GRi Arts & Culture 04 – 02 - 2003

South Africa to host judges of Commonwealth Writers Prize

Accra (Greater Accra) 04 February 2003- South Africa is to host judges of 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize: Africa Region, which was established in 1987.

The prize is sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation, administered by Booktrust and supported by Cumberland Lodge.

A statement in Accra on Monday said this is the first time ever the judging panel for the Africa Region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize will meet in South Africa. It said Professor Andries Oliphant from the University of South Africa, Pretoria, would chair the panel. Other members are Ms Ayeta Wangusa, Ugandan journalist and writer and Professor Mary Kolawole from Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

Professor Oliphant was quoted as saying: "As one of the most important prizes for fiction in Africa, we are delighted to welcome the regional judging of the Commonwealth Writers Prize here for the first time in its seventeen-year history."

The panel would meet in Johannesburg at the end of February 2003 to decide the Best Book and Best First Book in the region. Previous African winners in the Commonwealth Writers Prize include Nobel Literature Laureate Nadine Gordimer, Charles Mungoshi, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Festus Iyayi and JM Coetzee who has won the Booker Prize twice.

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