Tsitsi Dangarembga spread the spirit of ubuntu over UC Merced on Wednesday night, imparting its message of “how we can be good people who live well together.”
Dangarembga, a Zimbabwean filmmaker, writer and activist, is the 16th recipient of the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance . An audience of about 150 attended an award ceremony in the Dr. Vikram and Priya Lakireddy Grand Ballroom.
Ubuntu, a word rooted in Bantu languages of southern Africa, reflects the belief that individual identity and well-being are intertwined with the well-being of others. Dangarembga noted that, in Zimbabwe, the greeting of “How are you?” is answered by “I am well if you are well.”
She said she works to bring about a world that embraces the power of ubuntu — “a world of increased social justice and tolerance, which extends not only to ourselves as human beings, but also to our environment and all creation.”
Dangarembga’s work as a filmmaker often focuses on African women's experiences. She founded the International Images Film Festival for Women in Zimbabwe, along with the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA), which aims to develop filmmakers who can boost Africa’s presence in the global film economy.
She is best known for her critically acclaimed 1988 debut novel, “Nervous Conditions.” The first book by a Black Zimbabwean woman to be published in English, it won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and is celebrated for its incisive portrayal of colonialism, gender and identity in postcolonial Africa.
In 2008, a struggle for power between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe led to the beatings, torture and deaths of supporters of Mugabe’s political opponents. Through ICAPA, Dangarembga created “Winning the Peace,” a project that called for people to share their exposure to violence.
“We received over 100 stories written in various of Zimbabwe’s official languages, most of them written by women,” she said. The stories were transformed into plays performed across the nation.
She said ICAPA training programs led, starting in 2019, to 13 short documentaries on the lives of Zimbabwean women, each filmed by all-women crews. The initiative, called “Picture My Life,” was inspired by the #MeToo movement, Dangarembga said.
In 2020, Dangarembga was arrested and convicted on charges of inciting violence after she marched peacefully in Zimbabwe's capital of Harare while holding a placard that called for political reforms. Her six-month suspended sentence was overturned by Harare’s high court in 2023.
“The Spendlove awardees serve as powerful role models, inspiring our students, staff and faculty, as well as the citizens of the Central Valley,” said Leo Arriola, dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. “Each vent offers us a chance to reflect on their words and wisdom, reminding us how choices and actions, even under the most challenging conditions, can transform lives for the better.”
The Spendlove Prize is made possible by a gift from Sherrie Spendlove, a Merced native. The prize was founded in 2005 in honor of her parents, Alice and Clifford Spendlove. The prize has a value of $15,000.
Spendlove said her parents were “regular, everyday people” —a school secretary and a social worker — who in ways large and small attended to their community’s welfare.
“I think many of you here tonight also care greatly for your fellow human beings, and that is why you are here,” Spendlove said. “Bless you all.”
In his introduction of Dangarembga, UC Merced Professor Nigel Hatton quoted from the honoree’s “Black and Female,” a collection of essays about her determination to be heard over the noise of imperialism and race and gender biases:
The denial of voice has implications for the extent to which women can use the power of their imagination. Imagination is the necessary link between desiring and doing. … The realized products of imagination disseminate ideas into groups, which engage the individual at the level of thought, philosophy and ideology … enabling Black feminist representations of the world to influence other people's thinking and imagining in the direction of a world conceived by a Black feminist mind.
“This world that Tsitsi Dangarembga describes and asks us to imagine is certainly one that I would like to see achieved,” Hatton said.
