Cont Mhlanga
Winner of the 2008 Freedom to Create Main Prize
The inaugural winner of the Freedom to Create Prize, Zimbabwean playwright Cont Mhlanga, says he "sometimes still gets a shock" about his 2008 win.
Since his award, he has been congratulated and approached from artists from around the world, from Australia to America, all of whom have been inspired by Cont's courage and his use of the arts to promote social justice. Although he was not able to be in London to accept the award, he was heartened to hear from renowned playwright and social justice campaigner, Sir Tom Stoppard, who offered his congratulations during a mobile phone conversation shortly after his win was announced.
Cont's inspirational story and experience as a creative changemaker saw his induction to the judging panel for the 2009 Freedom to Create Prize awards.
He said of his experience: "I was impressed by the level of courage shown by the top five finalists this year, their creative voices and the uplifting of the cause of the freedom where they put one's own thoughts before their community's and the world and public," he said.
"It's so difficult to make a choice when all the people are using such clever concepts to express themselves."
Yet Cont was able to draw on his 25-year long career as a protest theatre practitioner to offer the judging panel his insights on how artists operate under extreme conditions. As well as a successful playwright, Cont has also founded the Amakhosi Performing Arts Academy and the Theatre for Community Action in Bulawayo through which he has stirred audiences to peaceful action against injustices and led them to substantial social change in Zimbabwe.
When he won the Freedom to Create Prize in 2008, it was for his play "The Good President", which presents a fictionalised account of a ruthless dictator that closely mirrored events in his community. "It was never just art for art's sake," he says, "It was always utility art."
For his efforts, Cont has been subjected to state surveillance and harassment. The actors and stagehands who have performed his plays have been threatened, with one man shot in the leg and left on the side of the road. Yet Cont's success in the Freedom to Create Prize has enabled him to expand his work.
His Amakhosi Performing Arts Academy is coordinating an outreach programme with prisoners every two weeks. Largely unknown to the outside world, Zimbabwe's prisons are suffering an acute form of the country's overall crises, especially food shortages and illness. In danger of slipping into despair, the prisoners stage a play for the public and, says Cont, "the energy and hope that arts give them is wonderful".
He is also staging a new play about the continuing land conflict, a sensitive subject he is treating with humour to break taboos and suggests a resolution to the problem. Cont intends to tour the play throughout Zimbabwe: "Theatre," he says, "for community action". And finally, as Zimbabwe enters a period of change under the coalition government of President Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Cont and his partners are establishing theatre workshops in rural areas to give young people a voice in the transition.
