About Creative Writing in Cape Town
Creative Writing in Cape Town is the flagship storytelling programme of Hatua Kali, a Pan-African storytelling studio, school, and research centre dedicated to strengthening the ways we communicate, imagine, and create together.
Through courses, workshops, and creative development spaces, we support writers, artists, and thinkers in transforming ideas into clear, compelling work — stories that move people, shape culture, and open new possibilities for how we live together.
Our approach understands storytelling not simply as craft, but as a relational practice: a way of listening, remembering, and responding to the world around us.
The Story Behind the School
Creative Writing in Cape Town was founded by Tanika Paschke-Moloi — an emergency medical practitioner by training, a writer and performer by craft, and a product-service designer by necessity.
After working across Sub-Saharan Africa and the United Kingdom in healthcare, the arts, and social innovation, she became increasingly aware of how deeply communication gaps shape our societies — in families, communities, institutions, and public life.
Stories are often where these gaps begin. And stories are often where healing begins too.
Hatua Kali was founded to explore storytelling as a form of social medicine: a way to restore connection, deepen understanding, and support creative responses to the complex challenges of our time.
Hatua Kali
Hatua Kali — Swahili for “Strong Action in a Soft Way” — is a social-impact arts organisation that works at the intersection of storytelling, design, and cultural research.
Part studio, part school, and part social-impact incubator, Hatua Kali brings together artists, researchers, community practitioners, and organisations to develop creative responses to social, cultural, environmental, and spiritual questions across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Our work centres:
cross-cultural collaboration
intergenerational knowledge exchange
creative experimentation
and the conditions that allow innovation to emerge from diverse voices and lived experience.
We believe that imagination is a resource, and that storytelling is one of the most powerful ways we have to shape the futures we inhabit.
Our Approach to Creative Practice
Every course, workshop, and mentorship container within Creative Writing in Cape Town draws on a wide body of knowledge and creative traditions.
Our methodology weaves together:
Pan-African and Eastern European indigenous knowledge traditions
contemporary literary and storytelling craft
somatic and psychological approaches to creativity
relational and systems-thinking practices
Together, these perspectives support a holistic understanding of creativity — one that recognises storytelling as spiritual, relational, psychological, ecological, and social work.
We help writers and creators learn how to listen for ideas, develop them with clarity and discipline, and bring creative work into material form.
Supporting a Wider Vision
Creative Writing in Cape Town operates as an independent creative education initiative while contributing resources back into the broader work of Hatua Kali.
Through this relationship, the programme helps support the ongoing development of storytelling research, creative education tools, and collaborative projects that strengthen communication, cultural dialogue, and relational healing in South Africa and beyond.
Our aim is simple and ambitious at once:
to cultivate creative practices that help people live, work, and imagine together more wisely.
An Invitation
Whether you are a writer beginning your first story, an artist exploring new creative forms, or a thinker seeking clearer language for the ideas that move you —
you are welcome here.
Because the stories we tell shape the worlds we build.
Meet Our Founder
Hello, I’m Tanika Paschke-Moloi—
a multi-hyphenate creative exploring many art forms, with a foundation in journalism, design communication and social entrepreneurship.
For many years, I worked as a storyteller—consulting and collaborating with design agencies, start-ups and social impact organizations across Sub-Saharan Africa and the UK.
Alongside this, I’ve been writing a fictionalised autobiography, Speak the Truth and Run—the story of a young white girl adopted into a Black family in Soweto, navigating love across class, race, and gender in post-apartheid South Africa.
I’ve also created a live music and storytelling solo show, The Butterfly Effect—a sonic exploration of individuation and spiritual transformation.
At heart, I am a lover of language and story. As I continue to grow my own creative practice, I direct an arts collective and build Creative Writing in Cape Town as a way of sharing that passion—bringing people together through a shared curiosity about what it means to be human.
In my spare time, you’ll find me curled up with a book, playing guitar, or wandering slowly through the mountains, treasure-hunting for flowers.
Contact us
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!