Biography
South African dramatist and director Maishe Maponya was born in Johannesburg. His early work includes The Cry (1976) and Peace and Forgive (1978), followed by The Hungry Earth (Soweto, 1979), which looks at the lives of three miners in rural and urban settings, and Umongikazi (Nurse, Market Theatre and townships, 1983), about apartheid in hospitals. Gangsters and Dirty Work (Market, 1984) form a diptych on the security state and its agents. His plays are multilingual, using agitprop and physical theatre techniques. Maponya won the 1985 Standard Bank Young Artists award, and works as an executive of the Johannesburg Southern Metroplitan Council.