Writer Zwai Mgijima’s car accident blessing in disguise
A NEAR-fatal car accident indirectly resulted in director, playwright and poet Zwai Mgijima’s first internationally published works.
It may have taken more than a decade to do so, but Mgijima’s book, Veil and Ghetto Goats: Two South African Plays is now available on Amazon.com thanks to a collaboration between him and Iowa university lecturer Martin Klammer.
The two, who met in Cape Town a decade ago, formed a bond when Klammer would bring with him his students for Summer breaks to watch Mgijima’s plays at the Baxter and other theatres.
“We spoke at length about the possibility of publishing my plays and eventually last year, in October, those talks resulted in my book being printed and being available on Amazon.com,” he said.
One of five children, Mgijima was born in New Brighton to a father who worked as a tyre inspector and a domestic worker mother. In his upbringing, Mgijima said the only hostility he ever felt was that of the era he grew up in, though he did have a good childhood.
“Due to the violence of the time my siblings and I were taken to Alice, where we would spend the next six years in a child-headed household,” he said.
Mgijima matriculated at Loyiso High School and during his last year there he started acting and was introduced to theatre legend Winston Ntshona.
“I was a football player initially but there was a neighbour of mine, Nobesuthu Mtengwana, who would round up the youth in my area and introduce us to acting.
“I started doing plays under Winston and eventually travelled to Scotland in 1995 to represent South Africa in a big festival for youth around the world,” he said.
The playwright said it was only after a 1999 car accident that left him with a damaged nervous system that he wrote Ghetto Goats.
It took him more than a year to learn to walk and nearly three years to learn how to run again. He said the play was about all the unsaid things and emotions one felt towards the homeless.
“Veil came about when I entered a competition run by an international company based in Johannesburg called Twisp Projects. People had to submit one of their works, maybe three scenes just for qualifying purposes.
“I entered, qualified and from there each finalist was given a book, Spilt Milk, by Kopana Matlwa, which we had to read and get inspiration from, to come up with our own stories,” said Mgijima.
ý To order a copy of Veil and Ghetto Goats: Two South African Plays, go to www.amazon.com.