The first time I met somebody who knew about Zakes Mda's work was in Botswana in 1982 when I was head of the Theatre Unit of Medu Art Ensemble - a cultural group with a strong political agenda which was founded in Botswana by South African exiles in 1978 and ceased its activities after the South African Defence Force raid on Gaborone in June 1985.

At the time I was directing a play written and produced by the Ensemble. One of two South African actors who had been brought from Johannesburg to perform the play introduced me to Mda's activities as a dramatist. His comments were enthusiastic and I subsequently tried to follow up Mda's work.

Until then, my only knowledge of the work was through reviews of We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, a daring look at a post-revolutionary sitution after independence in an unidentified country. The message is universal but particularly relevant in the Southern African context.

I arrived in Maseru in 1986 by which time Mda was Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the National University of Lesotho in Roma and was well established as one of the most important playwrights in Southern Africa.

In Maseru, I founded Meso (Sesotho for ‘dawn’) Theatre Group together with a group of Basotho. To begin with, this ensemble performed poetry and drama with a well-defined working line on social and political issues which attracted Mda's interest. Years of professional co-operation followed and at the end of my stay in Lesotho I was asked to assist the University's English Department (of which Mda became head in 1991) for a year, holding weekly workshops in dramatic skills training.

In Maseru, a city with only about 100 000 inhabitants, it was easy to meet and communicate and I developed both a professional and a personal relationship with Zakes Mda based on contact between our families and his knowledge of my previous work with South African playwrights, writers and artists during the lifetime of Medu Art Ensemble.

I am attracted to his frankness, his warm personality and his sense of humour as well as his inquisitiveness and interest in people, art and the environment.