PAWA to Host Mandla Langa

The Pan African Writers' Association (PAWA) will on 19 February present Mr. Mandla Langa, the distinguished South African Writer, in a reading from some of his works. The programme, "An Evening with Mandla Langa", scheduled to take place in the Senghor Seminar Hall, at PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra, at 6:30pm., will give Ghanaians an opportunity to sample some of his acclaimed writings and interact with this man of many talents.

Mandla Langa, a founding spirit of PAWA, born in Durban, 1950, grew up in KwaMashu Township, and studied for a BA at the University of Fort Hare. Following activism in the black consciousness movement and subsequent arrest in 1976, he went into exile in Botswana.


He has participated in various arts programmes and conferences in Africa and elsewhere. In 1980 he won the Drum story contest for "The Dead Men Who Lost Their Bones" and in 1991 he was awarded the Arts Council of Great Britain Bursary for creative writing, the first for a South African. He held various ANC posts abroad, such as Cultural Representative in the UK and Western Europe.


He was the Vice-Chairperson of the successful Africa 95 Exhibition in London, was a weekly columnist of the Sunday Independent.

Three of his works have been published: Tenderness of Blood (Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1987), A Rainbow on a Paper Sky (Kliptown Books London, 1989), The Naked Song and Other Stories (David Philip (DPP), Cape Town, 1997). The Memory of Stones, his latest novel was published by DPP in April 2000. His musical opera, Milestones featured at the Standard Bank Festival in Grahamstown in June 1999. He has been the editor-at-large of Leadership Magazine and the Programme Director for television at the SABC.


He was the Chairperson of the Independent Broadcasting Authority from 8th April 1999 to June 2000. With the merger of the IBA and the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Sarra), Langa was appointed Chairperson of the first council of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), which became operational on 1 July 2000.


Mandla Langa sits on the boards of the Business and Arts South Africa (BASA), the Foundation for Global Dialogue (FGD), Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (AIJ) and the Rhodes University School for Economic Journalism. He is a trustee of the Nation's Trust and the South African Screen writers' Laboratory (SCRAWL). He also serves as the director of Contemporary African Music and Arts (CAMA).