Professor Emerita Miki Flockemann pays tribute to her friend and former colleague Zoe Wicomb. Image: Shelley Christians/UWCThe University of the Western Cape’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Jaap Durand Chair for a Just, Participatory and Sustainable Society, recently co-hosted a segment of the Nobel in Africa Symposium.
The event also paid heartfelt tribute to Professor Zoë Wicomb, a renowned writer, former UWC academic, and alumna, who was originally scheduled to participate in the symposium but sadly passed away on 13 October.
In a moving tribute, Professor Emerita Miki Flockemann described Wicomb as “an enlivening and enlightening presence” in UWC’s English Department during the early 1990s.
“She was fiercely rigorous and impatient with what she considered lazy thinking or uncritical use of language – whether from students or colleagues. Her ironic ripostes and sharp tongue could make one cringe one moment and laugh out loud the next. She expanded and invigorated our somewhat drab office and teaching spaces with her unique style,” said Flockemann.
The Nobel Symposium in Literature, held under the auspices of the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, took place at Stellenbosch University, UWC, and the University of Cape Town. It brought together leading African writers and scholars to reflect on “the unique contribution African writing can make to reformulating the destructive narratives of the past and present.” The events were coordinated by the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS).
Welcoming delegates, Prof Fiona Moolla, Dean of Arts and Humanities at UWC, extended greetings to the visiting authors Aminatta Forna, Akachi Ezeigbo, Maaza Mengiste, Jennifer Makumbi, and Stephanie Newell, as well as to other members of the Nobel in Africa delegation. She also expressed regret that two of Africa’s Nobel Literature laureates, JM Coetzee and Abdulrazak Gurnah, were unable to attend as planned.
“I would have said to JM Coetzee, ‘Who would have guessed that, when I was sitting in one of your realism-to-postmodernism classes in the early 1990s, I would one day be welcoming you here?’
Professor Hein Willemse Opening the Nobel in Africa Symposium. Image: Shelley Christians/UWCEven though he’s not here, I wish him a warm welcome in spirit. “And to Professor Gurnah, whose novels I deeply admire, most recently, Theft, I want to say that it’s a work that steals up on one, very, very stealthily,” said Moolla.
Professor Emeritus Hein Willemse, who recently assumed the Jaap Durand Chair, reflected on UWC’s rich and turbulent history, invoking the words of writer and philosopher Adam Small, who once observed that the academic discontent of black students in the 1970s and 1980s “was merely a reflection of black bitterness about the whole situation in the country.”
“His words, ‘We will live without apology. We cannot apologise for being ourselves. We will autonomously be ourselves. We are!’- was the mantra of the time,” said Willemse.
Prof Shaun Pather, Advisor to the Rector and Vice-Chancellor, described UWC as “a testimony and a symbol of hope - of what can be achieved in the face of struggle and poverty.
“The symposium reflects a shared concern with how meaning is co-created and communicated across contexts, including from African perspectives. Whether through narrative or through data, we are all engaged in understanding how knowledge evolves,” said Prof Pather.
He also reflected on how the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence is reshaping the creative and linguistic spaces in which writers and thinkers now operate. “I wonder how these technologies are evolving the spaces in which today’s dialogues take place - retrieving the past, imagining futures, and influencing creative forms in African writing.”
Prof Akachi Eziegbo, Prof Maaza Mengiste and Prof Meg Vandermerwe. Picture: Shelley Christians/UWCA lively panel discussion, “Making African Literature Visible,” chaired by Prof Meg Vandermerwe, Head of UWC’s English Department, featured award-winning authors Akachi Ezeigbo (Nigeria), Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone), and Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia).
Prof Ezeigbo highlighted Nigeria’s vibrant literary scene, with “hundreds of writers and publishers” participating in arts festivals and the Nigeria Literature Prize, worth US$100,000. She called for more libraries to foster a culture of reading.
Prof Forna, a novelist, journalist, and lecturer at Georgetown University in the USA, spoke about her memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, which chronicles her investigation into the death of her dissident father in Sierra Leone. She reflected on growing up in a country with few, if any, bookstores and a mother tongue that, at the time, lacked a written script. Lecturers at Fourah Bay College, she noted, later developed an orthography that enabled the publication of children’s books in local languages.
Prof Mengiste, who teaches at Wesleyan University, USA, discussed her journey as a writer from Ethiopia, where writing was undervalued and the memories of war were repressed. Although her works are widely available abroad, she lamented their inaccessibility in her home country due to translation challenges and publishing costs.
In the afternoon session, Forna, Mengiste and Dr Jennifer Makumbi (Uganda), participated in a writers’ masterclass on the craft of writing, led by Prof Kobus Moolman of the English Department. The audience was also treated to poetry performances by young writers under the guidance of Dr Oliver Melvill and Dr Katlego Chale, and to a musical interlude by the UWC Jazz Combo, under the direction of Prof Henriette Weber.
Concluding the day, Prof Willemse expressed his gratitude to Mx Lloyd Chetty for event coordination and to the University’s support staff for their seamless management of a gathering that brought together such distinguished guests.
