Northern Cape authors among winners of the South African Literary Awards

A young creative writer in Kimberley in the Northern Cape, Lynthia Julius and a Sol Plaatje University lecturer and author, Sabata Mokae and Professor Brian Wilan have won in their respective categories in the South African Literary Awards.

The event was held virtually on Sunday. Julius won the first time published award for her poetry compilation ‘Uit die Kroes.’

Mokae and Professor Wilan won in the Creative Non-Fiction- category for their book on Sol T Plaatje, titled: A life in letters.

27-year-old Lynthia Julius was born in a writing family. Her other two siblings are staunch writers too. Her sister Sisca, has also been awarded previously for her writing skills.

Lynthia started her school career in 2000. At the age of 19, she started writing her award-winning book – which was approved for publication in 2018.

This avid reader and writer was taken by surprise when she was announced as the winner in her category on Sunday.

“I still can’t believe that I won. I didn’t expect to win. But it is an awesome feeling especially when your publisher starts posting and you see SALA Awards posting and you see all these people actually won and we were three nominated for the award, so it’s a big honour for me. It’s still sinking in.”

Julius explains what her poetry compilation ‘Uit die Kroes’ entails.

“So my poetry collection has to do with the history of South Africa and slavery. It’s also from the perspective of someone who is regarded as born-free in South Africa. I mean I am turning 28 this month, I don’t know apartheid but I wanted to learn so I can know where my position – especially as a woman in this country is. There are also poems about being a student, being a daughter, a girlfriend, love. So it’s a variety of poems that was my being in the world that gave birth to ‘Uit die Kroes”.

She further elaborates that there’s a gap in literature when it comes to the Afrikaans language being spoken in the Northern Cape.

“I don’t believe we see enough Oranje Afrikaans literature, especially in poetry. I matriculated in 2011, I was in grade 1 in the year 2000 and not once did we do a poem or a short story or novel on Oranje Rivier Afrikaans and I think we still have a long way to go. But I do think it’s important that we do write in Oranje Rivier Afrikaans so it becomes part of the literature calendar.”

On the other side of town, the Sol Plaatje lecturer and author Sabata Mokae is equally happy they won in their category – for their book depicting the late politician and writer, Sol Plaatje’s Life in letters.

Professor Brian Willan and I just won the @SALA_Awards in the category of Creative Non-Fiction. We thank our publisher Historical Publications Southern Africa (HiPSA), the readers of 'Sol T. Plaatje: A life in letters' and our institution @MySPU. pic.twitter.com/hcmPEB187R

— Sabata-mpho Mokae (@mokaewriter) November 7, 2021

“And every time a book has been entered for this award, I always expect the worst. If you remember the last one, before this one we had an official from the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture who went to receive it for me, and this one was done virtually. So I am glad that it happened from a distance just in case I didn’t win and I didn’t know how I would feel. But now I said to my co-editor and compiler, Professor Brian Wilan that we have been winning a couple of awards, we can give other people a chance, and he said no this one is for Sol Plaatje, it’s not for us.”

Mokae says they had to compile Plaatje’s life story seeing that he wrote it himself before he passed away.

“Sol Plaatje has written a lot of letters and most of these letters are in the public domain, in the archives in Britain and South Africa and Botswana. And we decided if we put these letters together in one book, we will realise that through these letters he has written his own life story and that is where we began. And then we went to the archives and looked for whatever letters Sol Plaatje wrote, we started categorising these letters by years.”

Julius is currently busy writing her second book and Mokae and Professor Wilson are again busy with a book on Sol Plaatje that will hopefully be published in 2023.