Authors : Peter Tshobisa Mtuze and Jeff Opland
Publications : Umoya Wembongi: Collected Poems 1922 – 1935) by John Solilo
: Iziganeko Zesizwe: Occasional Poems(1900-1943) by S.E.K. Mqhayi
Profiles
The Revd Professor Peter Tshobisa Mtuze is a poet, priest and academic. He worked as an interpreter in the law courts of the old South Africa, a radio announcer, a salesperson for a publishing company, a civil servant in the homeland government structures, a lecturer at Unisa, an Editor in Chief of the Greater Dictionary of isiXhosa at Fort Hare, before joining Rhodes University as Professor and Head of the isiXhosa Department.
He published, from 1961 to date, more than 25 books in all the genres, viz. novels, short stories, essays, drama, poetry, autobiography and theological books. Some of these works received awards and accolades from various institutions and one of his novels is on the list of literary classics. Many of the titles are available in Braille and audio recordings.
He translated former President Nelson Mandela’s monumental autobiography Long Walk to Freedom into isiXhosa as Indlela ende eya enkululekweni. In 2015, he was the recipient of the Chairperson’s Literary Award. Please view full profile on
Jeff Opland earned a PhD in English and African Languages from the University of Cape Town in 1973. After teaching at the Universities of Cape Town, Durban-Westville, Toronto and Leipzig, at Vassar College, and at Rhodes and Yale Universities, he retired in 2014 from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry (1980), Xhosa Oral Poetry (1983), Xhosa Poets and Poetry (2nd ed 2017) and Xhosa Literature: Spoken and Printed Words (2018), and has discovered, edited and translated Xhosa works by Nontsizi Mgqwetho (2007), Isaac Williams Wauchope (2008), W.W. Gqoba (2015), D.L.P. Yali-Manisi (2015), John Solilo (2016) and S.E.K. Mqhayi (2009 and 2017). In 2017 he was joint winner of the South African Literary Award in the category Literary Translators for his volumes on Gqoba and Yali-Manisi, and in the same year he was awarded the National Order of Ikhamanga: Silver for his work on Xhosa literature.