Nhlalwenhle Londeka came across FunDza in an unusual manner: she found a piece of her writing on our site – but it was under another author’s name. She contacted us via Facebook to complain. We investigated and discovered that the work was definitely her own, and not that of the FunDza Fanz writer who had sent it to us for publication under her own name.
What made our investigation easy was that the ‘Enhlabamkhosi’ published in our Fanz section was only a few paragraphs long, whilst Nhalwenhle’s ‘Enhlabamkhosi’ is a significant work that continues to grow in serialised format.
To combat the copyright infringement, we immediately removed the story from our site. But, we thought it would be good to discover more about the real author of ‘Enhlabamkhosi’ as we’d become intrigued by Nhlalwenhle. What motivates her? Why is her work the envy of impostor authors on social media? Sonja Kruse contacted her to find out more…
Nhlalwenhle, a 24-year-old writer from Richards Bay, started writing and posting ‘Enhlabamkhosi’ in January 2015 on a Facebook writing community page, BHALA Sifunde – izindaba zesinguni. The serialised story was popular and is currently in Season 2 Part 4 – with 205 likes and 79 comments no less!
Nhlalwenhle says that she was not really interested in writing when she was at school and only started writing in 2012. She loves seeing her ideas take shape on the page in isiZulu. The comments and suggestions she gets from her readers help feed her with new ideas for plot twists. In a way, she says, the readers become a part of the writing journey.
To have one’s work ‘shoplifted’ – to use Nhlalwenhle term – can be very unfortunate and upsetting. She took to social media and expressed her disappointment at having to question the honesty and integrity of people within their writing and reading community. She asked for everyone’s co-operation in reporting this kind of theft. She says that she doesn’t want this to deter writers from writing their stories.
The silver lining in this whole drama is that FunDza and BHALA Sifunde are now aware of one another and hope to find ways to work together in future.
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Mignon Hardie, executive director of FunDza, commented on the incident: “One of the conditions of FunDza Fanz writers sending us their work for publication in the Fanz section is that it is their own original work. Since we started publishing Fanz work in early 2012 we have received only three complaints about plagiarism/copyright infringement, including this one. The one claim was discovered to be spurious, while the other was valid (the offending piece was immediately removed from our site and the person who sent it in contacted). We work hard to deal with these issues as quickly as possible when they arise. Congratulations to Sonja Kruse and Zimkhitha Mlanzeli for their effective handling of this matter over the Christmas holidays.”