Jack Mapanje: Difference between revisions

'''1987''': Jack Mapanje was arrested by police at the Gymkhana Club in Zomba on September 25, 1987. Since then he has been detained without charge--and without any public explanation--at Mikuyu Prison. For the first twenty months of his incarceration, Mapanje was not allowed visits from his family or friends (he is married to a mid-wife, Mercy Mapanje, and they have three children). Nor has he been allowed to see a present--Mapanje is a practicing Roman Catholic. In the absence of any statement from the government the precise reasons for his detention are a matter of speculation, although clearly it was Mapanje's writing which upset the authorities. After his arrest, Mapanje was first taken in handcuffs to the University of Malawi, where he is head of the Department of English Language and Literature. The police searched his office and seized various manuscripts, including poems and the paper delivered at a Conference in Stockholm in 1986, entitled [[Censoring the African Poem: Personal Reflections]]. This includes an account of his problems with the Malawi Censorship Board. It is likely that the authorities were also concerned about Mapanje's plans to bring out a second volume of poems, provisionally entitled [[Out of Bounds]], and about an invitation for him to take up the post of writer-in-residence at the University of Zimbabwe.