Internationally-celebrated Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga — whose work tells the experiences of African women — was granted the prestigious Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance during a ceremony recently.
Dangarembga is best known for her hit 1988 debut novel Nervous Conditions.
The novel, which is part of a trilogy, is followed by The Book of Not (2006) and This Mournable Body (2018).
The latter made a short list for the Booker Prize.
She is also known as a prominent activist who at times has been arrested and faced persecution for calling out injustices in Zimbabwe.
As the 16th winner of the Spendlove Prize, Dangarembga now joins a group of honorees that includes former President Jimmy Carter, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Peter Balakian and Justice Cruz Reynoso and Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, among others.
The Spendlove Prize is made possible by a generous gift from Sherrie Spendlove, a Merced native. It was founded in 2005 in honour of her parents, Alice and Clifford Spendlove, who were lifelong professionals dedicated to the lives of citizens, youth and students of the Merced region in California, the United States.
The prize is awarded by the University of California (UC) Merced, the newest campus in the University of California system. UC Merced was founded in 2005 as the first US research university to be opened in the 21st Century.
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Around 150 people attended the award ceremony at the university’s Dr Vikram and Priya Lakireddy Grand Ballroom.
Her book Nervous Conditions is also known because it won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and is celebrated for its incisive portrayal of colonialism, gender and identity in post-colonial Africa.
Accepting the prize, Dangarembga said she works to bring about “a world of increased social justice and tolerance, which extends not only to ourselves as human beings, but also to our environment and all creation”.
In her additional work as an artist and activist, she founded the International Images Film Festival for Women in Zimbabwe, along with the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (Icapa), which aims to develop filmmakers who can boost Africa’s presence in the global film economy.
Dangarembga also was active during the crisis in her native Zimbabwe in 2008, when the nation’s former president Robert Mugabe and his supporters were violently attacking political opponents, and anyone perceived as such.
Through Icapa, Dangarembga created Winning the Peace, a project that called for people to share their exposure to violence.
“We received over 100 stories written in several of Zimbabwe’s official languages, most of them written by women,” Dangarembga said.
The stories were transformed into plays performed across the nation.
She said Icapa training programmes led, starting in 2019, to 13 short documentaries on the lives of Zimbabwean women, each filmed by all-women crews. The initiative, called “Picture My Life”, was inspired by the #MeToo movement.
In 2020, Dangarembga was arrested and convicted on charges of inciting violence after she marched peacefully in Zimbabwe’s capital of Harare while holding a placard that called for political reforms.
Her six-month suspended sentence was overturned by Harare’s High Court in 2023.
“The Spendlove awardees serve as powerful role models, inspiring our students, staff and faculty, as well as the citizens of the Central Valley,” said Leo Arriola, UC Merced’s dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.
