Job Opportunity at Jacana Media

We are currently looking for an assistant to the Director of Publishing at Jacana Media.

The successful candidate will be proactive and able to work independently, with an eye for detail, and excellent organisation skills. This is not your regular PA position.

Key duties include:

• Designing ad campaigns, as well as maintaining mailing lists and the ad campaign calendar.
• Managing metadata and eBook conversions for all titles.
• Administrative support (handling contracts, diary management, maintaining mailing lists, etc.)
• Processing manuscript submissions via our website and email.
• Coordination and management of the Jacana Literary Foundation, our not-for-profit organisation.
• Providing author care.
• Processing accounts and expenses, invoicing and debt collection.
• Experience using Everlytics, Photoshop, InDesign and Adobe will be an advantage.
• Experience within the publishing industry will be an advantage.

The ideal candidate will be keen to grow within the business. You should be able to demonstrate your capacity for the above tasks, as well as have a track record of being happy to learn ‘on the job’.

Only extraordinary individuals need apply.

If you are ambitious about a future in publishing, please email us your CV and covering letter to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and please use your name and JACANA MEDIA ASSISTANT APPLICATION as your subject line.

The position is based in Auckland Park, Johannesburg. Please note that we will only respond to applications we are interested in.

 

 

In Memoriam – Hugh Lewin

It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Hugh Lewin, the much-loved author, journalist and anti-apartheid activist. 

We at Jacana treasured the opportunity to work with Hugh on his Jafta children’s book series which was first published to worldwide acclaim in 1981 and then again by us in 2015 as well as by publishing houses in India and China. These children’s books meant an enormous amount to Hugh. His main character, Jafta, was born when Hugh was released from prison after a seven-year sentence for his opposition to apartheid.

With exquisite poignancy, Hugh described the life of separation Jafta experienced growing up without a father and shared the universal joys and sorrows of childhood. We send our deepest condolences to Fiona and Hugh’s family.

The Man Who Killed Apartheid

Dr Hendrik Verwoerd was murdered by Dimitri Tsafendas on 6 September 1966. In the Cape Supreme Court Tsafendas was found unfit to stand trial on the grounds that he suffered from schizophrenia. The Court found that Tsafendas had no political motive for killing Verwoerd. Tsafendas was declared a State-President’s Patient and was detained, first in prison, then in a mental institution until his death in 1999. For most of his incarceration he was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment by the prison authorities.

Harris Dousemetzis’s groundbreaking story shows in vivid detail that Dimitri Tsafendas was a deeply political person, a communist and the son of an anarchist. He was committed to an independent Mozambique, the country of his birth, and once even travelled throughout the country operating a communist library. He despised Verwoerd for his apartheid policy and the misery inflicted by those who enforced the apartheid laws. He wanted to end the madness of apartheid, so he murdered its creator. October 2018

This Mournable Body

Dangarembga, a filmmaker, playwright and novelist, is the author of Nervous Conditions, which is on the BBC’s list of “The 100 stories that shaped the world”, and a winner of The Commonwealth Writers Award. 

“You spend the morning writing a letter to your cousin Nyasha, who has become a filmmaker in Germany, in which you ask for advice concerning leaving Zimbabwe. You want nothing more than to break away from the implacable terror of every day you spend in your country − where you can no longer afford the odd dab of peanut butter to liven up the vegetables from Mai Manyanga’s garden or the petty comfort of perfumed soap − by going away and becoming a European.”

Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow’s boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point.

“Graywolf Press is honoured to be the US publisher of Tsitsi Dangaremba’s latest novel, This Mournable Body,” said Katie Dublinski, Associate Publisher. “We’re thrilled to be sharing this profound and indelible novel with Jacana, which we know will make a good home for the book in southern Africa.” 

In This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, to examine how the hope and potential of a young girl and a fledgling nation can sour over time and become a bitter and floundering struggle for survival.

Read more: This Mournable Body