Tatamkulu Afrika

Tatamkulu Afrika (Xhosa: Grandfather Africa; also: Tatamkhulu Afrika; December 7, 1920 – December 23, 2002) was a South African poet and writer.

Writing

k,oi His first novel, Broken Earth was published when he was seventeen (under his "Methodist name"), but it was over fifty years until his next publication, a collection of verse entitled Nine Lives. He won numerous literary awards including the gold Molteno Award for lifetime services to South African literature, and in 1996 his works were translated into French.

His autobiography, Mr Chameleon, was published posthumously in 2005.

Life

Tatamkhulu Afrika was born in Egypt and came to South Africa as a very young child. He was orphaned when both his parents died of flu. His father was Egyptian who married a Turkish woman.They lived in Cape Town's District 6, a mixed race inner-city community, with Afrikaans foster parents. District 6 was declared a “whites only” area in the 1960s and the community was destroyed. With an Arab father and a Turkish mother, Afrika could have been classified as a “white”, but he refused to be classified as a “white” and also became a Muslim.

In 1984, he joined the African National Congress, which led the struggle against apartheid, and in 1987, he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking or writing in public for five years. He wrote under the code name of Tatamkhulu Afrika, which enabled him to write.

He spent 11 years in prison and was only two cells away from Nelson Mandela. He was released in 1992. That was when he came back to District 6 to find it destroyed with no shops as promised. That was what his poem Nothing's Changed is about. The anger he felt towards what had happened to District 6 and his home.

Death

Tatamkulu Afrika died shortly after his 82nd birthday, from injuries received when he was run over by a car two weeks before, just after the publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden. He left a number of unpublished works, including his autobiography, two novels, four short novels, two plays and poetry.

Poetry

• Nine Lives (Carrefour/Hippogriff, 1991)
• Dark Rider (Snailpress/Mayibuye 1993)
• Maqabane (Mayibuye Books, 1994)
• Flesh and the Flame (Silk Road, 1995)
• The Lemon Tree (Snailpress, 1995)
• Turning Points (Mayibuye, 1996)
• The Angel and Other Poems (Carapace, 1999)
• Mad Old Man Under the Morning Star (Snailpress, 2000)
• Au Ceux (French translations) (Editions Creathis l'ecole des filles, 2000)
• Nothing's Changed (2002)

Novels

• Broken Earth (1940)
• The Innocents (1994)
• Tightrope (1996)
• Bitter Eden (Arcadia Books, 2002) An autobiographical novel set in a prisoner-of-war camp during WWII. The novel deals with three men who see themselves as straight but must negotiate the emotions that are brought to the surface by the physical closeness of survival in the male-only camps. The complex rituals of camp life and the strange loyalties and deep bonds between the men are depicted.

References

• Nothing's Changed, Brief biography (Powerpoint format)
• "Mother, Missus, Mate: Bisexuality in Tatamkhulu Afrika's Mr Chameleon and Bitter Eden," English in Africa 32,2:185-211. Cheryl Stobie, 1 October 2005, Rhodes University, Institute for the Study of English in Africa.
• "The Cape Tercentenary Foundation Medal". http://www.cape300foundation.org.za/archives-awards.htm. 

External links

• Works by Tatamkulu Afrika on Open Library at the Internet Archive