Es'kia Mphahlele

by Ruth Obee

Es'kia Mphahlele's life is well documented in Down Second Avenue, his autobiography about growing up in a black township in South Africa under apartheid, and in his memoir Afrika My Music. In 1952 he was banned from teaching in government schools because of his political activism but he continued his writing and teaching career in exile in other African nations and in Europe and the United States. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature and received the Ordre des Palmes from the French government in 1984 for his contribution to French language and culture. Mphahlele's most gratifying reward, however, was to witness the transfer of South Africa's leadership into the hands of Nelson Mandela in May of 1994. Except for his academic sorties, Mphahlele has been a permanent resident of his homeland since 1977, when he returned to an appointment in the department of African Literature at the University of the Witswatersrand. He became head of the department in 1983. Obee's fine stud