Unisa online - South Africa loses a much-loved writer

Well-known writer, Prof Es'kia Mphahlele, passed away on 27 October 2008. He was born in 1919 in South Africa and was best known for his novel Down Second Avenue (1959), which portrays his early life as a black South African.

Mphahlele was educated at Adams Teaching Training College. He became a teacher, but in the early 1950s was banned from teaching because of his opposition to the Bantu Education Act of 1953.

In the mid 1950s, he worked as an editor for the literary journal Drum and in 1956 obtained a master’s degree from the University of South Africa. Prof Mphahlele went into exile from South Africa in 1957. He subsequently lived in Nigeria, where he was an editor for the periodical Black Orpheus, in Kenya, Zambia and in the United States, where he attended the University of Denver and achieved his PhD. He earned the position of full professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to South Africa in 1977 and later became the first black professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. He founded the African Literature Department at Wits.

Prof Mphahlele's first book, Man must live (1947), is a collection of short stories about black life in South Africa. Down Second Avenue, his second and perhaps most famous work, achieved great critical and popular success, and is considered a classic of South African literature. The wanderers (1971) is an autobiographical novel dealing with themes in exile. His novel, Chirundu (1979), focuses on the conflicts felt by a fictional African politician. Afrika my music (1984) is concerned with the suffering caused by the Natives Land Act of 1913, which restricted blacks from residing in certain areas in South Africa. Mphahlele's other books include the critical works The African image (1962) and the Voices in the whirlwind and other essays (1972). A collection of his letters, Bury me at the marketplace, was published in 1984. Some of his other books include Renewal time (1988), A guide to creative writing (1966), Let’s write a novel (1981), The unbroken song, Es'kia (2002), Es'kia continued (2005), Let's talk writing (1987), Father come home (1984), In corner B (1967/1978) and Comic version (1988).

Prof Mphahlele received a number of awards and was awarded numerous honorary degrees and certificates during his lifetime, including an Honorary Degree in Literature and Philosophy from Unisa in 1997.