Zukiswa Wanner
Zukiswa Wanner (born 1976) is a South African journalist, novelist and editor born in Zambia and now based in Kenya. Since 2006, when she published her first book, her novels have been shortlisted for awards including the South African Literary Awards (SALA) and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In 2015, she won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for London Cape Town Joburg (2014).[1] In 2014, Wanner was named on the Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature.[2][3] In 2020, she was awarded the Goethe Medal alongside Ian McEwan and Elvira Espejo Ayca, making Wanner the first African woman to win the award.[4]
Quotes
[edit]- “I am the woman who,when the priest asks,"Is there any reason why this man and woman cannot be joined in holy matrimony?", would clear her throat or stand up to supposedly straighten her dress, thus making the groom and bride nervous for a minute.”[1]
- “How do you forgive someone who hasn't apologized? How do you forgive someone who hasn't acknowledged wrongdoing?”[2]
- I thus find myself unable to stay silent or keep an official decoration from a government that is this callous to human suffering
- I wish that the German government, in reflection and saying 'never again' would acknowledge that never again should be for anybody
- What does being an artist mean if one can't hold a mirror to society and critique and also applaud it
- In South Africa, black people were put in ethnic lands known as Bantustans. These are precursors, I feel, to the alleged "Area A" in Palestine that are allegedly governed by Palestinians independently, but Israeli forces can come in and take people hostages from there arbitrarily
- One did not need to be from a country with a history of apartheid to see the daily injustices and indignities visited on Palestinians
- South African history has a phrase for this: Petty Apartheid
- The UK, key to the Commonwealth –although we're unsure who the commoners in that wealth are– are also dealing with serious problems since it appears many Britons have their eyes open now to how complicit their government (and leading opposition are)
- What are the chances that we will make it? 25 percent. And yet, I, the eternal optimist, think that we may make it
