Storyteller, poet, playwright, actor, director author and activist Dr Gcina Mhlophe stands out as a torchbearer of South Africa and Africa’s oral and storytelling tradition. She is receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Nelson Mandela University on the 18th April at its graduation ceremony.
Everyone has a story to tell, and Dr Gcina Mhlophe wants to hear it. Her calling is to bring out the storyteller in each one of us, to talk about who we are and where we come from in a contemporary evocation of Africa’s ancient oral storytelling tradition.
For Dr Mhlophe the stories of the living and those who have passed, whether recently or thousands of years ago, are all part of the great circle of knowledge that needs to be honoured. And so she came up with the Gcina Mhlophe Memory House, which will be based in Durban and will be South Africa’s first public home of storytelling and oral history museum.
“It will be a space where people from all walks of life can listen to the stories and histories of ordinary people, record their own stories, and view heritage films and documentaries in an inspiring environment that is home to all,” explains Mhlophe who was born in Hammarsdale, KwaZulu-Natal, and who has been writing for children and adults, and performing on the stage and screen for over 30 years.
The memory house is currently in development, with funds being raised for a building, but in the meantime Mhlophe is getting it going from her home on the Bluff in Durban. “I am compelled to do this,” she says. “My people named me Gcinamasiko, which means the keeper of heritage. I wear this name like a blanket and I honour it with my being.”
Words and thoughts, she explains, whether spoken or written or performed or painted or made into beadwork, are magical things that create who we are. She learnt this through her paternal great grandmother, Nozincwadi MaMchunu, whom her father told her collected “a suitcase full of words”.
“She is said to have collected anything with words – books, articles, old Bibles, newspapers – and she kept them all in a suitcase. She told my father that these words were magical things that would speak to her one day.”
Dr Mhlophe never saw inside that suitcase, which was lost in time, but the power of the message spoke so strongly to her that she launched a literacy campaign in 2001 and has continued with it ever since. Literacy is as much about reading and writing as it is about self-concept, imagination, originality and using your voice. And in this country we’ve got voices baby!”
She says the late MaMchunu is delivered from the grave through the literacy campaign, and since 2001 she has travelled throughout South Africa, visiting schools, doing performances, donating books and encouraging young South Africans to read. “We do extreme makeovers at the schools, painting and fixing up a room that is not being used and turning it into a library and reading room. We’ve been all over, and my goodness, we have a beautiful country!” says Dr Mhlophe who celebrates all languages and cultures.
“When we celebrate International Mother Language Day on the 21st February each year, we celebrate all the languages in our country, continent and world, including sign language and braille. When we celebrate International Women’s Day on the 8th March each year, we celebrate all women, and all people who are doing amazing things.”
Dr Mhlophe also conceived and hosts the annual Spirit of Light Festival to honour people from all walks of life and how they are shining a light in their community. “This year the Spirit of Light Festival is taking place in Durban on the 6th, 7th, 8th September and storytellers from all over – from Jamaica, Reunion, Zimbabwe, Botswana, West Africa will be attending, alongside our South African storytellers. The theme is the Bones of Memory and we are going to be sharing a lot of history telling.”
Dr Mhlophe says there are so many bright lights in our country “but we don’t hear about them because they don’t steal or commit atrocities and therefore they don’t make the front pages of our newspapers. Hence we honour them at this festival and we also honour all ‘women in the making’, which was my daughter Nomakhwezi’s idea.
Twenty-one-year old Nomakhwezi recently graduated from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Drama and Marketing and is currently pursuing her Honours there. Her father is Dr Mhlophe’s husband, artist Karl Becker, whom she met while she was tour in Germany in 1988.
One of Dr Mhlophe’s favourite bright lights is Mama Cwengi Myeni from the Valley of a Thousand Hills who founded the Gogo Olympics for people over 60 who want to keep fit and complete in their Olympics. This has led to international events, including South Africa playing Canada in Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal. Mhlophe says: “Mama Myeni is in her 70s and she is so alive, not to mention her gorgeous skin, which she keeps that way with tried and tested Vaseline Blue Seal!”
Spend time with Dr Mhlophe and you will be smiling in no time; she has a brightness and ebullience that shines a light on you. Her charm has evolved from wonderful times and very difficult times: “Like all of us, I’ve had my fair share of crying and hardship, including being fetched out of the blue at age ten by my mother whom I never knew until then and being sent to boarding school in the Eastern Cape. Displaced from everything that was familiar to me, I was treated like a foreigner in the Xhosa-speaking Eastern Cape.
“But, as I tell people, when the river is flooding and you are being sucked by the current, and a branch comes along, you hold onto that branch for dear life. For me books were the branch and I held onto them for dear life.”
In time, she learnt to know and appreciate her mother who also instilled in her the invaluable habit of hard work. “She couldn’t tolerate it when people dragged their feet.” In time, Dr Mhlophe also mustered sufficient courage to ask her mother why she had abandoned her as a baby. “In those days it was taboo to ask these questions. I learnt that she had run away from a very difficult marriage in the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal where she had met my father and given birth to me. I realised that sometimes no matter how hard it is, you have to return and sort out what you left behind, which she did. When her abusive husband passed away, she came to fetch me.”
“With hindsight I can appreciate that the hard times I have experienced made me stronger and gave me a sense of self-love and self-reliance. Where I was so lucky is that as a young child I received a strong foundation of love from my father’s oldest sister, Gogo Mthwalo Mhlophe who raised me until I was ten. It’s the all-important foundation – like when you are going to build a high-rise building.
“She gave me all the love and adventure a little girl could desire. She would spontaneously say ‘let’s go visit our relatives in Nongoma’ or ‘let’s go to Port Shepstone’ and we would hop on a bus and explore the length and breadth of KwaZulu-Natal,” says Dr Mhlophe. Gogo Mthwalo also told her that there is a far bigger world out there for her to discover.
Her words were prophetic and Dr Mhlophe has been traveling for the past 35 years, journeying from Japan to Kenya, from South America to Sweden, sharing and performing stories and gathering material for more stories, books and plays.
She has significantly contributed to the revival of the African storytelling tradition, and performed in theatres from Soweto to London. She has over 30 books to her name, including children’s books, adult poetry, short stories and plays, published all over the world and translated into German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swahili and Japanese.
Dr Mhlophe is now writing a book and a play called My Travelling Bag about her 33 years of international travel. She walks onto stage with a suitcase, just like MaMchunu’s suitcase full of words. MaMchunu’s spirit is alive and thriving in her great granddaughter who captivates audiences everywhere with her stories, poetry and song.
