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Zakes Mda occupies a unique position in the annals of contemporary South African theater. The publication of two novels in 1995--She Plays with the Darkness (winner of the Sanlam Literary Award for 1995) and Ways of Dying (winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize for Prose and the M=NET Book Prize in 1997)--have shown Mda to be as deft at novel writing as he is at drama. Mda first shot to national prominence in 1978 when he received the Amstel Merit Award for We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (performed 1978; published 1980), an achievement that he bettered the following year when he won the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award for The Hill (performed 1980; published 1990). With two published collections of plays, The Plays of Zakes Mda (1990) and And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses: Four Works (1993)--still a rare feat for a black playwright-- and a major treatise on the uses of theater for purposes of social development, When People Play People: Development Communication through Theatre (1993), Mda achieved the unusual distinction in 1995 of having five of his plays produced by major mainstream theaters in South Africa within a period of six months.
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