Sudy, Juma win Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili 2021 prizes
Wednesday February 09 2022
Halfani Sudy receives the 2021 Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize from Tanzanian PM Kassim Majaliwa Majaliwa. PHOTO | COURTESY
Tanzanian authors Halfani Sudy and Moh’d Omar Juma are the winners of the 2021 Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili prizes for African Literature.
The winners were announced at a special ceremony on January 27, at the Milimani City Conference Centre in Dar es Salaam.
Sudy won in the Fiction category with his novel Kirusi Kipya (New Virus), and Juma’s Chemichemi Jangwani (Spring in the Desert) took the Poetry category.
Kirusi Kipya is about a female soldier, Hannan Halfani, who discovers a secret plot to assassinate President Mark Mwazilindi at the palace. She shares the secret with detective Daniel Mwaseba.
Chemichemi Jangwani is a poetry collection about a newly elected local representative who has to deal with various social, economic and political issues.
The second place in the fiction category was Lucas Lubago for his novel Bweni la Wasichana (The Girls’ Dormitory) and the runner-up was Mbwana Kidato’s Sinaubi. The judges said of Sinaubi: “This work presents a new form of writing. While it is highly creative, it is neither a novel, nor a play. In it you will find prose writing and then there are interactions and dialogue between the characters. That is why we gave this work a special place among the winners.”
The winners in each category received $5,000, and the runners up each got $2,500.
Judges included Aldin K. Mutembei, Salma Omar Hamad, and Joseph N. Maitaria.
Born in 1989, Sudy is a Tanzanian novelist. He is the head of the social welfare department at New Mafinga Health College, in Iringa region.
Juma was born in 1986 in Pemba. He teaches Kiswahili and English at Minazini Secondary School in Dar es Salaam and is also studying for a Master's degree in Education Administration, Planning and Policy Training at the Open University of Tanzania.
The prize was founded in 2014 by Dr. Lizzy Attree (Short Story Day Africa) and Prof. Mukoma wa Ngugi (Cornell University) and has the express goal of recognising writing in African languages and encouraging translation from, between and into African languages.
The Prize is supported by Mabati Rolling Mills of Kenya (a subsidiary of the Safal Group), The Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs at Cornell University, the Africana Studies Center at Cornell University and the Ngugi wa Thiong’o Foundation.