Congratulations Kwela!

LitNet would like to congratulate Kwela on 10 years of publishing excellence. Kwela set out to develop fresh local talent and have succeeded in doing exactly that.
Well done, and cheers to you, your authors and the next 10 years!

LitNet would also like to congratulate Kwela for having the only titles on the shortlist for the Herman Charles Bosman book prize for English fiction. Click here to find out which titles made the cut.

Read the fantastic quotes from well-known Kwela authors:

Achmat Dangor

My journey with Kwela Press began in 1997 when I received a letter from this publisher with the strange but resonant name “Kwela” asking permission to publish one of my stories. I vividly remembered the word kwela as an exhortation used by township “clevahs” to give each other courage as they raced alongside moving trains in order to catch a ride, moments before they came to equally vivid ends. I thought it was yet another retro-activist, post-Apartheid fad in search of relevance, trying to reclaim the dead Staffrider spirit.

Curious, but not expecting much, I asked to meet the publisher, who turned out to be this friendly, articulate and unassuming Afrikaans-speaking woman who knew exactly where to get a quick but good meal in Cape Town’s city centre. Within minutes I was offering her the manuscript for my novel Kafka’s Curse which I had withheld from my traditional “radical” publishing house that had just sold out to a multinational company. The rest, as they say, is history.

Kwela has not crashed into the many barriers, literary and financial, that so many other staffriding ventures have. It is flourishing because it is honest, places quality above fashion, and yet is willing to take on “risky” writers, both established and new. In my case, Kwela helped open international doors that have, in the last seven years, allowed my work to be published in many languages, from Dutch to Hebrew and Russian.

Viva Kwela, viva !

Gus Ferguson

I have been associated with Kwela in two ways: as an author and as as co-publisher.

In my humble view Kwela should be designated as a National Treasure. It is simply the bravest press we have seen in South Africa.

Working with Kwela is a huge pleasure and tremendous fun, thanks to the great attitude of Annari van der Merwe and her brilliant staff.

Writers who publish with Kwela are assured of the highest professional editorial care and design, all delivered in an atmosphere of friendship and co-operation.

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