Introduction to the Ukuthula project

Gender Based Violence (GBV) disproportionately affects women, girls and gender non-conforming people. It is systemic, and deeply entrenched in institutions, cultures and traditions in South Africa. Despite focused attention on GBV and many declarations signed by various faculties of government, the will of government to act is lacking. 

One of the most pernicious forms of violence enacted against women, girls and gender non-conforming people is silencing. Ukuthula constitutes a collective voice of defiance in the face of such silencing. It brings together South African activists and creative writers whose work spans genres and who are themselves located within different generations, orientations and cultures. This diversity is crucial to the project and allows for skill sharing and solution identification to pull from different spaces with different access to power.

Aims and objectives

Creative writing has the capacity to address and encapsulate violence and loss in ways other forms cannot. It not only provides a vital forum to share stories and experience, but also invites others to share in those experiences and live the words they read on the page.

It can thus not only change minds but also hearts and lives and behaviours, while at the same time  forging communities to support and sustain healing, transformation and nation building. As Mexican poet and activist Maria Rivera says, the “importance of poetry (…) has also to do with its capacity to move into other aesthetic experiences, to offer a new vision of the concrete world in which we live.” 

Globally creative writing has long been a catalyst for radical changes, with an ability to destabilise the status quo, and thereby holds the potential for healing and equality. Ukuthula seeks to build on the invaluable work written by South African women, while simultaneously identifying and supporting new voices.

The project asks: 

• As South African women writers, how can we place our voices in conversation with the larger international community?
• How do we harness and learn from our sisters and peers in other places and contexts, while at the same time giving voice to the specificities of our context, time and experiences? 
• How do we find new innovative forms and push the limits of representation so as to interrogate, reject, embrace, deface and bear out, on the page, our pain and anger and at the same time transcend the intimate and public wreckages of our present moment?
• How do we create something defiantly and beautifully alive out of so much violence, death and dying? 

Through workshops that focus on collective reading and writing, Ukuthula addresses these questions. The space we create is creative, challenging and caring, and one which recognises the importance of a community and the need for a collective desire to reimagine potential futures with vigour. It thus focuses on both reading and writing collectively.  

Activities

Following the development of the Ukuthula syllabus, we are in a position to run multi day workshops that are facilitated by at least one of the collective. The workshops include distinct themes, all of which have group and individual exercises. Participants in each workshop can come from different sectors and age groups.

Those who participated in Ukuthula workshops are invited to submit work for consideration. Selected work that comes out of the workshop process will be published in a chapbook by impepho press (our publishing partner).

Ukuthula syllabus

1. WHY WE WRITE: Collaborative Creation of a Manifesto.
   Download.
2. I AM NOT A WAR: Violence and brutality, as well as small, quiet and everyday violence
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3. SHIFTING THE SILENCE: Secrecy, Stigmas, Shame, Silences and Speaking Out
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4. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM: Grief, Loss, Mourning and Memory
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5. MOTHERS,  DAUGHTERS & SISTERS: Passing down knowledge and power of connection
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6. DO WORDS FEEL THE TONGUE OF THE SPEAKER: Desire, eroticism, embodied, bodies
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7. GIVE US KNIVES. WE HAVE TO THINK: Rituals, Prayers, Spells and Incantations
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Impact

The Ukuthula Workshop is an invaluable experience. Those involved can expect the following:

1. Healing: In some cases this is part of a journey that has already started, while for others the workshop may be the very beginning of that process.
2. Syllabus: The readings and exercises are powerful prompts to thinking and writing about GBV in ways that may not previously have been considered
3. Community: Participants can feel strong connections with each other and through that bond of trust are able to support each other through some of the traumatic moments that surface during the series
4. Writing: Those who join us without having significant writing experience to draw on are empowered to continue the writing process going forward.
5. Trigger Warning: As with all work of this nature, the content is highly triggering. It is crucial to remember that and to ensure that those who are in the room – whether participant or facilitator – feel safe and supported.

Who we are

vangile gantsho

vangile gantsho is a healer, poet and co-founder of impepho press. An unwavering advocate of the revival of the Black Feminine, she has travelled the continent and the globe participating in literary events and festivals, including: Long Night with The Poets (2021), the Gothenburg Book Fair – Bodies Under Siege (2020), the Open Book Festival (2018), Babi Slam (2018), Algiers International Book Fair  (2017), Inaugural Abantu Book Festival (2016) and Poetry Africa (2014). gantsho is the author of two  poetry collections: Undressing in front of the window (2015) and red cotton (2018). She holds an MA, with distinction, from the University Currently Known as Rhodes (2016), where she is currently a part time lecturer and was named one of Mail & Guardian’s Top Young 200 South Africans of 2018. Her  poetry has been published in various literary publications, including New Daughters of Africa (2019), The  Atlanta Review (2018), New Coin (2017 + 2018), New Contrast (2017), Illuminations (2017) and  Type/Cast (2017), Botsotso (2015), Wits Press (2011), Sabel (2010, 2017) and The Agenda (2004). Her  collection, red cotton, an exploration of what it means to be black, queer, and woman in modern-day  South Africa, was named City Press Top Poetry Read of 2018, and long-listed for the National Institute  for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2020 Award. gantsho has collaborated on productions such as  forgetting and memory (2020), Human4Human (2014-2015), Silence with the Moon (2013) and I Miss You Today (2010).

Stacy Hardy

Stacy Hardy is a writer, an editor with pan-African collective Chimurenga and teacher in creative writing at Rhodes University in South Africa. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and publications, including Chimurenga, Ctheory, Bengal Lights, Evergreen Review, Drunken Boat, Joyland,  Black Sun Lit, and New Orleans Review and a collection of her short fiction, Because the Night, was published in 2015. She regularly collaborates with Angolan composer Victor Gama on multimedia works that have been performed around the world and her experimental performance piece, “Museum of  Lungs” (https://produktionsdock.ch/en/projects/museum-of-lungs/), created together with Laila  Soliman, Neo Muyanga and Nancy Mounir, premiered in Johannesburg (2018), followed by dates in  Europe (2018 – 2019). She is a research fellow at Chicago University and is currently working on a research-and-performance-based collaborative endeavour with Chicago-based anthropologist Kaushik  Sunder Rajan and South African musician Neo Muyanga exploring biographies and geographies of breath, through a focus on the colonial histories and postcolonial politics. She is also writing the libretto for a new 

opera with composer Bushra El-Turk, which won the prestigious Fedora-Generali Prize for Opera 2020 and is booked for Aria’s festival, Royal Opera House Londen and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, among  others, in 2022 (https://www.enoa-community.com/creation/woman-at-point-zero.) 

Kirsten Deane

Currently completing her preliminary PhD year, Kirsten has completed her Masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of the Western Cape. She submitted her thesis (June 2023) that explores the relationship between poetry and photography. In 2023, Kirsten created R.E.I.I.D – Reclaiming Invisible Impairments and Disabilities, a project that conducts research and holds workshops/seminars to educate and explore the lived experiences of individuals living with disabilities that are not prominent to the human eye. She majored in English literature in her undergraduate degree and went on to start her specialty in creative writing in her third year, carrying on into her Honours year. Kirsten has worked as a creative editor for her university and also tutored undergraduate students in English Literature. While being a fulltime student, Kirsten also spent her time working on the craft of her writing and finding her own unique voice. This resulted in numerous publications, nationally and internationally, including The Best New African Poets 2019, 2020, and 2022 anthologies. Kirsten tends to focus on poetry but she has also published a short story through New Contrast, a well-known South African literary journal. Kirsten received a scholarship for the Creative Writing programme at the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School from the 12th of July to the 6th of August 2021 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. She received an A grade in Creative Writing at level SCQF10 (equivalent to senior Honours). Kirsten has been a guest speaker at multiple conferences including: the 8th International Symposium of Poetic Inquiry (2022): Presented a poetry and research on exploring disabilities through Poetic Inquiry, The Disability and Inclusion Africa Networks Alternative Explanations: Disability in African Arts (2022), The Disability and Inclusion Africa Towards Disability Inclusion in African Contexts (2023), the Sindiwe Magona conference (United States) (2023), and in August 2023 she presented a Poetic Inquiry workshop at the 28th Performance Studies International Conference at the University of Witwatersrand, focusing on using Poetic Inquiry to explore the lived experiences of disabilities. Kirsten was one of the Lecturers/facilitators at the Human Sciences Research Council’s Poetic Inquiry workshops held in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban (2023). Kirsten Deane is also a board member for the Disability and Inclusion Africa Network.

Frankie Murrey

Frankie Murrey worked in the book retail sector for many years before becoming the festival coordinator of Open Book Festival, a five-day festival that took place every year in early September in the heart of Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to putting together the festival’s core program, she worked closely with others on the Poetica, Comics Fest and Youth Fest programmes. She facilitated the Mentoring Program and the Open Book School Library Project. In 2015, her work was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She resigned from Open Book Festival at the end of 2019 and started her own company, FM Project Management. Through this company, she has since been working as curator/project manager on various events in the literary sector, as well as on research looking at violence against women. In 2022, she began working with Open Book Festival once more, exploring ways to shift how the Festival engages with the public. Her debut collection, Everyone Dies: A Series won the HSS Award for best emerging author in fiction (2024).

Contact details

FM Project Management
Frankie Murrey
+27 82 958 7332
fmurrey12@gmail.com