We are delighted that acclaimed author Zakes Mda has been nominated for the 2023 African Genius Awards.

The Awards were established in 2021 and are run by Priority Performance Projects, which is part of Plus 94 Research, a South African black-owned research company. They aim to honour exceptional Africans who espouse the values that will take the continent forward, with criteria including demonstrable contribution to problem solving, leadership and inspirational qualities, exceptional skills, outstanding contributions relevant to the community or society, and official recognition such as awards, honours and prestigious appointments.

The other nominees come from a wide range of fields and include Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (the first woman president of Mauritius), Oscar winning actress Lupita Amondi Nyong’o and Nobel Peace Prize winners Leymah Gbowee and Ouided Bouchamaoui. The full list can be found here. The three winners will be named on May 25, Africa Day, in a ceremony that will be streamed live from the University of Pretoria.

Zakes Mda’s latest novel, WAYFARER’S HYMNS was published by Umuzi in 2021 and was included in Brittle Paper’s ‘50 Notable African Books of 2021’ list.

Praise for Zakes Mda

‘A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration’ – The New York Times

‘Mda’s lyrical tale defies easy categorization and enters the realm of pure magic.’ – John Updike

‘Combines Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magic realism and political astuteness with satire, social realism and a critical re-examination of the South African past.’ – The New York Times Book Review

‘Lyricism, vividness and dark, tragic wit have earned the author recognition here and in his homeland.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘The great South African novelist of his generation, a writer rich in both imagination and ironic political attitude.’ – The Philadelphia Inquirer

About Zakes Mda

Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda. He is a South African, Lesotho and Appalachian American-African writer, painter, and music composer. He holds an MFA (Theatre) and an MA (Telecommunications) from Ohio University, and a PhD from the University of Cape Town. There have been recent successful exhibitions of his work in the US and South Africa and his paintings are bought by collectors around the world.

He has published more than twenty books, ten of which are novels and the rest collections of plays, poetry and a monograph on the theory and practice of theatre-for-development. His novel CION, set in southeast Ohio, was nominated for the NAACP Image Award. His memoir SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID: MEMOIRS OF AN OUTSIDER was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux and was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. He has won many prestigious literary awards in South Africa.

He divides his time between the USA and South Africa. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio University, lecturer in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University and Extraordinary Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape. In South Africa he is a patron of the Market Theatre and director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust. He also runs a beekeeping project he established in 2000 with rural women of the Eastern Cape and is a director of NeoZane, a publishing house and animation film production company in Johannesburg.

Follow Zakes on Twitter.