Derrick Zgambo (AKA David Kerr), was born in UK in 1942. He has lived most of his life (since 1969) in Africa (working at Universities in Malawi, Zambia, and, at present, Botswana). Betweeen 1982 and 1992, in addition to teaching at the University of Malawi, he ran a small industry (Mulunguzi Winery) which made wine out of wild fruits, he was a human rights monitor for Amnesty International, and wrote/distributed samizdat literature for the democracy movement campaigning against one-party rule. His decision to use a pseudonym for Passages, was to protect his then wife’s family against arrest, assassination or harassment by agents of the Malawi Secret Intelligence Service.

Kerr is a practitioner of theatre and media for transformation and human rights, about which he has written widely in Popular African Theatre: From Precolonial Times to the Present Day (James Curry, 1995) and Dance, Media Entertainment and Popular Theatre in South East Africa (Bayreuth African Studies Series 43, 1996). He has had numerous articles published in such journals as Harvard Educational Review, African Literature Today, Review of African Literature, Africa Media Review and Critical Arts. His collection of verse, Tangled Tongues, was published by Flambard in 2003 (www.flambardpress.co.uk/books). He has other poems published in numerous journals and anthologies, as well as co-authored plays such as Matteo Sakala (Lusaka 1978), Growing Wings (Torino, 1988), Thari Ya Lelwapa (Gaborone, 1997) and The Ghosts Return (Oxford 2006). At present Kerr is Professor and Head of Department of Media Studies at the University of Botswana.