Late “Arrivants” to Creative Writing: An Interview with Lucy Dlamini

Writers in Swaziland have received negligible attention from southern Africa and the rest of the world, and there has been little critical response to their works. Relatively brief interviews with the writer, Sarah Mkhonza, and the actor and playwright, Sibusiso Mamba, have been posted on the Internet, but otherwise one must go back as far as 1981 to Lee Nichols’ Conversations with African Writers, which includes an interview with J.S.M. Matsebula, to find any substantial dialogue with a Swazi writer. The following interview seeks to discover possible reasons for this neglect, as well as introduce the writings of a prominent literary figure in Swaziland. Lucy Dlamini is a Swazi writer, editor, and academic who is Senior Lecturer with the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Swaziland. She has published drama and fiction in English and siSwati. During the course of the interview, Dlamini discusses early influences on her as a writer, the state of writing in English and siSwati in Swaziland, the role of publishers in shaping that literature, and her responses to local tradition and patriarchal authority in her fiction.