Mhlophe worked as a
newsreader at the Press Trust and
BBC Radio. From 1982-1983, she was a writer for the "Learn and Teach" magazine. She began to get a sense of the demand for stories while in
Chicago in 1988. She performed at a library in a mostly-
Black neighborhood, where an ever-growing audience kept inviting her back. Still, Mhlophe only began to think of storytelling as a career after meeting an
Imbongi, one of the legendary poets of African folklore, and after encouragement by
Mannie Manim, the then-director of the
Market Theatre,
Johannesburg. From 1989 to 1990, she was resident director at the
Market Theatre. Mhlophe has appeared in theatres from
Soweto to
London, and much of her work has been translated into
German,
French,
Italian,
Swahili, and
Japanese. She has travelled extensively in
Africa and other parts of the world giving storytelling workshops. Mhlophe's stories meld
folklore, information, current affairs, song, and
idiom. Storytelling is a deeply traditional activity in
South Africa, and Mhlophe is one of the few woman storytellers in a country dominated by males. She does her work through charismatic performances, working to preserve storytelling as a means of keeping history alive and encouraging South African children to read. She tells her stories in four of South Africa's languages:
English,
Afrikaans,
Zulu and
Xhosa. Her writing has appeared in collections including
A Land Apart: A South African Reader (eds
André Brink and
J. M. Coetzee, London: Faber and Faber, 1986),
Daughters of Africa (ed.
Margaret Busby, London: Jonatan Cape, 1992) and
Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region (ed. Margaret Daymond, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2002). ==Other activities==