Don Mattera
Don Mattera
Lifetime Achievement Literary Award
 The work of Don Monnapula Lebakeng Mattera which was banned in South Africa in the past is representative of the political and cultural period between Sharpeville and Soweto. Before index on censorship (London) and later kunapipi (Aarhus, Denmark) brought out Mattera’s work, few people outside South Africa knew about him. He was born in Western Native Township (now Westbury) in 1935 and grew up in SophiatownMattera’s grandmother sent him to study at the St Theresa Catholic Covenant School in Durban because they were not pleased with the quality of education provided for Coloureds by the government at the time. Once a gangster leader in Sophiatown, Mattera is today a committed Muslim and community leader. A renowned journalist in South Africa, he has published collections of short stories, children’s stories Gone with the twilight: A story of Sophiatown, Zed Books (London) 1987, the five magic Pebbles (children’s literature), Skotaville 1992 and plays.His renowned poetry anthology Azanian Love Song remains a South African classic. His poems reveal his sensitivity and display his sense of structure and his eloquence. There is little public posturing in them. Mattera is the winner of the Steve Biko prize for his seminal autobiography, Memory is the weapon. In 1997 he won the World Health Organisation’s Peace Award from the Centre of Violence and Injury Prevention.

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