The 13th Time of the Writer International Literature Festival Opens: Notes, Gallery and Podcast

The Kholwa Brothers, an isicathamiya group from Durba,n set a mellow mood for the Opening Night of the Centre for the Creative Arts' (CCA) thirteenth annual Time of the Writer Festival which is being held in Durban this week. Peter Rorvik, Director of the CCA, invited each writer participating in the week’s events up on to the stage to explain why he or she writes. He expressed the hope that such direct engagement would nurture all readers and writers in the audience.

First up was Uwem Akpan, from Nigeria, who set African fiction on a new trajectory when his book, Say You're One of Them was selected for Oprah's Book Club last year. With an infectious laugh, Akpan said he writes about what worries him, which in this case is child trafficking, tribalism and genocide in Africa. He said he tries to personalise the stories he tells - in Say You're One of Them by using the perspective of children. Next on stage was Aher Ahop Bol from the Sudan, author of the memoir, The Lost Boy, who explained that as a survivor he felt compelled to recount the story of the Sudanese war. Elana Bregin, an SA author, followed him, detailing her hesitancy at writing as a "white female fifty-plus voice", but saying that when she is not writing, her life "does not make sense at all".

Imraan Coovadia, a writer originally from Durban, most recently having published what has been termed an "angry post-apartheid" novel, High Low In-between, paradoxically said he was glad to be a writer in SA now, as he felt its democracy was thriving - a fact which was disputed by Andile Mngxitama, publisher of the New Frank Talk books, who said he was concerned about being a black writer in SA, which he labeled Nelson Mandela’s "failed project". He said he sees writing as "a brick which we can throw at the government".

Thando Mgqolozana, a writer originally from the Eastern Cape, said he writes about things that trouble and torture him. His book, A Man Who is Not a Man, addresses what he sees as a silence around male circumcision in SA. He said he was driven by anger and a desire to "show the"’. Similarly, Leonora Miano, from Cameroon and now living in France, said she writes as a way of dealing with pain and danger.

Sally Ann Murray, another Durban writer and poet, claimed her writing as a "way into a sense of self and place".

Mike van Graan, playwright and arts activist, finished off the evening with a keynote address on the State of the Arts in SA. He emphasised the importance of writers proving that the "pen can be mightier than the sword", asking whether development in Africa had actually enlarged peoples’ choices. He referred to Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana’s recent refusal to open an exhibition of black lesbian photographs on Constitutional Hill, saying that her excuse that her action was in the interest of "nation-building" undermined artists’ rights to self-expression. Van Graan called on SA artists to use their "soft power", to keep producing despite a lack of government support. He called on Writers to Stand up and Be Counted.

Listen to a podcast of van Graan's speech: