covering South African arts-based news for London-based South African newspaper SA TIMES and the Big Issue magazine in Cape Town. Upon his return to SA in 2011 he took up his current position of Features Writer at AfriPOP! Magazine and continue to make contributions to UK-based newspaper SA TIMES and the website Southafrican.com. His book project ‘Gateway to a new world: Profiles of eminent mission education schools in South Africa’ aims to cover the development of mission education in South Africa and its purpose as a breeding ground for the new breed of African leaders, and subsequently a new African nationalism, whose consequence was the development of the ideological underpinning of a century-long political offensive that would finally lead to the demise of racialism in South Africa.
Catherine Hunter Shubane grew up, and schooled in Lesotho and Swaziland and has lived in South Africa since then. Currently she designs, writes and delivers organisational development programmes in range of contexts and subjects. Throughout she emphasises the close links between past influences, and relationships, to anything we do and the richness of working in a diverse environment. A political activist in the eighties she spent the first two decades of her career in the field of Mathematics education, teaching, teacher-training and developing materials. Catherine is the mother of two adult daughters, and she swims and plays the guitar for fun. Her book project for which she won the Anfasa award entitled ‘Nkomati’ , tells the true story of a soldier in apartheid South Africa’s military intelligence who passed on to the ANC information on the SADF’s support of Mozambique’s rebel movement RENAMO
Suren Pillay is Associate Professor at the Center for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. He has published on issues of violence, citizenship and justice claims. With Chandra Sriram he is co-editor of the book, Truth vs Justice? The Dilemmas of Transitional Justice in Africa (London: James Currey, 2011) He has an Mphil, and a Phd in Anthropology from Columbia University in New York. Suren is currently completing two book manuscripts- a study of state violence in the period of late apartheid; and a study of citizenship, violence and the politics of difference in post apartheid South Africa. His current research also focuses on experiments in cultural sovereignty in postcolonial Africa in the sphere of knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences. Suren has been a visiting fellow at Jawarhalal Nehru University, India, the Makerere Institute for Social Research, Uganda, the Center for African Studies, Univ. of Cape Town, and the Center for Social Difference, Columbia University. He is a previous editor of the journal Social Dynamics, blogs for Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), and has published widely in the press
Leon de Kock is Emeritus Professor of English at Stellenbosch University and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of several books, including Civilising Barbarians (1996), a study of missionary imperialism, the novel Bad Sex (2011), and three volumes of poetry. His literary translations include Marlene van Niekerk’s blockbuster novel Triomf, Ingrid Winterbach’s The Road of Excess, and Etienne van Heerden’s In Love’s Place. He has published more than 60 academic articles and book chapters in a career spanning over thirty years, and he is a public commentator who regularly writes for newspapers and periodicals both in South Africa and further afield. His AGSA project is entitled “Losing the Plot: Postapartheid Writing and the Fiction of Transition”. The work seeks to offer the first book-length study of postapartheid South African writing. Importantly, this study places great emphasis on the growing importance and uptake of what some people call “creative nonfiction”, especially in what he call the “forensic mode” of heightened social analysis, a kind of diagnostic exploration and probing of the South African social body.