Storyteller supreme, Gcina Mhlophe, wants to leave behind a very special legacy as she turns 60: She wants her birthday, October 24, to become National Storytelling Day.
With the support of storytellers — both local and international — who have pledged to tell stories on that day, Mhlophe hopes that her birthday will be the storytelling catalyst across the land from schools and villages to rural and urban areas. But, she’s not looking to government to cement this day into the general public’s holiday calendar. She wants the germ of her idea to grow, organically, until it has caught root across the land, and reading and storytelling have become as much a part of the public landscape as breathing.
Mhlophe calls storytelling a vocation — a very special calling — and certainly not just a job. When she tells her stories, she becomes her characters in a deep voice that rumbles as it rolls around the words. She says that she did not always love her voice — its deep vibrating tone worried her because she thought she sounded like a man. But she has embraced her natural gift, and honed her craft by paying particular attention to the way she tells her stories: building the narrative through tension, changing the tone, watching her audience reaction, timing.
Not surprisingly, it has been said that storytelling is one of the most important, and the most enduring, of human traditions. This is so mostly because stories teach us as much about ourselves as they do about the world around us, and how we need to be, and behave, in it. Stories enlighten; they teach us about justice, love and forgiveness. Through stories, we learn how to become better versions of ourselves.
We all have stories, the poet and master storyteller says, that need to be told in order to confirm our existence, flesh out our identity and help us find our own very special place in the world. That is her unique gift to everyone who hears her tales and has allowed her to become South Africa’s favourite storyteller, a cloak she wears with the humility of her characters.
“One of the questions most frequently asked of me is why do you tell stories. I tell stories in order to wake up stories in other people,” she explains. “I tell them so that people know they can share their own stories, ones that lie deep inside them.”
We at Puku are particularly proud to be able to host her books on our platform. Since much of Mhlophe’s work is directed at children, her books help to encourage the recreational reading of books to and by children, in their mother tongue. As the performer, director, playwright and storyteller celebrates more than half a century of existence, we look back on a well-lived life that has made a difference to the lives of many through the telling of stories. For the Durban-based writer, poet, storyteller, activist, performer and actress, it’s been a journey forged in throat-aching passion and sweat.
Her love of the art began as a small child growing up at her grandmother’s knee.
“Let your imagination run wild, Gcina, my grandma used to tell me. Wild… let it run wild. So I did, and I started writing and telling stories,” Mhlophe says.
In one of her first short stories, “My Dear Madam,” she wrote about how she started out life as a domestic worker, employed by an Irish family. She lasted 37 days in the job. Without so much as a glace backwards, she began to perform and write. She has become known as much for her adult audience poetry, short stories and plays as she is for her children’s books.
It’s been a long and often difficult road to take this ancient art form, one that preceded science and written history, to the place it is now. When she first decided to give up everything to concentrate solely on storytelling she says her loved ones were alarmed.
“People got worried about me. They thought something was going wrong,” she explains. “But I wanted to listen to that inner storytelling voice, to answer that calling. And I’ve never been happier. I’m very grateful that I listened to that voice.”
She insists that her literacy-focused work has been most important to her. For her, it’s crucial that children are told stories and read to in their mother tongue because she believes storytellers share our stories through language which provides a sense of identity. Children therefore need to speak their mother tongue to get a sense of self.
“Through reading or telling stories in their own language, you are giving them the gift of communication; the ability to unlock and share the stories that are in their own heads,” she explains.
Her dedication to encouraging kids inspired her to create a CD for children produced and performed with Ladysmith Black Mambazo in 1993 as well the music and stories for the SABC TV series, Gcina & Friends. In 2000, her award-winning storytelling CD entitled Fudukazi’s Magic, (for German audiences,) was released. A year later, as part of a countrywide travelling reading show, “Nozincwadi Mother of Books” was produced.
This year, celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Nozincwadi Storytelling and Book Festival theme was “From the Bones of Memory”. The festival started on the poet’s birthday in 2008 as a literacy campaign and now incorporates both books and storytelling to honour both the written word and the oral tradition.
In the last three decades, Mhlophe has taken her stories, our stories, around the world. Though she tells stories in four languages, isiXhosa, isiZulu and English, her writings have been translated into German, French, Italian, Swahili and Japanese.
Asked why she’s so successful, Mhlophe says: “You can’t be a good storyteller unless you love what you do – to feel good and passionate about the story no matter how scary or exciting or totally unbelievable it is. The moment it leaves your lips, it’s gospel truth.”
