Equal Education Book Named as One of the Best Books at Annual Children’s Africana Book Awards

Equal Education book Amagama eNkululeko! Words for freedom: Writing life under Apartheid! has been named as one of the Best Books for older readers at the 25th Annual Children’s Africana Book Awards.

PEN SA member Zakes Mda wrote the foreword to the book. The book is a collection of short fiction, poetry, narrative journalism and extracts from novels and memoirs. It features seasoned writers like RRR Dhlomo, Nat Nakasa and Oswald Mtshali as well as work by contemporary writers such as Eric Miyeni.

Zakes Mda’s foreword.

Why do you keep harping on about the past? The past is gone, done and buried. Why can’t you just forget it and move on? You said you forgave the past, so why can’t you forget it as well?

These are questions we often hear whenever a project that explores the past, such as this one, is initiated. Some of us tend to think that forgiving and forgetting are either the same thing or should, of necessity, go together.

To forget the past is not only to have amnesia about where we come from but about who we are. Like all members of the human race we are who we are today because of who we were yesterday. We have been shaped by our past for better or for worse. Our very identities are tied in with our individual and collective memory. We are often reminded of the saying: you will not know where you are going unless you know where you come from.

Forgetting the past would be forgetting the legacy the writers in this collection have bequeathed us, and indeed all other legacies that have shaped our humanity.

You can see the rest of the recipients here.

(Image courtesy of Loot)