Bongani Kona: Our Ghosts Were Once People. Stories on death and dying

HUMA Book Launch

Author: Bongani Kona (University of the Western Cape, South Africa)

Introduction: Death is a certainty, as the old saying goes, but the experience of grief is unique to each of us. Our Ghosts Were Once People: Stories on Death and Dying brings together writers and poets such as Sisonke Msimang, Dawn Garisch, Lidudumalingani, Mary Watson, Ishtiyaq Shukri, Hedley Twidle, Karin Schimke, Khadija Patel, Shubnum Khan and many others. The contributions range from the deeply personal: a poet chronicles her relationship with her troubled, abusive father, a World War II survivor – to the political: an investigator from the Missing Persons Task Team draws us into the ongoing search for the remains of activists who were murdered by the apartheid state between 1960 and 1994 – to the philosophical: one writer wrestles with the ethics of killing ‘small animals’ and another ponders on the extinction of humankind. See the book: Our Ghosts were once People (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021).

‘Grief—a word that seemed too small to encompass the world I had been plunged into’ (Open Access chapter). Sisonke Msimang’s essay from Our Ghosts Were Once People: Stories on Death and Dying (2021). The Johannesburg Review of Books. 19 August.

About the author: Bongani Kona is a PhD candidate and a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape. His work has appeared in various places, including Chimurenga, Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction, The Daily Assortment of Astonishing Things and Other Stories, The Baffler and BBC Radio 4. He was awarded the Ruth First Fellowship in 2019 and shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2016. He has recently edited Our Ghosts Were Once People (2021).

Discussant: Catherine Boulle is an audio maker, writer and researcher based at the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), University of Cape Town, where she researches Live Art in South Africa and produces The ICA Podcast. With ICA Director Jay Pather, she co-edited the collection Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa (Wits University Press, 2019), shortlisted for the National Institute for the Humanities & Social Sciences Non-fiction Book Award in 2020.