Feminist author and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga awarded German Peace Prize

By Edward Tsumele

Zimbabwean feminist author and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga has been awarded a prestigious peace price, her local publisher Jacana Media confirmed.

Dangarembga whose latest novel This Mournable Body was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2020, was awarded the German Peace Prize.

“Congratulations to Tstsi Dangarembga on being awarded the 2021 German Peace Prize,” Jacana Media said in a statement following the announcement of this latest recognition by the organisers of the prize.

“I’m sure you would have preferred to give up on occasion, Tsitsi, to simply give in to the temptation to just lead a normal, ordinary life. [But you are far from ordinary,” Kenyan academic, community activist and author, Auma Obama told the German Peace Prize recipient for 2021, Dangarembga. The Foundation Board of the Peace Prize selected Tsitsi, someone, they said, “who has made an important contribution to peace, humanity and understanding between peoples.” In her acceptance speech, Dangarembga said, “There will be no miracle cures for our errors of thought. What we can look to is to change our thought patterns word by word, consciously and consistently over time, and to persevere until results are seen in the way we do things and in the outcomes of our actions.”