Dr Gcina Mhlophe is a South African storyteller, poet, playwright, director, performer and an advocate for child literacy. She has won multiple awards for the work she has done over her career of 35 years. Here is the story about where and how it all began.
When Dr Gcina Mhlophe was 17 years old and still in high school, she was a member of the school choir. But she was told that her voice was too deep. As a result, she was asked to either sing tenor with the boys, or leave. She felt that her voice was not good enough, because the other choir members laughed at the incident. Mhlophe decided to quit choir.
But it was when she was invited by her minister from her high school to watch a performance by a praise poet in Tsholo, that her perception of her voice changed.
“It was a very transformative moment for me to see someone use their voice like that and communicate to people like that,” says Mhlophe.
It was on that day that Mhlophe decided that she wanted to be a poet and praise poet, and this was when she started to love her voice.
“I was so grateful that the minister from my high school could take me there,” said Mhlophe. “That he had the premonition that this is what I needed to experience in order to accept who I am and my voice the way it is.”
A voice for the radio
It was at a party in Johannesburg, in 1982, that the sound of Mhlophe’s voice grabbed the attention of a woman who liked the way that Mhlophe spoke. The woman offered Mhlophe a job as a news reader for BBC News in Johannesburg, which she accepted.
Her career at the BBC was short-lived, though. According to Mhlophe, the offices from where they broadcast were bombed a few months after she had started to work there.
After this incident, some of Mhlophe’s colleagues went into exile. Mhlophe decided to become a domestic worker in the white suburbs to “lay low” and avoid the police.
Whilst Mhlophe was a domestic worker, she would perform poetry in her spare time. Maishe Maponya, a playwright and poet from Soweto, saw Mhlophe performing poetry, and decided to cast her as the lead in his play, Umongikazi – The Nurse. She accepted the job offer.
Have You Seen Zandile?
In 1984, Barney Simon, South African writer, playwright and director, asked Mhlophe to act in the play, The Black Dog, which he directed. The play was performed abroad for six months, after which she decided to return to South Africa. That December, her mother passed away.
As a way of processing her grief, Mhlophe started writing about all her emotions that related to her mother’s death. Her writing turned into the autobiographical play, Have You Seen Zandile?, which she starred in.
“It was fascinating to live my life on stage. I felt quite naked,” says Mhlophe.
The play made its debut in August 1985. It resonated with audience members of different races, who would share their life stories with Mhlophe and who would return to re-watch the play.
“It was very interesting how the audience reacted to that. I had no idea. I just knew that it was a universal story,” says Mhlophe.
The calling
In 1990, Mhlophe decided to write and tell stories on stage, as a full time storyteller. “For me, it was like a call, like somebody who answers the call of the ancestors to be a healer,” she says.
Becoming a full-time storyteller raised questions amongst those around her. “People thought it was funny… [they] thought I was having a nervous breakdown. But it didn’t matter to me,” she recalls.
Gcina Mhlophe, the highly acclaimed South African storyteller, grew up listening to her grandmother tell her stories. Her grandmother’s storytelling ignited Mhlophe’s passion for languages. It also showed her how to tell stories that the listeners can visualise. PHOTO: Supplied/ GCINA MHLOPHE website
Advocate for children’s literacy
In 2001, the level of illiteracy in South Africa led Mhlophe to initiate the Nozincwadi Mother of Books Campaign, in an attempt to encourage reading and writing in South Africa. They launched this campaign with a roadshow, which saw Mhlophe and her team drive to different parts of the country to deliver books to schools that did not have libraries. She encouraged those schools to identify a room which they could call a library and to store the books from the campaign, as a starting point.
“The books chosen for the roadshow were mostly written by African authors so as to honour them,” recalls Mhlophe.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Nozincwadi Mother of Books Campaign.
Helping children tell their stories
This year, Mhlophe received the South African Film and Television Award (Safta) Lifetime Achievement Award, according to The Witness. She mostly attributes this to her work as a story advisor for the film Liyana, which was released in 2017, according to The Witness.
The film was initially meant to be a documentary about a group of orphans who lived in an orphanage, New Life Homes, in eSwatini. But, in early interviews during the research and development phase of the documentary, directors Aaron and Amanda Kopp realised that some of what the children told them about their own pasts was fictional. According to Aaron, this is common for kids who have experienced trauma.
“We decided to lean into that and embrace fiction as a way to ensure they were never made to feel vulnerable about what they shared on camera,” Aaron says, via email correspondence with MatieMedia.
As a result, the directors decided to turn the documentary into a film with a plot line created by the children.
Aaron has always been “enchanted” by Mhlophe, whose performances he has watched a few times. Therefore, when it came to finding someone to assist the children in creating a plot line for the film, he reached out to Mhlophe who agreed to get involved.
When working with the children, Mhlophe ensured that they knew that their stories mattered. She supported them in creating the plot line by telling them that “there are no stupid questions”.