Chuma has the “write stuff”

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A resident of Muduluni village in the Kutama area, Thato Khutso Chuma, has the “write stuff” in her brains – which means that she possesses the ability to create the kind of writing that leaves her readers begging for more.

She remembers that she grew up with a passion for writing and a dream to one day become a best-selling author. “Without being able to make a career out of writing, I pursued a career in internal auditing and further specialised in forensic investigation,” she said.

She did not, however, give up on her writing dream. She kept reading and writing, sharing her work with friends who read and appreciated it. At some later stage, she put together her writings into a book, which came out under the title Dear Life – The suicide note. “It is a novel that addresses modern challenges faced by the youth of today,” she said. “It sheds light on problems that matriculants going to varsity deal with.”

Chuma stated that these were problems that almost every young person faced but many people shied away from talking about. “Some of the problems addressed in the book are the dangers of misused freedom, lack of self-control, not knowing what you want and many others,” she said.

This young author is big on enlightening her fellow youths about life. She believes that youths must "voice" their challenges. She practises this view wherever she goes around local schools, encouraging matriculants to keep up the momentum and stay focused. “I urge those who have given up to stand back and remember why they started whatever they had started in the first place,” she said. “Failure is just an opportunity to start over with more insight this time.”

The author is set to launch her second book, The Heart that Grieved in Silence. Just like her first one, it tackles issues of, among others, abuse and rape. “I touch on how to step out of an abusive relationship or go about asking for help when you find yourself in an abusive relationship,” she said.

She said that she always wrote in a way that made her writing accessible. “Writing is the language of the heart to the world; it fulfils me to be able to share my thoughts with so many people at once,” she said. “Writing lives on and passes to generations after generation. In a nutshell, I enjoy writing because I'm serving my purpose.”

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.