Award-winning Eastern Cape poet Chris Mann dies

Award-winning SA poet, singer, songwriter and academic Christopher Zithulele Mann has died.

The much-loved 72-year-old Rhodes University emeritus poetry professor lost his battle with cancer and died at his Makhanda home on Wednesday.

Speaking on behalf of Rhodes University, senior linguistics and applied language studies lecturer Ian Siebörger described Mann as a “gracious and well-loved academic and writer who blessed Rhodes University with his teaching, research and poetry”.

“Chris’s poetry is deeply rooted in the soil of the Eastern Cape, drawing on and enriching the English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa languages, and inspired by his deep and reflective Christian spirituality.

“He will be most fondly remembered by many of us not only as a poet, but also as a connector of diverse people through his efforts to align people around love of the multilingual tapestry that is SA.” 

The National Arts Festival said in a statement that Mann had been a poet, teacher, family man and pioneer who had always been involved in the community life of Makhanda

“He cared deeply about this town and all of its people.”

Mann was founder and convener of the National Arts Festival’s popular Word Fest, a national multilingual festival of languages and literature designed to celebrate the “word arts” and foster a love of reading and writing.

He often performed at Word Fest.

The Amazwi SA Museum of Literature said Mann and his wife, artist Julia Skeen, often collaborated on multimedia projects combining art and poetry.

In 2019 he received the English Academy Gold Medal for a lifetime of service to English studies at an award ceremony held at Amazwi.

Over the years Mann received many awards, including the Newdigate prize for poetry, the Olive Schreiner prize for SA poetry in English, the SA performing arts councils’ playwright award, the EC premier’s award for literature and the English academy of SA Thomas Pringle award for poetry.

Mann was born in Port Elizabeth in 1948 and went to school in Cape Town.

He studied English and philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand.

He later went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and was awarded an MA in English language and literature.

He also achieved an MA from the School of Oriental and African Languages (London) in African oral literature.

  From 1977 to 1980 he held a lecturer post in the English department at Rhodes University. He left the security of that position, instead serving for 15 years with a developmental NGO, the Valley Trust, which worked with communities in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in KwaZulu-Natal.

In 1995, he returned to Rhodes University, where he served as professor of poetry with the Institute for the Study of English in Africa.

Mann was able to converse in Afrikaans, isiZulu and isiXhosa and performed his work at festivals, schools, churches, universities and conferences in SA.

The Cathedral of St Michael and St George in Makhanda, where Mann was an artist-in-residence, said its community valued his poems, songs and collaborative multimedia shows produced for its successive Spiritfests with Skeen.

“His faith breathed easily through his art, an unforced, natural witness. We give thanks for his incalculable contribution to this city and this worshipping fellowship, mourn his passing, and pray for Julia and the family.”

Speaking of his love for poetry, Mann says on his webpage that: “Poetry has been my vocation since my teenage years — an inconsolable yearning, a craft, a moment of vision, a protest, a solace, a prayer and respite throughout the turbulence of our times.”

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