A Brand New Docuseries On Showmax Shining A Spotlight On Local Storytellers

Written By Sizwe Shabalala

Storytelling is one of the most effective ways of documenting and preserving history. Art, in all its various forms, plays a pivotal role in empowering us to tell our stories in ways that best represent us and our communities. Through a new docuseries called “Origins” on Showmax, MultiChoice, being leaders in storytelling, are now shining a spotlight on a group of voices that have been telling passionate stories through various mediums such as music, art, videography, text and more. One of those honoured in this campaign is Zikhona Valela.

Zikhona is an academic with a heart set on collecting South Africa's forgotten history and thereby preserving the future(s) of her people. She has a proven track record of translating layered political and cultural material into engaging, accessible conversations that teach and inspire.

When it comes to storytelling, Zikhona’s track record speaks for itself. Her work has been featured on reputable platforms such as New Frame, Mail & Guardian and Johannesburg Review of Books, just to name a few.

When reflecting on her own origins as a storyteller, Zikhona talks about how many of the books she was exposed to while growing up weren’t really history books. Her mother is a nurse and her father a mathematics fanatic and so, most of the books kept in the house were of her parents’ academic interests.

“Some of my earliest childhood memories of history was perhaps through the various coffee table books my parents had over the years which, more often than not, told the history of white-centric world events.”

Growing up in eQonce, where most of the colonial aesthetic is still present, Zikhona has memories of her father taking her to places like the Garden of Remembrance where Steve Biko is buried and it was through those experiences that she became more and more exposed to the history and stories of black South Africans.

As an historian and writer, a lot of Zikhona’s power lies in her words and how she uses them. When she thinks back to her early years, she pinpoints oral history as being the entry point to the power of language and storytelling. She was fascinated by how people chose to tell their stories and own journeys.

“My mother speaks a lot about her own family tree and it’s that work and act of naming where you come from and bringing that part of yourself that sometimes collapses and disappears into the identity of patriarchy and other one-dimensional, very surface level types of storytelling. It’s also growing up in a transitional time of this country and how the official narrative of how liberation was one is kind of pushed to the core front.”

Zikhona shares how, even though she was always interested in History and even took it as a subject in high school, she didn’t consider it as a potential career path for herself and this was mainly due to the fact that, at the time, she didn’t really see much representation of black women in this space.

“I grew up seeing black professionals going into things like teaching and nursing and when our country achieved democracy, we got to see more of our people in the fields of medicine, accounting and engineering. However, for me, it wasn’t until I was in university as a History major that I started embracing the idea of pursuing this professionally.”

She admits that she was frustrated by the fact that most of the history she was exposed to at the time centered particular voices. She says, “Even though many stories of our historic black figures were being told, they are told from a very specific perspective and often without the participation of black people attached to those stories. It really was a case of representation or lack thereof, really.”

You don’t get to this level and standard of storytelling without having to constantly perfect the process in which you create your art. Zikhona is very aware of what’s at stake when deciding to tell any particular story and it’s this kind of awareness that continues to see her deliver the most incredible work. She holds an MA in History on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, which she obtained from Rhodes University in 2017. Researching and writing about historical figures is one of her greatest strengths as a storyteller.

When talking about her creative process for wiring her latest book (Now you know how Mapetla died: The story of a Black Consciousness martyr) she gives insight on how she approached the project.

“History and biographical writing tend to make monuments out of human beings. It rarely ever happens that they take into consideration that, even though these figures made history, impacted society and made huge sacrifices, the human part of their story is almost always missing. Writing about someone who is no longer alive to participate in how their story is told in this book, I had to find ways of trying to access their humanity through the memories of his loved ones and colleagues. I would even go as far as saying, it is obligatory especially when writing about a Black Consciousness figure because at the forefront of the Black Conscious politics and ideology, is the human being.”

Through her work, Zikhona says she is mindful to respect the fact that people are in a permanent state of grief considering the ways that these people died. Being in constant collaboration with the people and the families of these people is at the heart of my writing process.

“It’s so important to remember that, if I’m going to talk about someone like Mapetla, people died with him the day he died. Many people are still stuck on the 5th of August 1976 and as a writer, you’ve always got to respect that. You’ve always got to respect the fact that there are people who have been left behind and so, when you write the story, you’ve got to really honour the grief and honour that pain. It’s not something you use to boost your profile; it’s about moving with respect”

Zikhona adds that, even though people who survived Apartheid and have gone on to see a different dispensation, you have to respect that there are certain unspeakable traumas they’ve had to endure and so, it’s important to see them at a very human level first before anything else — to see them as more than just the things they’ve survived as well.

When speaking about the MultiChoice campaign and what it all means to her as a passionate storyteller, she admits that she didn’t expect for something like this to happen so soon and so, she has been taking some time to process it all.

“This kind of stuff doesn’t just happen because you are doing the work or because you are being the vessel of storytelling, it also happens because there are people that are vehicles for the story — the audience and the people that engage with the stories and talk about it in their own spaces. It’s really exciting to hear that there are people having conversations and talking about this. It’s not something I applied for or pitched for. It’s really about people seeing the importance of these stories and embracing the importance of supporting people like myself who do this kind of work.”

She adds that, if people support and if people buy into this campaign, it opens up an opportunity for us to balance out the archives. “We constantly hear that there is just way too much bias or that there’s way too many stories yet to be told and so, when you spotlight the people who are dedicated to doing the work that I do or the stories that I tell, there’s so many more opportunities that can open up for further storytelling and interesting ways in which we convey our histories.”

Zikhona Valela is a featured artist in the MultiChoice Origins docuseries on Showmax, with her documentary, Zikhona Valela – In Search Of The Forgotten Heroes, now streaming.