Simamkele Dlakavu

Simamkele Dlakavu is a Fallist and has recently completed her Master’s in African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She has been an active participant in student movements calling for an intersectional decolonial reality in SA, and reflects on those experiences in her chapter in Rioting & Writing: Diaries of the Wits Fallists (SWOP Institute, 2017). She is former Media and Communications Manager for Oxfam South Africa and has also worked as a human rights television producer on one of SA’s most popular current affairs shows, The Big Debate. In 2013 she was one of the producers for a special episode of BBC Question Time on Nelson Mandela. She has co- created and participated in organisations that center Black rural and township youth, like Sakha Ulutsha Lwethu. Simamkele shares her views on current affairs and politics on platforms such as City Press, Daily Maverick and Independent Newspapers. In 2015 she was among 22 young women selected to attend the African Women’s Development Fund’s Writing for Social Change Workshop in Uganda. In 2014 the Mail & Guardian recognised Simamkele as one of SA’s Top 200 Young South Africans.