Lewis Nkosi

Lewis Nkosi
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"Mating Birds" redirects here. For mating behaviour of birds, see Birds mating.
Lewis Nkosi
Lewis Nkosi at the Centre for the Study of Southern

African Literature and Languages at the University of
Durban-Westville, 2001
5 December 1936
Born Embo, KwaZulu-Natal, South
Africa
5 September 2010 (aged 73)
Died
Johannesburg, South Africa
Nationality South African
Occupation Novelist, journalist, essayist, poet
Lewis Nkosi (5 December 1936 – 5 September 2010) was a South African writer, who spent 30
years in exile as a consequence of restrictions placed on him and his writing by the Suppression
of Communism Act and the Publications and Entertainment Act passed in the 1950s and 1960s.
A multifaceted personality, he attempted every literary genre, literary criticism, poetry, drama,
novels, short stories, essays, as well as journalism.
Contents
 1 Early life
 2 Later life
o 2.1 Literary career in South Africa
o 2.2 Life as an exile
o 2.3 Return to South Africa
 3 Works
o 3.1 Novels
o 3.2 Drama
o 3.3 Poetry
o 3.4 Short stories
o 3.5 Literary criticism and journalism
 4 Themes
 5 Quotations
 6 Critical appraisal and research
 7 Bibliography
 8 Awards
 9 Posthumous honour
 10 References
 11 Further reading
 12 External links
Early life
Nkosi was born in a traditional Zulu family in a place called Embo in KwaZulu-Natal, South
Africa. He attended local schools, before enrolling at M. L. Sultan Technical College in
Durban.[1]
Later life
Nkosi in his early twenties began working as a journalist, first in Durban, joining the weekly
publication Ilanga lase Natal ("Natal sun") in 1955, and then in Johannesburg for Drum
magazine and as chief reporter for its Sunday newspaper, the Golden City Post, from 1956 to
1960.[2]
Literary career in South Africa
He contributed essays to many magazines and newspapers. His essays criticised apartheid and
the racist state, as a result, the South African government banned his works.
Life as an exile
Nkosi faced severe restrictions on his writing due to the publishing regulations found in the
Suppression of Communism Act and the Publications and Entertainment Act passed in the 1950s
and 1960s. His works were banned under the Suppression of Communism Act,[3] and he faced
severe restrictions as a writer. At the same time he became the first black South African
journalist to win a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University to pursue his studies.[4] When he
applied for permission to go to United States, he was granted a one-way exit permit to leave
South Africa, thus barred from returning. In 1961, accepting the scholarship to study at Harvard,
he began a 30-year exile.
In 1962 he attended the African Writers Conference at Makerere University, along with the likes
of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ezekiel Mphahlele.[5] He was an
editor for The New African in London and the NET in the United States. He became a Professor
of Literature and held positions at the University of Wyoming and the University of California-
Irvine, as well as at universities in Zambia and in Warsaw, Poland. He appeared in Three Swings
on a Pendulum, a programme about "Swinging London" in 1967 which can be viewed on BBC
iplayer.[6]
Return to South Africa
Lewis Nkosi returned to South Africa in 2001, after a gap of nearly four decades. His final years
before his death in 2010 were passed in financial difficulties and ill health. He was apparently
injured in a car crash in 2009 and spent his time on the bed, slowly recovering from the wounds;
however, that never really happened and he drifted towards death. One of the African literary
legend's efforts in literature did not give him any economic relief and his friends and fans
gathered a charity fund to pay his last medical bills.[7] He died on Sunday, 5 September 2010, at
the Johannesburg Wellness Clinic.[8]
Works
Novels
Though Nkosi started his literary career in the 1960s, he entered the realm of fiction much later
than his Drum colleagues. His first novel, Mating Birds, was published in 1983. His next novel,
Underground People, came out in 2002 and his third novel, Mandela's Ego, in 2006.
Mating Birds (1986)
Mating Birds is the narration of an educated South African black native called Ndi Sibiya. He
narrates the story from prison, awaiting a death sentence. As a jobless youth Sibiya wanders the
city of Durban and reaches the segregated beach. There he finds a white girl on the other side of
the fence (on the white side of the beach). They silently exchange looks and enter into a muted
affair. They were well aware that race laws in South Africa would sentence them to
imprisonment if caught. The white girl intentionally allows her naked body to be seen by Sibiya.
He takes the entire episode as a love affair between the white girl and himself. The girl with her
regular appearances on the beach and seeming interest dupes Sibiya into believing her.
After several silent meetings on the beach, Sibiya follows her to her bungalow, finds her lonely
and willing, and enters into sexual copulation. But they are discovered by neighbours, and the
white girl accuses Sibiya of rape. A trial by white judges begins. In the court, the white girl,
Veronica, denies any knowledge of Sibiya and reiterates the charge of rape against him. The
court finds Sibiya guilty and sentences him to death.
The novel generated a controversy and received critical attention, being awarded the Macmillan
Silver Pen Prize in 1986. The New York Times declared the novel one of the best hundred books
of 1986.
Underground People (2002)
Nkosi's second novel, Underground People, is a political thriller. In this novel, he moved away
from the theme of inter-racial sexual relations and centred the story on the armed struggle in
South Africa.
Cornelius Molapo is a language teacher and a member of the National Liberation Movement, an
organisation waging armed war against the racist white minority government. He is a poet, a
great orator, hungry reader of many books, and even plays cricket. He often criticises the policy
of the Central Committee and irks its members. To counter him, they draw a strategy. The
Central Committee of the Organization advises Cornelius to go to a remote part of the country
called Tabanyane and to participate in peasant uprisings. The Central Committee plans to make
use of his absence from mainstream life into an act of abduction by the Government. At first he
hesitates, but reluctantly agrees. After reaching Tabanyane, Cornelius organises the poor
illiterate jobless country men into revolutionary men and leads them. In this task, he enlists the
support of Princess Madi, who is a daughter of the deposed chief of Tabanyane. During the
clandestine operations, he takes two white hostages into his custody. However, he is unwilling to
execute the unarmed civilians.
Meanwhile, the Central Committee starts a big propaganda about the disappearance of Cornelius
from duties. They blame it on the South African police, who deny any knowledge of him. The
National Liberation Movement brings the matter to international organisations like the United
Nations and Human Rights International. The latter sends its official Anthony Ferguson, who
was born in South Africa and immigrated to England, to investigate the matter. Anthony's sister
and mother are still living in South Africa. After some rest he undertakes to search for Cornelius
unsuccessfully.
The Central Committee members, plagued by jealousy of his success as a revolutionary, want to
use the issue of white hostages for the release of their leader from prison, engage in talks with
the Government and to observe a ceasefire. But contrary to the expectations of the Central
Committee, Cornelius defies them and conducts attacks on the police stations and other
locations. To escape police persecution, Cornelius leaves his hideout, and allows the white
hostages to leave unharmed. The white hostages reach police and recognise Cornelius's photo
and confirm his active presence in the fight.
Naturally, police suspect the intentions of Anthony Ferguson and ask him to go to Tabanyane, to
convince Cornelius to surrender. He takes the help of a member of the Central Committee and
reaches Tabanyane. However, Cornelius refuses to surrender and ditch the people for whom he
had been fighting. Eventually, the police shoot, and he dies.
Mandela's Ego (2006)
Nkosi's third novel, Mandela's Ego (2006), has a strange story to tell. Dumisani Gumede is a
teenage boy who has come of age in a Zulu village and runs after every girl and woman to satiate
his newly acquired power. His uncle Simon tells him many stories about Nelson Mandela and
makes him a follower of the great leader. In the story telling, Uncle Simon invents stories with
lies and half-truths. He also tells Dumisani that Mandela is a great pursuer of women. Taking cue
from the "real life" of Mandela, Dumisani goes unstopped in his conquests. In his village, every
girl falls for his charms except Nobuhle, a beautiful orphaned girl. His admiration for Mandela
goes to the extent of starting a football club, with Dumisani as its chairman. He even goes to the
city of Pietermartizburg to see Mandela, who comes there to address a convention demanding
equal rights for all races and a dialogue among all the races.
After his schooling, Dumisani joins a tourist company as a guide. Dumisani's friend Sofa Sonke,
driver of the tourist bus, brings every day a newspaper from Durban for him. After many
attempts to win Nobuhle, Dumisani finally succeeds and gets accepted by her. She invites him to
meet her on the river bank. On the same day, Dumisani receives the news of Mandela's arrest.
The news shocks him and takes his nerve away. When Dumisani tries to unite with Nobuhle, his
body fails. He tries again but fails. His sexual energy deserts him. Nobuhle leaves in tears.
Dumisani consults many, witch doctors, tribal doctors and conventional doctors in hospitals. But
nothing works to cure him. He leaves his home, wanders the country aimlessly for years. When
he reaches middle age, one day he hears the news of Mandela's release from prison. He attends
the first public address of Mandela after the release. He rejoices. In his joy, he huddles a woman
next to him, and his lost sexual urge returns. His life is restored.
Drama
Nkosi's plays include The Black Psychiatrist and some drama for radio.[9]
Poetry
Nkosi's few poems include "To Herbert Dhlomo" in Ilanga lase Natal (22 October 1955).
Ntongela Masilela notes that, despite Nkosi's early promise, "in his whole life he wrote seven
poems, the last one written in Lusaka in the early 1980s where he was then living and published
at that time in Sechaba, the political and cultural review of the African National Congress."[8]
Short stories
Nkosi wrote a good number of short stories. His story of police violence and popular resistance
in a black township, "Under the Shadow of the Guns", appeared in the 1990 anthology Colours
of a New Day, the book taking its title from an optimistic phrase used by one of the characters in
Nkosi's story.[10]
Literary criticism and journalism

He wrote critical essays on many issues, including politics, history, African affairs, American
culture, and civilisation. No other critic touches upon such diversified themes. His critical works
include Home and Exile (1965), The Transplanted Heart (1975), and The Tasks and Masks
(1981). His essays and other works were published over four decades in America, England and
Africa. Publications in which his writing appeared include Drum, Ilanga lase Natal, Golden City
Post, Transition, The Guardian, The Africa Report, Afro-Asian Writings, Sechaba, New Society,
The Spectator, New Statesman, The Observer, Negro Digest, Black Orpheus, Fighting Talk,
Contact, The African Guardian, Southern African Review of Books, London Review of Books,
Genèva-Afrique, The New African, and Harvard Crimson.[8]
Themes
As opposed to apartheid, Nkosi's work explores themes of politics, relationships, and sexuality.
His works, possessing great depth, received less recognition than they had actually deserved. In
the post-apartheid era, his works are gaining critical attention across the third world. Nkosi
joined forces with African powerhouse authors Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka in an
interview in the third chapter of Bernth Lindfors' Conversations With Chinua Achebe. In 1978,
Nkosi and composer Stanley Glasser wrote a collection of six Zulu-style songs called Lalela
Zulu for The King's Singers, a group of six white British, male a cappella singers.
Quotations
On the situation in South Africa during apartheid
"Africans have learned that if they are remaining sane at all it is pointless to try to live
within the law. In a country where the Government has legislated against sex, drinks,
employment, free movement and many other things, which are taken for granted in the
Western world, it would take a monumental kind of patience to keep up with the demands
of the law. A man's sanity may even be in question by the time he reaches the ripe age of
twenty-five." (Nkosi: Home and Exile, 22)
On black writers and their literature
"Black South Africans did not produce on elite which was alienated form the black
masses or even from the conditions of everyday life under which our people laboured. In
South Africa we were saved from the emergence of Black Bourgeoisie by the leveling
effect of apartheid." (Nkosi: Home and Exile, 32)
On his exile
"A writer needs his roots; he needs his people perhaps more than they need him in order
that they should corroborate the vision he has of them, or at least, to dispute the
statements he may make about their lives." (Nkosi: Home and Exile, 93)
On the writers and commitment

"…whether we consider ourselves revolutionaries or not, are playing a marginal role. We
may be good for propaganda; we may raise some money and build up contacts for the
people of South Africa-but there is no such thing as a revolution fought in exile, without
a base among the oppressed masses of the country for which the change is desired."
(Nkosi: On South Africa, 286–292)
"Ambushed by history, deprived of the moral and material support of the socialist camp
by the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, a negotiated peace, between a lame
government and weary liberation movements was probably the next best thing.… The
negotiated peace enacted what Doris Somer, writing about the South Africa, described as
a premature end of a history." (The Republic of Letters: Mandela’s Republic)
Critical appraisal and research

The first comprehensive and critical review on Nkosi appeared in 2006, edited by Professor
Lindy Steibel and Professor Liz Gunner, entitled Still Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on
Lewis Nkosi, published by Wits University Press.[11]
Nkosi's works are gaining recognition and being prescribed as university and college textbooks.
Some of his works of criticism and essays have been accepted as standard reference texts in the
area of African literary criticism and literature. Research on Nkosi's work has also gained
momentum across the Third World countries. He is a featured writer in the KZN Literary
Tourism project.[12][13]
Bibliography
Collections of essays
 Home and Exile, Longman, 1965

 Home and Exile and other selections, Longman, 1983, ISBN 0-582-64406-2
 The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa, 1975
 Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, Longman, 1981, ISBN 0-582-
64145-4
Plays
 The Rhythm of Violence (1964)

 The Chameleon and the Lizard
 The Black Psychiatrist (2001)
Novels
 Mating Birds, Constable, 1986, ISBN 0-09-467240-7 (Winner of the Macmillan Pen
prize)
 Underground People, Kwela Books, 2002, ISBN 0-7957-0150-0, originally published in
Dutch in 1994
 Mandela's Ego, Struik, 2006, ISBN 1-4152-0007-6
Short stories
 "The Hold-Up", Lusaka, Zambia: Wordsmith
Films
 He shared the writing credits with Lionel Rogosin on Come Back, Africa (1959),[1] a film
shot mainly in Sophiatown.
Awards
 1961: Nieman Fellowship, Harvard University
 1965: Dakar Festival Prize
 1977: C. Day-Lewis Fellowship
 1987: Macmillan Silver Pen Award
 2009: Presidential National Order of Ikhamanga: Silver (OIS)
Posthumous honour
In February 2011, wordsetc.co.za published a commemorative volume entitled The Beautiful
Mind of Lewis Nkosi.
On 13 June 2011 Nadine Gordimer participated in a colloquium to commemorate the life and
works of Lewis Nkosi.[14]
On 12 April 2012 the Durban University of Technology (DUT) conferred on Nkosi a

posthumous honorary Doctor of Technology Degree in Arts and Design in recognition of his
significant contributions as a prolific and profound South African writer and essayist.[15] The
award was accepted by Professor Nkosi's widow, Professor Astrid Starck-Adler, at the
graduation ceremony at the DUT Midlands Campus. She was also the guest speaker during the
ceremony.[16]
References
1.
 "Lewis Nkosi", South African History Online.

  "Lewis Nkosi", Encyclopædia Britannica.
  Peter Horn, "A radical rethinking of the art of poetry in an aprtheid society", in Writing My
Reading: Essays on Literary Politics in South Africa, Rodopi, 1994, p. 49, note 2.
  "Lewis Nkosi, the first black South African fellow, dies at 73", Nieman Foundation for
Journalism at Harvard, 9 September 2010.
  Denis Herbstein, "Lewis Nkosi obituary", The Guardian, 22 September 2010.
  "Three Swings on a Pendulum", BBC iPlayer.
  Makatile,"Widow bereft as Nkosi's esteemed works add up to nothing", Sowetan, 8
September 2010.
  Ntongela Masilela, "Lewis Nkosi (1936-2010): An Appreciation", Claremont (Los
Angeles), California, 7 and 8 September 2010.
  Liz Gunner, "Contaminations: BBC Radio and the Black Artist — Lewis Nkosi's "The
Trial" and "We Can't All be Martin Luther King", in Lindy Stiebel and Liz Gunner (eds), Still
Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on Lewis Nkosi, Rodopi, 2005, pp. 51–66.
  Sarah Lefanu and Stephen Hayward, Colours of a New Day (London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1990, pp. xiii, 287.
  Lindy Steibel and Liz Gunner (eds), "Still Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on Lewis
Nkosi" (Cross/Cultures 81)[permanent dead link], KwaZuluNatal University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-
86814-435-6.
  Southafrica.net. "KwaZulu-Natal Literary Tourism Route". southafrica.net. Retrieved 24
September 2014.
  "Lewis Nkosi". KZN Literary Tourism. Retrieved 24 September 2014.
  Deborah Minors, "Gordimer, Mtshali, Khumalo remember Lewis Nkosi", University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 19 July 2011.
  "DUT posthumous honorary Doctorate for Professor Lewis Nkosi" Archived 31 December
2013 at the Wayback Machine., Durban University of Technology, 28 February 2012.
16.  Leanne Jansen, "Honours for top South Africans", IOL News, 27 February 2012.
Further reading
 Bernth Lindfors (ed.), Conversations With Chinua Achebe, University Press of
Mississippi (October 1997)
 Geoffrey V. Davis (ed.), Southern African Writing: Voyages and Explorations, Rodopi
(January 1994)
 Lindy Stiebel and Liz Gunner (eds), Still Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on
Lewis Nkosi, KwaZuluNatal University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-86814-435-6
External links
 Tribute to Lewis Nkosi by the Minister of Arts and Culture, Ms Lulama Xingwana MP,
South African Government Information, 8 September 2010.
 "RIP Lewis Nkosi, 1936 – 2010", Books Live.
 "Lewis Nkosi dies", Times Live, 7 September 2010.
 Vuyo Seripe, "Writer's Block", Mahala, 28 September 2010.
 "Lewis Nkosi, writer and academic", The Witness, 16 September 2010; reprinted in
Pambazuka News.
 "Lewis Nkosi (1936–2010): An Appreciation", Post-Colonial Networks.
 "Cato Manor Writers – Lewis Nkosi", Ulwazi.
 Litzi Lombardozzi, "The Journey Beyond Embo: the construction of place and identity in
the writings of Lewis Nkosi", University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. "Journeying beyond Embo:
the construction of exile, place and identity in the writings of Lewis Nkosi", dissertation,
January 2007.
 A documentary on Lewis Nkosi
 Ryan Wells, "Hands Off, Westerner", Cinespect, 24 January 2012.
 Khainga Okwemba, "Legend of a critic and literary scholar", The Star, 26 January 2012.
 Zodidi Mhlana, "Follow the literary trails of great writers", The New Age Online, 23
February 2012.
 Janice Harris, "On Tradition, Madness, and South Africa: An Interview with Lewis
Nkosi".
 WorldCat Identities
 BNF: cb12007046f (data)
 GND: 124807623
Authority  ISNI: 0000 0000 8158 6963
control  LCCN: n82047705
 SUDOC: 028184033
 VIAF: 79040607
Categories:
 1936 births
 2010 deaths
 People from KwaZulu-Natal
 Zulu people
 South African journalists
 Harvard University alumni
 20th-century South African novelists
 South African male novelists
 South African dramatists and playwrights
 Male dramatists and playwrights
 20th-century dramatists and playwrights
 21st-century South African novelists
 South African male short story writers
 20th-century short story writers
 21st-century short story writers
 20th-century essayists
 Recipients of the Order of Ikhamanga
 Nieman Fellows
 20th-century male writers
 21st-century m
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Selected works
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Described in South Africa Sunday Times as a “sharp and gifted writer with an irreverent take on
life,” Lewis Nkosi has lived in exile since 1960. He held several jobs in print and broadcast
journalism before beginning an academic career that brought him to campuses in Europe, the
United States, and Zambia. In his plays, fiction, and essays, Nkosi confronts issues relating to
apartheid and its aftermath in contemporary South Africa.

Nkosi was born on December 5, 1936, in Natal, South Africa, and attended a boarding school run
by religious missionaries in Zululand, a region of Natal province that is the ancestral home of the
Zulu people. He then enrolled in the M. L. Sultan Technical College in Durban. Nkosi’s first job
as a journalist was with a Zulu newspaper, Ilanga lase Natal. In 1956 he joined the staff of Drum
magazine, an influential publication by and for Africans that attempted to raise anti-apartheid
consciousness. As he explained to Kerri Berney in the Brandeis University newspaper The
Justice, “We would send reporters [in disguise] to jail or to white farms and have them write
about how the prisoners were treated.”
By 1959 Nkosi’s work was sufficiently well-known that the young reporter was invited to apply
for a Neiman Fellowship for study at Harvard University. He was accepted, but the South
African government refused to give him a passport. “I figured I would just stay in South Africa,”
he explained in The Justice, “but a lawyer friend of mine got very angry about my treatment.
He…found a very obscure law that let me out of South Africa.” But once Nkosi left the country,
he would lose his citizenship and not be allowed to return.
After completing his studies at Harvard, Nkosi flew to London, where he obtained work with the
BBC. He produced the radio series Africa Abroad from 1962 to 1965, and interviewed major
African writers for the television program African Writers of Today, a series for National
Education Television. In London, Nkosi also served as editor of New African magazine from
1965 to 1968. Commenting later on his decision to live in exile, Nkosi told the South Africa
Sunday Times that “I couldn’t care about the prospect of not returning. My sense of what was
wrong in South Africa at the time remained. But leaving helped me come to terms with the fact
that we did not own injustice. I began to see the larger world from a perspective not limited to
race,” he added. “To be frank, I was relieved to be rid of the constraints placed on me.”

In 1963, Nkosi’s stage play The Rhythm of Violence was produced in London. When it was
published the following year, the play received significant praise. Depicting the plight of
characters who are caught up in a spiral of mindless violence, the play shows that
At a Glance…
Born on December 5, 1936, in Durban, South Africa; married Bronwyn Ollerenshaw, 1965;
children: Louise, Joy (twins). Education : Sultan Technical College, Durban, 1954-55; Harvard
University, Nieman Fellow, 1961-62; University of London, BA English literature, 1974;
University of Sussex, MA, 1977.
Career: llanga Lase Natal (Zulu newspaper), Durban, South Africa, staff member, 1955-56;
Golden City Post, Johannesburg, South Africa, journalist, 1956-60; Drum magazine,
Johannesburg, South Africa, journalist, 1956-60 South African Information Bulletin, Paris,
France, writer, 1962-6B; BBC Transcription Center, London, England, radio producer, 1962-64;
The New African, literary editor, 1965-68; University of California-Irvine, visiting Regents
professor, 1970; University of Wyoming, professor of English, 1991-99. University of Zambia,
University of Warsaw, and Brandeis University, visiting teaching positions
Awards: Dakar Festival prize, 1965; C. Day Lewis fellowship, 1977; Macmillan Silver Pen
award, 1987.
Addresses: Home —Switzerland; Agent —Deborah Rogers, Rogers, Coleridge, and White Ltd.,
20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England.
understanding between human beings is an attainable goal, but that the rhythm of self-
perpetuating violence prevents it. According to a contributor to Contemporary Dramatists, The
Rhythm of Violence is an “outstanding first play and an important one,” and caused critics to
place Nkosi among the “vanguard of the new black South African theater.”
Nkosi also wrote radio plays during this period, including The Trial and We Can’t All Be Martin
Luther King. His television play, Malcolm, aired in Sweden and in Britain. In addition to
dramatic works, Nkosi also began writing literary criticism.
Nkoksi’s most famous work for the stage is The Black Psychiatrist, a one-act play that toured
several African countries and also was produced at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. In this
work, a white woman visits the consulting room of a black male psychiatrist in England. In an
openly seductive manner, the woman implies that she knows him from long ago, when they were
lovers in South Africa. The psychiatrist vehemently denies this, but as the play proceeds, it
becomes clear that the woman does have intimate information about the doctor’s past—enough
to worry him. Though he tries to fend off the woman’s sexual advances, the psychiatrist finally
embraces her, but then reveals his own secret: that her father had raped his mother, a black
servant on the white estate, and that he is the woman’s half-brother.

The subject of rape is also central to Nkosi’s celebrated first novel, Mating Birds. Sibya, a young
man who has just moved to the city from his native Zulu village, sees an attractive white woman
on the segregated beach and begins a silent flirtation with her across the fence that separates
white and colored areas. He begins following the woman everywhere, and eventually goes to her
bungalow. Seeing him watching her, she undresses in front of him and lies down on the bed. He
enters her room and they have sex, but almost immediately he is arrested and charged with rape.
Sibya narrates his story from his prison cell, where he awaits the death sentence for this “rape.”
The novel attracted considerable attention. Some critics were disturbed by its suggestion that the
woman was “asking for it,” but others hailed it as a powerful indictment of apartheid. Nation
critic George Packer wrote that the novel “attempts nothing less than an allegory of colonialism
and apartheid, one that dares to linger in complexity.” The novel won the Macmillan Silver Pen
award in 1987 and has been translated into several languages.
Despite using the subject of interracial sex so prominently in his own work, Nkosi has been
highly critical of the stereotypical treatment that many other black South African writers have
given this theme. He makes this point clearly in his essay “Fiction by Black South Africans,”
which criticizes writers who rely on “readymade plots of racial violence, social apartheid, [and]
interracial love affairs.” Yet these elements are found in Nkosi’s work, too; critics, however,
have admired the fresh and often ironic approach that he brings to this material. His novel
Underground People, for example, deals with apartheid-era resistance during South Africa’s
State of Emergency, which was declared in 1985 and gave the government wideranging
emergency powers, including the power to imprison people without charge. Despite the gravity
of this subject, Nkosi’s novel focuses comic characters and situations. Cornelius (“Corny”)
Molapo is a dabbler in poetry and politics whose disappearance from Johannesburg is staged by
the resistance movement so that he can travel to the countryside to organize an uprising there.
Thinking that Corny has actually been detained by the government, a naive human rights worker
from London comes to “find” him. South Africa Sunday Times contributor Andries Oliphant
described the Underground People as a “mélange of irony, satire and ribald humour” that
communicates a “droll attitude to history.” Nkosi’s use of a laughable character instead of a
heroic one, in Oliphant’s words, “boldly enacts the license of fiction and breaks with the dull
dirges on the historical crisis in South Africa.”
A prominent literary critic, Nkosi has written frequently for New York Review of Books and
London Review of Books and has published several volumes of essays. He often criticizes
contemporary South African fiction, as he does in the anthology Writing South Africa:
Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1995, for its “formal insufficiencies, its
disappointing breadline asceticism and prim disapproval of irony, and its well-known
predilection for what Lukacs called ‘petty realism, the trivially detailed painting of local
colour.”’ This condition, Nkosi adds, is rooted in South Africa’s colonial legacy and, “it is hoped,
a post-apartheid condition will set it free.” Nkosi has taught at several universities, including the
University of California-lrvine, Brandéis University, and the University of Zambia. Retired from
the University of Wyoming, where he was a tenured professor, he now lives in Switzerland.
Selected works
Novels
Mating Birds, East African Publishing House, 1983; St. Martin’s Press, 1986.
The Hold-Up, Wordsmiths Zambia Ltd., 1989.
Underground People, Kwela Books, 2003.
Plays
Come Back Africa (screenplay), 1959.
Rhythm of Violence, 1963.
The Trial (radio play), 1969.
The Chameleon and the Lizard (libretto), 1971.
We Can’t All Be Martin Luther King (radio play), 1971.
Malcolm (television play), 1972.
The Black Psychiatrist, c. 1994.
Other
Home and Exile (essays), Longman, 1965; revised edition, 1983.
The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa, [Benin City, Nigeria], 1975.
Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, Longman, 1981.
(Contributor) Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1995, Derek
Attridge and Rosemary Jolly, eds., Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Sources
Books
Contemporary Authors, Gale Research, 2001.
Contemporary Dramatists, 6th ed., St. James Press, 1999.
Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., Gale Research, 1998.
Periodicals
Justice, November 1, 1995.
Nation, November 22, 1986.
New York Times, May 18, 1986.
New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1986.
Sunday Times (South Africa), November 24, 2002.
On-line
“Arts/Culture Review: Underground People,” Mmegi, www.mmegi.bw (June 29, 2004).
—E. Shostak
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Lewis Nkosi
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.
Lewis Nkosi
Lewis Nkosi (born 1936) is known chiefly for his scholarly studies of contemporary African
literature, and is the author of the novel Mating Birds (1986). Critics enthusiastically
praised Nkosi's prose style and narrative structure in Mating Birds, and several have
compared the work with Albert Camus's The Stranger.
Nkosi was born in Natal, South Africa, and attended local schools before enrolling at M. L.
Sultan Technical College in Durban. In 1956 he joined the staff of Drum magazine, a publication
founded in 1951 by and for African writers. In his Home and Exile and Other Selections (1965),
Nkosi described Drum's young writers as "the new African[s] cut adrift from the tribal reserve—
urbanised, eager, fast-talking and brash." According to Neil Lazarus, the description fitted Nkosi
as well. "Nkosi's whole bearing as a writer," he wrote, "was decisively shaped by the years in
Johannesburg working for the magazine." In 1960 Nkosi left South Africa on a one-way "exit
permit" after accepting a fellowship to study at Harvard University. Now living in England, he
teaches and writes articles on African literature. In addition to the novel Mating Birds, he has
also produced several plays and collections of essays, including The Rhythm of Violence (1963),
Malcolm (1972), The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa (1975), and Tasks and Masks:
Themes and Styles of African Literature (1981).
Mating Birds tells the story of Sibiya, who spots a white woman across a fence on a segregated
beach in Durban. Although the rules of apartheid keep them from speaking to each other, they
begin a wordless flirtation across the fence. Soon Sibiya becomes obsessed with the woman and
follows her everywhere. He learns that her name is Veronica and that she is a stripper at the local
nightclub. One day Sibiya follows Veronica to her bungalow. Seeing him, she undresses in front
of the open door and lies down on the bed. Sibiya enters her bedroom and has sex with her.
Shortly after, they are discovered, and Veronica accuses Sibiya of rape. He is then beaten,
arrested, and sentenced to death.
Many critics viewed Mating Birds as a commentary on South Africa's system of apartheid.
George Packer, for example, observed: "Mating Birds feels like the work of a superb critic.
Heavy with symbolism, analytical rather than dramatic, it attempts nothing less than an allegory
of colonialism and apartheid, one that dares to linger in complexity." Other commentators,
however, attacked the novel's ambiguous depiction of rape. "Nkosi's handling of the sexual
themes complicates the distribution of our sympathies, which he means to be unequivocally with
the accused man," noted Rob Nixon in the Village Voice. "For in rebutting the prevalent white
South African fantasy of the black male as a sex-crazed rapist, Nkosi edges unnecessarily close
to reinforcing the myth of the raped woman as someone who deep down was asking for it." For
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., even the question of whether Sibiya raped at all remains unclear. This
causes problems for the reader, as "we are never certain who did what to whom or why." Sibiya
himself is unsure: "But how could I make the judges or anyone else believe me when I no longer
knew what to believe myself? … Had I raped the girl or not?" Gates responded: "We cannot say.
Accordingly, this novel's great literary achievement—its vivid depiction of obsession— leads
inevitably to its great flaw." Sara Maitland further objected to Nkosi's portrayal of the white
woman: "Surely there must be another way for Nkosi's commitment, passion and beautiful
writing to describe the violence and injustice of how things are than this stock image of the pale
evil seductress, the eternally corrupting female?"
Despite the novel's shortcomings, Michiko Kakutani concluded in the New York Times, Mating
Birds "nonetheless attests to the emergence of … a writer whose vision of South Africa remains
fiercely his own." Similarly, Sherman W. Smith lauded: "Lewis Nkosi certainly must be one of
the best writers out of Africa in our time."
Exiled after leaving South Africa to study at Harvard University, Lewis Nkosi has written short
stories, plays, and criticism from his adopted home in England. Much of his work, however,
deals with African literature and social concerns. "As a playwright and short-story writer, he is
also the most subtly experimental of the black South African writers, many of whom are caught
in the immediacy of the struggle against apartheid," comments Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the New
York Times Book Review. According to Alistair Niven in British Book News Nkosi is "one of the
architects of the contemporary black consciousness in South Africa."
Further Reading
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 45, Gale, 1987.
Best Sellers, July, 1986.
Books and Bookmen, October, 1986.
British Book News, March, 1987.
Choice, June, 1982.
Listener, August 28, 1986.
London Review of Books, August 7, 1986.
Nation, November 22, 1986, pp. 570-574.
New Statesman, August 29, 1986, pp. 25-26; January 22, 1988, p. 32.
New Yorker, May 26, 1986.
New York Times, March 22, 1986.

New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1986, p. 3.
Observer, July 27, 1986.
Southern Review, January, 1987, pp. 106-118.
Spectator, August 16, 1986.
Times Literary Supplement, August 13, 1964, p. 723; February 3, 1966, p. 85; August 27, 1982,
p. 928; August 8, 1986, p. 863.
Village Voice, July 29, 1986, p. 46.
West Coast Review of Books, September, 1986.
World Literature Today, spring, 1983, pp. 335-337; summer, 1984, p. 462. □
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Nkosi, Lewis 1936–

COPYRIGHT 2005 Thomson Gale
Lewis Nkosi 1936–

Writer
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Selected works
Sources
Described in South Africa Sunday Times as a “sharp and gifted writer with an irreverent take on
life,” Lewis Nkosi has lived in exile since 1960. He held several jobs in print and broadcast
journalism before beginning an academic career that brought him to campuses in Europe, the
United States, and Zambia. In his plays, fiction, and essays, Nkosi confronts issues relating to
apartheid and its aftermath in contemporary South Africa.

Nkosi was born on December 5, 1936, in Natal, South Africa, and attended a boarding school run
by religious missionaries in Zululand, a region of Natal province that is the ancestral home of the
Zulu people. He then enrolled in the M. L. Sultan Technical College in Durban. Nkosi’s first job
as a journalist was with a Zulu newspaper, Ilanga lase Natal. In 1956 he joined the staff of Drum
magazine, an influential publication by and for Africans that attempted to raise anti-apartheid
consciousness. As he explained to Kerri Berney in the Brandeis University newspaper The
Justice, “We would send reporters [in disguise] to jail or to white farms and have them write
about how the prisoners were treated.”
By 1959 Nkosi’s work was sufficiently well-known that the young reporter was invited to apply
for a Neiman Fellowship for study at Harvard University. He was accepted, but the South
African government refused to give him a passport. “I figured I would just stay in South Africa,”
he explained in The Justice, “but a lawyer friend of mine got very angry about my treatment.
He…found a very obscure law that let me out of South Africa.” But once Nkosi left the country,
he would lose his citizenship and not be allowed to return.
After completing his studies at Harvard, Nkosi flew to London, where he obtained work with the
BBC. He produced the radio series Africa Abroad from 1962 to 1965, and interviewed major
African writers for the television program African Writers of Today, a series for National
Education Television. In London, Nkosi also served as editor of New African magazine from
1965 to 1968. Commenting later on his decision to live in exile, Nkosi told the South Africa
Sunday Times that “I couldn’t care about the prospect of not returning. My sense of what was
wrong in South Africa at the time remained. But leaving helped me come to terms with the fact
that we did not own injustice. I began to see the larger world from a perspective not limited to
race,” he added. “To be frank, I was relieved to be rid of the constraints placed on me.”

In 1963, Nkosi’s stage play The Rhythm of Violence was produced in London. When it was
published the following year, the play received significant praise. Depicting the plight of
characters who are caught up in a spiral of mindless violence, the play shows that
At a Glance…
Born on December 5, 1936, in Durban, South Africa; married Bronwyn Ollerenshaw, 1965;
children: Louise, Joy (twins). Education : Sultan Technical College, Durban, 1954-55; Harvard
University, Nieman Fellow, 1961-62; University of London, BA English literature, 1974;
University of Sussex, MA, 1977.
Career: llanga Lase Natal (Zulu newspaper), Durban, South Africa, staff member, 1955-56;
Golden City Post, Johannesburg, South Africa, journalist, 1956-60; Drum magazine,
Johannesburg, South Africa, journalist, 1956-60 South African Information Bulletin, Paris,
France, writer, 1962-6B; BBC Transcription Center, London, England, radio producer, 1962-64;
The New African, literary editor, 1965-68; University of California-Irvine, visiting Regents
professor, 1970; University of Wyoming, professor of English, 1991-99. University of Zambia,
University of Warsaw, and Brandeis University, visiting teaching positions
Awards: Dakar Festival prize, 1965; C. Day Lewis fellowship, 1977; Macmillan Silver Pen
award, 1987.
Addresses: Home —Switzerland; Agent —Deborah Rogers, Rogers, Coleridge, and White Ltd.,
20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England.
understanding between human beings is an attainable goal, but that the rhythm of self-
perpetuating violence prevents it. According to a contributor to Contemporary Dramatists, The
Rhythm of Violence is an “outstanding first play and an important one,” and caused critics to
place Nkosi among the “vanguard of the new black South African theater.”
Nkosi also wrote radio plays during this period, including The Trial and We Can’t All Be Martin
Luther King. His television play, Malcolm, aired in Sweden and in Britain. In addition to
dramatic works, Nkosi also began writing literary criticism.
Nkoksi’s most famous work for the stage is The Black Psychiatrist, a one-act play that toured
several African countries and also was produced at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. In this
work, a white woman visits the consulting room of a black male psychiatrist in England. In an
openly seductive manner, the woman implies that she knows him from long ago, when they were
lovers in South Africa. The psychiatrist vehemently denies this, but as the play proceeds, it
becomes clear that the woman does have intimate information about the doctor’s past—enough
to worry him. Though he tries to fend off the woman’s sexual advances, the psychiatrist finally
embraces her, but then reveals his own secret: that her father had raped his mother, a black
servant on the white estate, and that he is the woman’s half-brother.

The subject of rape is also central to Nkosi’s celebrated first novel, Mating Birds. Sibya, a young
man who has just moved to the city from his native Zulu village, sees an attractive white woman
on the segregated beach and begins a silent flirtation with her across the fence that separates
white and colored areas. He begins following the woman everywhere, and eventually goes to her
bungalow. Seeing him watching her, she undresses in front of him and lies down on the bed. He
enters her room and they have sex, but almost immediately he is arrested and charged with rape.
Sibya narrates his story from his prison cell, where he awaits the death sentence for this “rape.”
The novel attracted considerable attention. Some critics were disturbed by its suggestion that the
woman was “asking for it,” but others hailed it as a powerful indictment of apartheid. Nation
critic George Packer wrote that the novel “attempts nothing less than an allegory of colonialism
and apartheid, one that dares to linger in complexity.” The novel won the Macmillan Silver Pen
award in 1987 and has been translated into several languages.
Despite using the subject of interracial sex so prominently in his own work, Nkosi has been
highly critical of the stereotypical treatment that many other black South African writers have
given this theme. He makes this point clearly in his essay “Fiction by Black South Africans,”
which criticizes writers who rely on “readymade plots of racial violence, social apartheid, [and]
interracial love affairs.” Yet these elements are found in Nkosi’s work, too; critics, however,
have admired the fresh and often ironic approach that he brings to this material. His novel
Underground People, for example, deals with apartheid-era resistance during South Africa’s
State of Emergency, which was declared in 1985 and gave the government wideranging
emergency powers, including the power to imprison people without charge. Despite the gravity
of this subject, Nkosi’s novel focuses comic characters and situations. Cornelius (“Corny”)
Molapo is a dabbler in poetry and politics whose disappearance from Johannesburg is staged by
the resistance movement so that he can travel to the countryside to organize an uprising there.
Thinking that Corny has actually been detained by the government, a naive human rights worker
from London comes to “find” him. South Africa Sunday Times contributor Andries Oliphant
described the Underground People as a “mélange of irony, satire and ribald humour” that
communicates a “droll attitude to history.” Nkosi’s use of a laughable character instead of a
heroic one, in Oliphant’s words, “boldly enacts the license of fiction and breaks with the dull
dirges on the historical crisis in South Africa.”
A prominent literary critic, Nkosi has written frequently for New York Review of Books and
London Review of Books and has published several volumes of essays. He often criticizes
contemporary South African fiction, as he does in the anthology Writing South Africa:
Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1995, for its “formal insufficiencies, its
disappointing breadline asceticism and prim disapproval of irony, and its well-known
predilection for what Lukacs called ‘petty realism, the trivially detailed painting of local
colour.”’ This condition, Nkosi adds, is rooted in South Africa’s colonial legacy and, “it is hoped,
a post-apartheid condition will set it free.” Nkosi has taught at several universities, including the
University of California-lrvine, Brandéis University, and the University of Zambia. Retired from
the University of Wyoming, where he was a tenured professor, he now lives in Switzerland.
Selected works
Novels
Mating Birds, East African Publishing House, 1983; St. Martin’s Press, 1986.
The Hold-Up, Wordsmiths Zambia Ltd., 1989.
Underground People, Kwela Books, 2003.
Plays
Come Back Africa (screenplay), 1959.
Rhythm of Violence, 1963.
The Trial (radio play), 1969.
The Chameleon and the Lizard (libretto), 1971.
We Can’t All Be Martin Luther King (radio play), 1971.
Malcolm (television play), 1972.
The Black Psychiatrist, c. 1994.
Other
Home and Exile (essays), Longman, 1965; revised edition, 1983.
The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa, [Benin City, Nigeria], 1975.
Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, Longman, 1981.
(Contributor) Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1995, Derek
Attridge and Rosemary Jolly, eds., Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Sources
Books
Contemporary Authors, Gale Research, 2001.
Contemporary Dramatists, 6th ed., St. James Press, 1999.
Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., Gale Research, 1998.
Periodicals
Justice, November 1, 1995.
Nation, November 22, 1986.
New York Times, May 18, 1986.
New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1986.
Sunday Times (South Africa), November 24, 2002.
On-line
“Arts/Culture Review: Underground People,” Mmegi, www.mmegi.bw (June 29, 2004).
—E. Shostak
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"Nkosi, Lewis 1936–." Contemporary Black Biography. . Encyclopedia.com. 27 Aug. 2018
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Notes:
Lewis Nkosi
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.
Lewis Nkosi
York Times Book Review. According to Alistair Niven in British Book News Nkosi is "one of the
architects of the contemporary black consciousness in South Africa."
Further Reading
Choice, June, 1982.

p. 928; August 8, 1986, p. 863.
World Literature Today, spring, 1983, pp. 335-337; summer, 1984, p. 462. □
Lewis Nkosi Facts
York Times Book Review. According to Alistair Niven in British Book News Nkosi is "one of
the architects of the contemporary black consciousness in South Africa."
Further Reading on Lewis Nkosi

Choice, June, 1982.

p. 928; August 8, 1986, p. 863.
World How I Write’ – by literary legend Lewis Nkosi

by Adele on May 11th, 2016
Image: Victor Dlamini
UKZN Press has shared an excerpt from the recently released

Writing Home: Lewis Nkosi on South African Writing, edited by
Lindy Stiebel and Michael Chapman.
Lewis Nkosi, who died in 2010, was a writer and essayist who
spent 40 years in exile. He returned to South Africa,
intermittently, after the unbannings of 1990, but his critical eye
never left his home for long.
Writing Home showcases Nkosi’s wit, irony and moral toughness.

In it, he assesses a range of leading writers, including Herman
Charles Bosman, Breyten Breytenbach, JM Coetzee, Athol Fugard, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie
Head, Alex la Guma, Bloke Modisane, Es’kia Mphahlele, Nat Nakasa, Njabulo S Ndebele, Alan
Paton and Can Themba.
 More about the book
The following excerpt is taken from a chapter titled “How I Write”.
Enjoy!
*****
How I Write
from wordsetc: South African Literary Journal, First Quarter, 2011
It is not so long ago that European modernists, especially in France, used to say that when we
read literature writing is everything. When we read books or listen to stories, we have access to
the world through words or the word made flesh, as the Bible put it. The mystery, of course, is
how something that seems as immaterial as words can be made flesh.
Recently, I twice broke into tears over the death of two fictional characters during a re-reading of
a novel and a play; first over Anna’s death in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy’s famous novel, and then
over Cleopatra’s suicide in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. In both works the two women
commit suicide over love affairs that have gone badly wrong. Shakespeare’s character is, of
course, supposed to be based on a true historical personage, but reading about her in a historical
textbook had left me more or less indifferent. So what was it about reading the play about ‘The
Serpent of Egypt’ dying defiantly in the throes of love, and trying to avoid humiliation in the
hands of the Roman imperialists, that so moved me to tears? Cleo’s pride, her revulsion at being
dragged triumphantly through the streets of Rome, achieves a height of sublimity in her self-
induced death by the bite of a snake.
Some modernist theorists have sometimes gone so far as to suggest that writing is all, and they
claim that beyond writing itself, there is nothing. Maurice Blanchot, then Roland Barthes and,
certainly, Jacques Derrida became famously associated with the view that there was ‘nothing
outside the text’.
In these discussions, society and the material world are sometimes grandly referred to as the real.
The material world is seen as the very ‘outside’ of writing. But is it really? Is the real world that
‘outside’ of what we do when we write and are the effects that writing provokes so beyond
comprehension?
After all, my tears shed over two women at the very limit of their despair, over Cleopatra’s
suicide and Anna’s death, ground under the wheels of a railway train, were real enough; but how
does the creation of illusion manage to produce such real effects? Sympathy, you will say.
Empathy. A bit of psychology that goes some way to explain the mystery of the effects upon us
of artistic representation, but psychology finally explains nothing.
When it comes to wielding a pen or a brush, how does the manipulation of words or paint finally
bring them into contact with the real? It remains a mystery. The mirror is often used as a
metaphor, but it is an inexact, even a misleading, metaphor.
The problem of ‘an inside that searches for an outside’ is not confined to art, but extends to
questions of political representation. Not surprisingly, critiques of modernity, as two political
scientists have told us, reside ‘where the blackmail of bourgeois realism is refused’, going
beyond what already exists. Writers certainly and the world or the real resistant to any attempt to
capture it through words.
I imagine the same is true of painters and sculptors. In artistic representation, ‘mirroring’ reality
became a political issue with the arrival of modernity and the question of political representation.
Consequently, what is called ‘true’ representation of reality is linked to the question of
‘authenticity’.
In black America and black South Africa what became prized above everything else in literature
was referred to as ‘truth-telling’.
The joke and the irony is the attempt by white South African writers to ‘authenticate’ their works
by trying to capture the reality of township life, of which they knew very little, while dismissing
the parables of fellow writers such as JM Coetzee as far removed from this ‘reality’.
Nadine Gordimer’s rise to literary pre-eminence was based primarily on the perception in
London and New York that she was able to describe life as it was lived by ‘real people’, black
and white, in South Africa, but most importantly by black people in the township. When being
questioned on Dutch television whether she felt comfortable about describing life in the
township when she did not live there, she angrily retorted that she had at least slept for one night
in the township!
Gordimer’s problem can thus be seen as the reverse of the black writers who created the so-
called ‘township novel’. Not all but many of them began to think it was enough to have lived in
the township to produce good novels about township life; craft could look after itself.
For me, writing is primarily a struggle with language; words refusing to be made ‘flesh’. When
Shakespeare writes: ‘Full fathom five thy father lies / Of his bones are corals made!’, while I
know that English people in the sixteenth century did not really speak like this, I find the lines
true because of their music: that alliteration of the ‘f’ sound convinces me that a certain man lay
in the depths of the sea as truly as if his body had been detected by laser beams.
What is Anna Karenina to me that I should weep for her? Why do I mourn Cleopatra?
A lot of it has to do with how words are put together. The rest is a mystery.
Book details
 Writing Home: Lewis Nkosi on South African Writing edited by Lindy Stiebel and
Michael Chapman
Book homepage
EAN: 9781869143091
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Book Excerpts, Book Extracts, Breyten Breytenbach, Can Themba, English, Es'kia Mphahlele,
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Literature Today, spring, 1983, pp. 335-337; summer, 1984, p. 462.
Home > Biographies > Lewis Nkosi
Synopsis:
South African writer, academic and literary critic
First name:
Lewis
Last name:
Nkosi
Date of birth:
05-December-1936
Location of birth:
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (then Natal), South Africa
Date of death:
05-September-2010
Location of death:
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Lewis Nkosi was born in Chesterville, Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal and was educated at local
schools before enrolling at M. L. Sultan Technical College in Durban.
Nkosi began his writing career at the publication Ilanga lase Natal in Durban. In 1956, he joined
other African writers on the staff of Drum magazine, which was founded in 1951.
In his book Home and Exile and Other Selections (1965), Nkosi describes the Drum staff as "the
new African[s] cut adrift from the tribal reserve - urbanised, eager, fast-talking and brash."
In 1960, Nkosi accepted a fellowship to study at Harvard University, and left South Africa on an
exit permit.
Nkosi has since worked as an editor for The New African in London and NET in the United
States. Nkosi has also been a Professor of Literature at various universities, including the
University of Wyoming, the University of California-Irvine, and universities in Zambia and
Warsaw, Poland.
Nkosi has also worked with well known African authors such as Chinua Achebe and Wole
Soyinka, which was recorded in an interview in Bernth Lindfors' Conversations with Chinua
Achebe.
Nkosi also shared the writing credits with Lionel Rogosin and William “Bloke” Modisane for the
film Come Back, Africa in 1960.
Nkosi lived in various countries, including Switzerland and England, where he taught and wrote
articles on African literature. In recognition of his contribution to South African literature, Nkosi
was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga on 28 October 2008.
Lewis Nkosi died on 5 September 2010 in Johannesburg, after a long illness, at the age of 74. He
is survived by his twin daughters, Louise and Joy, and his wife, Astrid Starck.
Novels:
 Mating Birds (1986) [banned by the apartheid government]

 Underground People (2002)
 Mandela’s Ego (2006)
Plays:
 The Rhythm of Violence (1963)

 Malcolm (1972)
 The Black Psychiatrist (2001)
Essays:
 Home and Exile (1965)

 Home and Exile and Other Selections (1983)
 The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa (1975)
 Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature (1981)
References:
• Anon. (unknown) ‘Come Back, Africa’ from Wikipedia [online] Available at:
www.wikipedia.org [Accessed 6 September 2010]
• Anon. (unknown) ‘Lewis Nkosi’ from KZN Literary Tourism [online] Available at:
www.literarytourism.co.za [Accessed 6 September 2010]
• Anon. (unknown) ‘Lewis Nkosi’ from Wikipedia [online] Available at: www.wikipedia.org
[Accessed 6 September 2010]
• Anon. (unknown) ‘Lewis Nkosi Biography’ from Answers.com [online] Available at:
www.answers.com [Accessed 6 September]
• Williams, B. (2010) ‘RIP Lewis Nkosi, 1936
Writing Home: Lewis Nkosi on South African Writing

Last updated : 0
– new from UKZN Press!

by Adele on Apr 6th, 2016
UKZN Press is excited to present Writing Home: Lewis

Nkosi on South African Writing edited by Lindy Stiebel
and Michael Chapman.
Lewis Nkosi’s insights into South African literature,

culture and society first appeared in the 1950s, when the
“new” urban African in Sophiatown and on Drum
magazine mockingly opposed then Prime Minister HF
Verwoerd’s Bantu retribalisation policies. Before his
death in 2010, Nkosi focused on the literary-cultural
challenges of post-Mandela times.
Having lived for 40 years in exile, he returned to South

Africa, intermittently, after the unbannings of 1990. His critical eye, however, never for long left
the home scene. Hence, the title of this selection of his articles, essays and reviews, Writing
Home.
Writing home with wit, irony and moral toughness, Nkosi assesses a range of leading writers,
including Herman Charles Bosman, Breyten Breytenbach, JM Coetzee, Athol Fugard, Nadine
Gordimer, Bessie Head, Alex la Guma, Bloke Modisane, Es’kia Mphahlele, Nat Nakasa, Njabulo
S Ndebele, Alan Paton and Can Themba.
Combining the journalist’s penchant for the human-interest story with astute analysis, Nkosi’s
ideas, observations and insights are as fresh today as when he began his 60-year career as a
writer and critic.
Selected from his out-of-print collections, Home and Exile, The Transplanted Heart and Tasks
and Masks, as well as from journals and magazines, Nkosi’s punchy commentaries will appeal to
a wide readership.
About the editors

Lindy Stiebel is a professor of English Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and visiting
professor at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Michael Chapman is affiliated as a senior researcher to the Durban University of Technology.

He is also an emeritus professor and fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Book details
 Writing Home: Lewis Nkosi on South African Writing edited by Lindy Stiebel and
Michael Chapman
Book homepage
EAN: 9781869143091
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Cats: Academic, News, Non-fiction, South Africa

Tags: Academic, Alan Paton, Alex la Guma, Athol Fugard, Bessie Head, Bloke Modisane,
Breyten Breytenbach, Can Themba, Criticism, English, Es'kia Mphahlele, Herman Charles
Bosman, JM Coetzee, Lewis Nkosi on South African Writing, Lindy Stiebel, Michael Chapman,
Nadine Gordimer, Nat Nakasa, New Releases, News, Njabulo S Ndebele, Non-fiction, South
Africa, UKZN Press, Writing Home
Quick URL
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7-Mar-2018

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Lewis Nkosi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lewis Nkosi at the Centre for the Study of Southern

Literary career in South Africa

Return to South Africa

Mating Birds (1986)

Underground People (2002)

Literary criticism and journalism

On black writers and their literature

On the writers and commitment

Critical appraisal and research

 Home and Exile, Longman, 1965

 The Rhythm of Violence (1964)

 "The Hold-Up", Lusaka, Zambia: Wordsmith

On 12 April 2012 the Durban University of Technology (DUT) conferred on Nkosi a

 "Lewis Nkosi", South African History Online.

Home People History Historians, Miscellaneous: Biographies Lewis Nkosi

Contemporary Black Biography

Contemporary Black Biography

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Nkosi, Lewis 1936–

Lewis Nkosi 1936–

Embraced Socially-Conscious Journalism

Lekke Durban Akkommodasie - LekkeSlaap.co.za

Selfsorg, Gastehuis, B&B of Hotel. Lekke maklik en lekke vinnig!

Hailed as Important Black Dramatist

Earned International Acclaim for “Mating Birds”

Travel Hotel Price Comparison - HotelPriceComparison.net Site

Embraced Socially-Conscious Journalism

Hailed as Important Black Dramatist

Earned International Acclaim for “Mating Birds”

The Hold-Up, Wordsmiths Zambia Ltd., 1989.

Underground People, Kwela Books, 2003.

Come Back Africa (screenplay), 1959.

Rhythm of Violence, 1963.

The Trial (radio play), 1969.

The Chameleon and the Lizard (libretto), 1971.

We Can’t All Be Martin Luther King (radio play), 1971.

Malcolm (television play), 1972.

The Black Psychiatrist, c. 1994.

Contemporary Authors, Gale Research, 2001.

Contemporary Dramatists, 6th ed., St. James Press, 1999.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., Gale Research, 1998.

Justice, November 1, 1995.

Nation, November 22, 1986.

New York Times, May 18, 1986.

New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1986.

Sunday Times (South Africa), November 24, 2002.

“Arts/Culture Review: Underground People,” Mmegi, www.mmegi.bw (June 29, 2004).

Cite this article

Learn more about citation styles

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Best Sellers, July, 1986.

Books and Bookmen, October, 1986.

British Book News, March, 1987.

Choice, June, 1982.

Listener, August 28, 1986.

London Review of Books, August 7, 1986.

Nation, November 22, 1986, pp. 570-574.

New Yorker, May 26, 1986.