Gcina Mhlope
Encyclopedia
Nokugcina Elsie Mhlophe is a well-known South Africa
n freedom fighter, activist, actor
, storyteller
, poet
, playwright
, director
and author
. Storytelling is a deeply traditional activity in Africa
and Mhlope is one of the few woman storytellers in a country dominated by males. She does her most important work through charismatic performances, working to preserve storytelling as a means of keeping history alive and encouraging South African children to read. She tells her stories in four of South Africa's languages: English
, Afrikaans
, Zulu
and Xhosa
.
. Mhlope says, "My grandmother taught me everything about telling stories. When I was growing up, half the kids in our neighbourhood would come and spend the evening at home so that they could listen to izinganekwane (tales)."
She began to get a sense of the demand for stories while in Chicago
in 1988. She performed at a library in a mostly-black neighbourhood, where an ever-growing audience kept inviting her back. Still, Mhlope only began to think of storytelling as a career after meeting an Imbongi
, one of the legendary poets of African folklore, and after encouragement by Mannie Manim, the then-director of the Market Theatre
, Johannesburg
.
Since then Mhlophe has appeared in theatres from Soweto
to London
and much of her work has been translated into German
, French
, Italian
, Swahili
and Japanese
. Mhlope has travelled extensively in Africa and other parts of the world giving storytelling workshops.
Mhlophe's stories meld folklore, information, current affairs, song and idiom
. The realisation of her dreams is a visceral motivator for her and she is passing on her infectious enthusiasm by developing young talent to carry forward the work of storytelling through the Zanendaba (Bring me a story) Initiative. This initiative, established in 2002, is a collaboration with the Market Theatre and READ
, a national literacy organization.
Currently, Mhlophe focuses on making books available to poor South African rural communities by making sure that libraries are built, and making sure they are stocked with locally and culturually relevant books.
Selected Works
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n freedom fighter, activist, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, storyteller
Storytelling
Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, director
Theatre direction
A theatre director or stage director is a practitioner in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production by unifying various endeavours and aspects of production...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. Storytelling is a deeply traditional activity in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
and Mhlope is one of the few woman storytellers in a country dominated by males. She does her most important work through charismatic performances, working to preserve storytelling as a means of keeping history alive and encouraging South African children to read. She tells her stories in four of South Africa's languages: English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
, Zulu
Zulu language
Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...
and Xhosa
Xhosa language
Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...
.
Life and career
Several experiences inspired Mhlophe to turn to a career as storyteller. She credits her gonefness, who brought her up in DurbanDurban
Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and the third largest city in South Africa. It forms part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa. It is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism...
. Mhlope says, "My grandmother taught me everything about telling stories. When I was growing up, half the kids in our neighbourhood would come and spend the evening at home so that they could listen to izinganekwane (tales)."
She began to get a sense of the demand for stories while in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1988. She performed at a library in a mostly-black neighbourhood, where an ever-growing audience kept inviting her back. Still, Mhlope only began to think of storytelling as a career after meeting an Imbongi
Imbongi
Imbongi was the second release by the South African isicathamiya group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It featured songs such as "Izinkomo Zikababa" , and "Sengikhumbule Nomathemba", which was a follow-up song to a previous Mambazo recording, "Nomathemba" .-Track listing:# "Imbongi" # "Uthando" # "Abazali"...
, one of the legendary poets of African folklore, and after encouragement by Mannie Manim, the then-director of the Market Theatre
Market Theatre
The Market Theatre, based in the vibrant inner-city suburb of Newtown in Johannesburg, South Africa, was opened in 1976, operating as an independent, non-racial theatre during the country’s apartheid regime...
, Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
.
Since then Mhlophe has appeared in theatres from Soweto
Soweto
Soweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...
to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and much of her work has been translated into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
and Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. Mhlope has travelled extensively in Africa and other parts of the world giving storytelling workshops.
Mhlophe's stories meld folklore, information, current affairs, song and idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
. The realisation of her dreams is a visceral motivator for her and she is passing on her infectious enthusiasm by developing young talent to carry forward the work of storytelling through the Zanendaba (Bring me a story) Initiative. This initiative, established in 2002, is a collaboration with the Market Theatre and READ
Read
Read is a village in the Ribble Valley in Lancashire, England about west of Padiham on the A671 which was originally a turnpike road from Portfield, near Preston, to Padiham in the 1840s.-History:...
, a national literacy organization.
Currently, Mhlophe focuses on making books available to poor South African rural communities by making sure that libraries are built, and making sure they are stocked with locally and culturually relevant books.
Selected Works
- 1983, took the lead in Umongikazi: The Nurse, by Maishe Maponya
- 1984, acted in Black Dog: Inj'emnyama
- 1986, Place of Weeping (film)
- 1986, Have you seen Zandile? (autobiographical play, at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, Mhlope as Zandile)
- 1987, Born in the RSA (New York)
- 1989, storytelling festival at the Market Theatre (there have been many since then)
- 1989, performed a praise poem in honour of Nokukhanya Luthuli, 1961 Nobel Peace Prize winner
- 1990, performed Have you seen Zandile? at the Edinburgh Festival
- Toured Have you seen Zandile? through Europe and the USA
- 1989-1990, resident director at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg
- co-ordinator at READ, a national literacy organization
- 1991, Ashoka Fellowship (social entrepreneurship innovator)
- 1993, Music for Little People (CD)
- 1994, The Gift of the Tortoise (contributed to the Ladysmith Black MambazoLadysmith Black MambazoLadysmith Black Mambazo is a male choral group from South Africa that sings in the vocal styles of isicathamiya and mbube. They rose to worldwide prominence as a result of singing with Paul Simon on his album, Graceland and have won multiple awards, including three Grammy Awards...
album) - 1997, Poetry Africa, presenting poet
- 1999, guest speaker at the Perth Writers Festival
- Philharmonic Orchestra (London)
- Royal Albert Hall (London)
- Cologne Philharmonie, Africa at the Opera
- Honorary doctorate from the London Open University
- Honorary doctorate from the University of Natal
- Lectureships at various universities
- 2000, performed in Peter und der Wolf at the Komische Oper (Berlin)
- Wrote music for her SABC TV series Gcina & Friends
- 2002, Fudukazi's Magic screened in Durban at the African Union Film Festival
- 2002, The Bones of Memory (performance, history-telling from the old and new South Africa)
- 2003, lectured on storytelling at the Eye of the Beholder seminar
- 2003, Mata Mata (performance, family musical)
- 2006, FIFA World Cup South African handover ceremony, Germany
Collaborations
- Pops MohamedPops MohamedIsmael Mohamed-Jan is a respected South African multi-instrumentalist, jazz musician and producer.Born 10 December 1949 in Benoni, Gauteng Pops Mohamed's career in music was the logical outcome of an early exposure at Dorkay House to the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim and Kippie Moeketsi. He started...
, musician and tribal music preservationist - Ladysmith Black MambazoLadysmith Black MambazoLadysmith Black Mambazo is a male choral group from South Africa that sings in the vocal styles of isicathamiya and mbube. They rose to worldwide prominence as a result of singing with Paul Simon on his album, Graceland and have won multiple awards, including three Grammy Awards...
, choir group, The Gift of the Tortoise (CD), 1994 and Music for Little People in America (CD), 1993 - Bheki Khoza, guitarist, Animated Tales of the World (TV series for Right Angle in the UK and for the SABC)
- Anant Singh, video producer, Fudukazi's Magic (CD and video for German audiences)
- Biblionef South Africa, a children's book donation agency, supplies book packages for Mhlope's workshops, 2003
Documentary appearances
- Acted and narrated in Travelling Songs
- 1990, performed poetry in Songolo: voices of change (how aspects of culture in South Africa have become part of the anti-apartheid struggle)
- 1993, The Travelling Song (the contemporary process of story gathering)
- Appeared in Literacy Alive
- Appeared in Art Works
Awards
- Nominee for the Noma Award for Queen of the Tortoises, 1991
- Book Chat Award for Molo Zoleka
- OBBIE Theatrical Award (New York) for Born in the RSA
- Fringe First Award (Edinburgh) for Have you seen Zandile?
- Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Actress (Chicago) for Have you seen Zandile?
- Sony Award for Radio Drama from BBC Radio Africa for Have you seen Zandile?
External links
- The Connection. org Dick Gordon of WBUR Boston interviews Mhlope extensively.
- Biblionef South Africa Official site of Biblionef South Africa, a children's book donation organisation which has previously collaborated with Mhlophe.
- http://wiki.esaach.org.za/index.php?title=Mhlophe%2C_Gcina