She’s been a charismatic force in the literature and charitable sectors in Bulawayo. Publisher, Jane Morris (Ebbw Vale, Wales, 1953), who was agony columnist “Aunty Thandi”, shares her world.
Read time: 9 minutes
Primary School: Pontygof Infants, and Pontygof Junior.
Secondary School: Hafod-y-Ddôl Grammar School (Welsh for summerhouse in the valley).
After school: University of Sussex (BA, American Literature); University College London (MA, Area Studies (American Literature)); University of Leicester (Social Work)) and University of Strathclyde, Scotland (Post Qualifying Certificate in Social Work Education).
“Wales has a lot in common with Matabeleland in that we were colonised by the English.”
The First Passport Stamp of…
France.
The Wales of…
I grew up in a pub in an industrial area of the South Wales Valleys; the customers being mainly Irish and Welsh steelworkers and miners. Wales has a lot in common with Matabeleland in that we were colonised by the English, and the place is now an economically depressed part of the UK where many industries were closed with nothing to replace them.
There are only three million Welsh people and so we are a small nation. There are challenges in the area in which I grew up like high unemployment. It used to have very high rainfall, so I never thought I would move back to Wales and worry about water! But global warming has changed that (I visited the White Cliffs of Dover: where Julius Ceasar and the Romans took over Britannia 2,075 years ago; the English c. 449AD; and then the Vikings c. 793AD. The Normans – who seized control in 1066 to become the world famous-infamous monarchy currently held by Charles III, King of the UK – descended on Wales between 1277–1282 – SJ).
The Lost Language of…
Because of colonisation, I didn’t learn my own language. My school taught Latin, Russian, German, French, and English. In the 19th century, there was something called the Welsh Not – “thou shall not speak Welsh” in schools. It was a wooden stick that was passed to any kid who spoke Welsh, and whoever had it by the end of the day would be beaten. My great dream in life is to learn Welsh and write a Welsh novel. Like Matabeleland, we have a lot of folktales and myths.
The Siblings of…
My brother, a wildlife enthusiast who was among many who helped in the Aberfan disaster of 1966, has now sadly passed away. My sister still lives in Ebbw Vale.
The Parents of…
My English mother was quite a character, and she moved to the Welsh Valleys after she married my dad. She was an orphan and grew up in an orphanage. She inspired me with her love of literature; she loved poetry and we would recite Shakespeare together while walking the hills.
The Social Work of…
I was the training manager at Island Hospice (“No man is an island,” in poem, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions and severall steps in my Sicknes by John Donne, 1624; Island Hospice, 1979 – SJ), as well as the “Aunty Thandi” agony columnist in the Edgars Club magazine. At hospice we helped people through different life issues like bereavement, terminal illness, and home-based care at a time when a quarter of the population lived with HIV and many subsequently died from AIDS. I learnt a lot at hospice including the funeral cultures of Matabeleland, so different from what I knew.
The Marriage of…
[Professor Emeritus] Brian Jones and I met in 1972 at the University of Sussex. We have been together for 53 years. We lived all over the UK as Brian had fellowships in different universities as an astrophysicist. We moved to Bulawayo in 1994. A job came up at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST, Bulawayo, 1991) and we had to get married for me to be able to accompany him. I cried! I didn’t want to get married – we were happy as we were, but I’m now happily married. Initially, as a dependent spouse, I wasn’t allowed to work but did do voluntary social work including telephone counselling skills training for Childline when it opened in 1997.
The Bulawayo of…
One of the aims of amaBooks was to encourage people in Zimbabwe to read local literature. You can learn a lot about your own culture and the lives of those around you through literature.
The onus is on young people to take the arts forward, and especially now, considering that we have lost eminent figures like Pathisa Nyathi and Cont Mhlanga. We often talk about those from the British Council Bulawayo Echoes of Young Voices youth group. You lot could run the world! Bulawayo is teeming with talent. It’s sad that so many talented people have left the country.
Side note: I was once “the voice of Bulawayo” when Pathisa Nyathi, then publicity officer of the City Council, asked me to do voice overs for their conference videos including about the water situation in Bulawayo.
“We were happy to be a part of Bulawayo’s artistic community where it was nothing but the celebration of life.”
The amaBooks of…
Writer John Eppel offered some of his poetry with all proceeds going to Childline. We had no idea what publishing was all about. It was a steep learning curve, but we had the support of a great printer and all the thousand copies quickly sold out! John was chuffed and thought we should carry on publishing as people were clearly interested. One of my passions became the Short Writings from Bulawayo series, where we featured writers from diverse sections from the community – men, women, gay, straight, black or white …
There were lots of bookshops back then and we were happy to be a part of the artistic community that celebrated life. We could fill up the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo with 200-300 people and it would even be on the news, that is if the ZBC guys didn’t “accidentally tape over our bulletin” with something else!
We didn’t make much money so we kept our regular jobs as well as running amaBooks. The highlight was all the wonderful people we met as new people in a new country. We got to attend international book fairs like the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest in the world, which we attended twice.
We were lucky and the writers we have worked with over the past twenty-five years have been amazing. We recently co-published a translation of Ignatius Mabasa’s Mapenzi into English, and it is available in Zimbabwe and the UK. We are getting a lot of submissions lately, which is heartening.
The Return to the UK of…
The impetus to return home was due to my ill-health and, as you will know, it is challenging to get sick in Zimbabwe. Plus, we wanted to be closer to family, and the NHS (National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system of the United Kingdom – SJ). Otherwise, we would probably still live in Zimbabwe. We had rented in Claremont, Esigodini, on a 30-acre plot and could do market gardening, which was quite fun. It was sometimes a mission when there was no electricity for weeks and then cell phone coverage didn’t reach the area. We lived amongst a good community of people, many of whom had retired from the civil service or city life.
The Land Reform Era of…
The Patriot newspaper really did not like amaBooks and I was once referenced to as being “a snake”. Another time, a ZANU-PF person (Zimbabwe’s ruling party since 1980 – SJ) came up to me at the Book Fair when it was in Bulawayo and said, “If you keep your mouth shut, you will be just fine.” But we never felt unsafe in any way with the people. It was undeniable that there needed to be land redistribution, but the collapse of the economy at that time led to immense suffering. Many people suffered during that period – not just white farmers. The resilience of Zimbabweans helped them through the hardest of times – they tend to “make a plan”.
SJ: You deserve a farm for all the work you have done!
(laughs) A few people have said that! (Here is great journalism summarising the arrival of the British South Africa Company, to the current farmer compensation schemes – SJ).
The Religion of…
I like to think that I am a humanist – the basic goodness of human beings – but there are some unscrupulous people out there, including the so-called prophets who prey on people with very little, demanding tithes across many countries in Africa. I loathe discrimination and feel there are many things that need to change in Zimbabwe, including that Zimbabwe’s Criminal Law Act criminalises same-sex relations between men.
Jane Morris and her husband Brian Jones are living in a quiet plot in Wales in semi-retirement. “Aunty Thandi” was one of the agony aunts that inspired me do “Ask SJ”, and currently on the Facebook show, Dr. Love with Ezra Tshisa Sibanda.
Interview date: 25 August 2025
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Cite this article: Jermain, S. (2025, September 2). The Republic of. . . Jane Morris. Sonny Jermain Online. https://sonnyjermain.com/the-republic-of-jane-morris/
In-text: Parenthical – (Jermain, 2025); or Narrative – Jermain (2025).
