In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 6 October 1948
- Birthplace
- Herschel, Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Country
- South Africa
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Ways of Dying, The Heart of Redness, theatre and fiction connecting history with contemporary life
- Full name
- Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda
- Early exile
- Lesotho, from 1964
- Fiction milestones
- Ways of Dying, 1995; The Heart of Redness, 2000
- Hurston/Wright Fiction winner
- The Heart of Redness, 2003
- National order
- Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, 2014
- University designation
- Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio University
Why this life matters
His career crosses performance and prose, South Africa and Lesotho, and later American academic life. Historical research informs his fiction without making the novels substitutes for documentary history.
Timeline
Key moments
Eastern Cape and exile
Birth in Herschel precedes joining his father in Lesotho.
Teaching, writing and performance
Work in Lesotho develops alongside theatre, broadcasting and further study.
Ways of Dying
Toloki’s fictional mourning career becomes a major point of entry to the novels.
The Heart of Redness
South African publication precedes later US editions and the 2003 award.
National recognition
The official gazette records the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver.
An established academic connection
Ohio’s directory identifies him as an English emeritus professor, not a newly appointed active chair.
Exile made the border part of an early writing life
Born in Herschel in 1948, Mda grew up in a family affected by political repression. His father, A. P. Mda, was involved in the ANC Youth League. South African History Online records the younger Mda joining him in Lesotho in 1964, after childhood schooling in the Eastern Cape.
Writing began before the move, including an early isiXhosa story. He later used Zakes Mda as his published name. Lesotho was not simply an interval before a South African career resumed: teaching, employment, study and artistic work there supplied experiences that became part of his formation.
Theatre and communication preceded international recognition as a novelist
He worked in teaching and developed an interest in theatre as communication, alongside painting and broadcasting. Further study and university work connected practice with research. Some biographical sources differ on precise qualification years, so the chronology here does not manufacture a single exact graduation sequence.
NYU Press’s bibliography includes plays such as And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses and Our Lady of Benoni. This theatrical output matters to the range of the career: he was not a novelist whose earlier life can be reduced to waiting for the first successful book. Different forms offered different ways to stage conflict and address audiences.
The novels bring intimate lives into larger historical questions
Ways of Dying appeared in South Africa in 1995; The Heart of Redness followed in 2000. Their different narrative forms resist treating a novel as a documentary register of everyone living through its historical setting.
International editions followed on their own schedules. Macmillan’s author profile associates him with Johannesburg and Ohio, while its individual book records identify particular US editions. A later publication date in an American catalogue does not supersede the earlier South African chronology.
Historical borrowing brought a substantive literary disagreement
In 2008 Andrew Offenburger argued that The Heart of Redness used language and narrative material from Jeff Peires’s The Dead Will Arise without sufficiently identifying individual borrowings. Mda rejected the plagiarism interpretation, pointing to his acknowledgement of Peires and to the novel’s intertextual method.
That is a dispute about authorship and attribution, not a court conviction established by the cited material. It belongs in the record alongside the book’s recognition. A reader can distinguish the existence of borrowing, the adequacy of acknowledgement and the different truth claims made by history and fiction without pretending that a promotional award list resolves the debate.
Awards and academic titles require their own records
The Hurston/Wright Foundation lists The Heart of Redness as its 2003 Fiction winner. That award year is separate from first publication and later paperback dates. The South African government’s April 2014 gazette and citation booklet record Mda’s Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, correcting the Bronze wording found in a secondary biography.
Ohio University’s directory identifies him as Professor Emeritus of English. This is more precise than reproducing an undated publisher profile as proof of a current active appointment. Teaching and international publishing extend the career’s reach, while the writing continues to be read through specific books, performances and contested interpretations rather than one uniform national message.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Zakes Mda
- What are two key novels by Zakes Mda?
- Ways of Dying, first published in South Africa in 1995, and The Heart of Redness, in 2000.
- Which national order did he receive?
- The official 2014 records specify the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver.
- Did The Heart of Redness win its Hurston/Wright award in 2000?
- No. The Foundation’s Fiction winners table records 2003; first-publication and award dates differ.
- Is his Ohio University title an active new appointment?
- The directory reviewed here lists Professor Emeritus of English, not a new active chair.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Nadine Gordimer
Compare different South African literary approaches without treating novelists as speaking with one political voice.
- J. M. Coetzee
Distinguish fictional narrators, historical settings and an author’s life in another international career.
- Johnny Clegg
Explore a different relation between cultural practice, teaching and public performance.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. South African History OnlineZanemvula Kizito Mda — selected early life, exile and writing chronology
Selected early chronology and bibliography. Incorrect Bronze designation superseded by primary records; uncorroborated operational allegations and conflicting qualification-year detail not adopted.
- 2. Ohio UniversityEmeriti Association directory — named English emeritus designation
- 3. MacmillanZakes Mda — author profile and international publishing context
- 4. NYU PressZakes Mda — selected theatre bibliography and creative range
- 5. South African Government Gazette23 April 2014 — Notice 326, Silver category
- 6. The Presidency, South Africa2014 National Orders booklet — Mda citation, PDF page 21
- 7. Picador / MacmillanWays of Dying — book description, awards and 2002 edition metadata
Selected description, opening excerpt and edition fields; not the complete novel. Repeated editions share one underlying-work allowance.
- 8. Picador / MacmillanThe Heart of Redness — book description and 2003 paperback metadata
- 9. Hurston/Wright FoundationLegacy winners table — 2003 Fiction award
- 10. Andrew Offenburger / Mail & Guardian11 November 2008 — attributed authorship criticism and account of the reply
- 11. Zakes Mda / Research in African Literatures, indexed via ResearchGate2008 response to Offenburger — selected acknowledgement statement
Indexed author-response passage read; direct retrieval failed. The complete scholarly exchange and both full books were not compared.
- 12. Nutmegreader / Wikimedia CommonsExact named group photograph — author self-licence and full supplied frame
Exact author-uploaded self-licence, first/current records and original full four-person frame checked; later extracted crop not used.
