Kopano Matlwa

The novel’s protagonist is Mohumagadi, a black principal of her own successful school. The novel explores the relationship between Mohumagadi and her students and also the relationship between Mohumagadi and a white priest who is living through hard times. While writing this novel, Dr Matlwa-Mabaso felt disappointed with the new post-Apartheid era politics and with personal feelings; it wasn’t everything that was promised. The characters in the novel and their interactions with one another are representative of the feelings of disappointment that the South African “born free” generation experienced. They soon found "deceit and greed and corruption creeping into society"

Dr Matlwa is also the founder of the Transitions Foundation, an organization that seeks to help South Africa’s youth transition from hopelessness to personal fulfillment through education. Dr Matlwa was inspired to start this foundation after being invited to the Young African Women Leaders Forum in conjunction with Michelle Obama, the former US first lady. She knew that she wanted to give back to her community, and one way of accomplishing this was through education. Dr Matlwa “knew from her own personal experience [that education] can change not only the trajectory of an individual life but that of an entire family” (Transitions Foundation, Our Story). The foundation offers three different services to children and families; community engagement, academic tutoring, and personal development. Community Engagement offers programs for children in the Allanridge Secondary School in the township of Rabie Ridge, Midrand. Academic tutoring offers students intensive math and science tutoring in problem areas (so these are pretty tailored to the student’s needs). Lastly, Personal Developments seeks to empower these children and families through life and career skills. They offer educational field trips, mentors and book clubs to provide an array of opportunity and possible career interests.

In 2016, Dr Matlwa published her third novel Period Pain. This novel discusses how South Africans discriminate against foreign nations and how “xenophobia exists within households and institutions”. It follows Masechaba’s story as she grows up in South Africa dealing with how South Africans are perceived by other Africans as enslaved and spoiled. Through her struggles and marked events in her life, we are given a look into the mental health challenges that not only affect patients but also the professionals who deal with the patients. Dr Matlwa’s Period Pain was shortlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, the South African Literary Awards and South Africa’s Humanities and Social Sciences Award.

In 2016, Dr Matlwa gave a TED x talk in Johannesburg about her Ona-Mtoto-Wako project. She talked about her experience setting up these clinics in dire African communities and how the people there didn't let their situation determine their attitudes. She spoke of their desire to help their community which Dr Matlwa also possesses and how “one cannot hang one’s hopes on the brightness of the moon, instead one must derive one’s motivation from a dissatisfaction and impatience with the dark night, whatever that dark night might be for you."

Her many non-literary honours include: Young Physician Leader by the Interacademies Medial Panel in 2014, 2015 class of Tutu Fellows, Aspen Institute's New Voices in Global Health Fellow, and co-founder of Ona Mtoto Wako, an initiative to bring antenatal health care to pregnant women living in remote and rural parts of the developing world which won the 2015 Aspen Idea Award.

Kopano Matlwa Mabaso (née Matlwa) was born in township outside of Pretoria, South Africa. She began writing in 2004 when HIV was devastating South Africa to "debrief myself [Dr Matlwa] to try to make sense of the crazy times."

Matlwa is influenced by her youth when writing. She was nine or 10 years old in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, and she told NPR that she remembers it as an "exciting time": "We were the 'Rainbow Nation,' and kind of the 'golden children' of Africa." As she grew up, however, she says that sense of hope and newness fell away to the reality of a corruptible government. She is also a Rhodes Scholar and physician, who wrote her first novel, Coconut, while completing her medical degree.

Kopano Matlwa (born 1985) is a South African writer known for her novel Spilt Milk, which focuses on the South Africa's "Born Free" generation, or those who became adults in the post-Apartheid era and Coconut, her debut novel, which addresses issues of race, class and colonization in modern Johannesburg. Coconut was awarded the European Union Literary Award in 2006/07 and also won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2010. Spilt Milk made the long list for the 2011 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.