Cornelius Tennyson Daniel Marivate (10 April 1927 – 4 December 2020) was a South African politician, academic and writer, known for his work in

Tsonga Tsonga may refer to: * Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa * Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa. * Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) ...

. He won the

South African Literary Awards The South African Literary Awards (SALA) have been awarded annually since 2005 to exceptional South African writers. Founded by the wRiteassociates, in partnership with the national Department of Arts and Culture (DAC), the awards "pay tribute t ...

Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Marivate worked at the

University of South Africa The University of South Africa (UNISA) is the largest university system in South Africa by enrollment. It attracts a third of all higher education students in South Africa. Through various colleges and affiliates, UNISA has over 400,000 student ...

(UNISA) from 1963 to 1992. He served briefly in the government of the

Gazankulu Gazankulu was a Bantustan in South Africa, intended by the apartheid government to be a semi-independent homeland for the Tsonga people. It was located in both the Northern Transvaal, now Limpopo province and Eastern Transvaal, now Mpumalang ...

bantustan and later represented the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

(ANC) in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

from 1996 to 1999.

Early life and career

Marivate was the second-born son of Daniel Marivate, a renowned South African composer and writer. He was born on 10 April 1927 and raised at a Swiss mission station in

Valdesia ''Valdesia'' is a monotypic genus of daesiid camel spiders, first described by Emilio Antonio Maury in 1981. Its single species, ''Valdesia'' ''simplex'' is distributed in Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a co ...

in the former

Transvaal province The Province of Transvaal (), commonly referred to as the Transvaal (; ), was a province of South Africa from 1910 until 1994, when a new constitution subdivided it following the end of apartheid. The name "Transvaal" refers to the province's ...

, where his father was a teacher and pastor. He himself began teaching in 1948 at a nearby primary school, while studying by correspondence for his school-leaving certificate. After he completed his bachelor's degree at UNISA in 1963, he was invited to join the university's

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

department as UNISA's first Xitsonga-native lecturer. Beginning as a lecturer and ultimately becoming head of department, he remained at UNISA until his retirement in 1992. During that time he completed his master's degree, on Tsonga folk tales, and in 1982 his doctorate, on

ideophone An ideophone (also known as a mimetic or expressive) is a member of the word class of words that depict sensory imagery or sensations, evoking ideas of action, sound, movement, color, or shape. The class of ideophones is the least common syntac ...

and

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...

in African languages. He also completed a diploma in music through the London School of Music.

Political career

Marivate was occasionally involved in politics during

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

. In 1978, he successfully campaigned for election to a seat in the Gazankulu Legislative Assembly, but withdrew before he was sworn in. Later he served as a minister in the Gazankulu government under Chief Minister

Samuel Dickenson Nxumalo Samuel Dickenson Nxumalo (1926 – 7 March 2015) was the third and last Chief Minister of Gazankulu, a former bantustan in apartheid-era South Africa Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of instit ...

, while also serving as a delegate to the

Convention for a Democratic South Africa The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of bilateral and multi-party negotiations between 1990 and 1993. The negotiations culminated in the passage of a new interim Constitution in 1993, a precursor to the Constitution ...

. After the end of apartheid in 1994, he was appointed as a member of the Public Service Commission in the new Northern Province (later renamed Limpopo); the main task of the commission was to reintegrate the Gazankulu,

Lebowa Lebowa was a Bantustan ("homeland") located in the Transvaal Province, Transvaal in northeastern South Africa. Seshego initially acted as Lebowa's capital while the purpose-built Lebowakgomo was being constructed. Granted internal self-gover ...

, and

Venda Venda ( ), officially the Republic of Venda (; ), was a Bantustan in northern South Africa. It was fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while, to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black hom ...

homelands with parts of the Transvaal provincial administration. In October 1996, he was sworn in to the National Assembly, the lower house of the new

South African Parliament The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa is South Africa's legislature. It is located in Cape Town; the country's legislative capital. Under the present Constitution of South Africa, the bicameral Parliament comprises a National Asse ...

, where he filled a casual vacancy in an ANC seat. He advocated for a political programme involving self-reliance, reconciliation, and cooperation among political parties. He left the Parliament after the next general election in 1999.

Music and literature

Marivate wrote several books in Tsonga, including ''Jim Xilovekelo'' (1965) and ''Mpambulwa Wa Switlhokovetselo'' (1983), and he translated others from English, including a book of Tsonga folktales. In 2019, he won the

's Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of work in Tsonga. Like his father, he was also involved in composing and conducting

choral music A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

Personal life and death

He was married to Stephina and had seven children. He was an adherent of the

Moral Rearmament Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman headed MRA for 23 years until his death in 1961. In 2001, the movement was renamed I ...

movement and a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. He died on 4 December 2020, aged 93.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marivate, C. T. D. 1927 births 2020 deaths Tsonga people People from Louis Trichardt University of South Africa alumni 20th-century South African writers African National Congress politicians Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 1994–1999