Speakers

Nhlanhla Maake is a Roving Mentor on the Doctoral Programme of the NIHSS (National Institute for the Humanities and social

Professor Nhlanhla Maake

Sciences). He is a language activist, former high school teacher, one-time actor with Phoenix Players at Dorkay House, and grandfather. He has published more than 20 non-fiction and fiction books in Sesotho and English, several articles in accredited, radio plays, study guides, poems, academic, polemical and position articles. He has won several literary awards: Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award (Wits University), IDEM Award (Radio Plays), MNet Book Prize two times, African Literary Heritage Award three times, the South African Literary Awards (Best Translation) two times and the Sello Duiker Memorial Award.

Maake hold has taken the following degrees: BA (University of the North, now Limpopo), BA Hons (Wits), Hons. BA (UNISA), MLitt (University of Strathclyde, MLitt (University of Keele), DLitt et Phil (UNISA), and Certificate in Higher Education Management (Wits). He has held academic and managerial positions at the following universities: SOAS, University of London (Lecturer in Southern African Drama and Theatre), Wits (Lecturer and Professor and Chair of African Languages), University of Pretoria (Professor in the Drama Department), Vista University (Campus Principal), North-West University (Director), University of Limpopo (Executive Dean), University of South Africa (Professor in the Department of English studies) and Lecturer (Wits School of Education).

He has held Fellowships at Aarhus University in Denmark, on the Southern African Research Program at Yale University in the US, Ernest Oppenheimer Fellowship at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Distinguished Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.  He has served member of the Board of DALRO (Drama, Art and Literary Rights Organisation), Chairperson of the Board of the Catholic Bible College, the English National Language Body as member and Acting Chairperson, member of the Council of the English Academy of Southern Africa and the Southern African Languages Association. He has served in several governmental Task Teams on language, and a Task team for Restructuring of the Judiciary, as well as a panel member of several book awards, e.g., the Sunday Times Alan Patron Non-fiction Award, FNB Vita Awards and the Book Awards of NIHSS. He has published more than twenty books. Some titles are: Kweetsa ya pelo ya Motho, Letters to my Sisters, Welcome to the Twin-Dogs Party, Sejamonna ha se mo Qete, Hyenas in a Place of Joy, and Barbarism in Higher Education and translated essays by S. Machabe Mofokeng (PhD Wits, 1957) from the Sesotho as In my Heart, edited by Gayatri Spivak and Preface by Simon Gikandi (2021, Seagull Books, London, New York and Calcutta). He has won ten literary awards.