Cm's video: Lewis Nkosi

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. 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. 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. Literary career in South Africa.. He contributed essays to many magazines and newspapers. His essays criticised apartheid and the racist state, as a result of which 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. He died on Sunday, 5 September 2010, at the Johannesburg Wellness Clinic. 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.