Family life Es'kia Mphahlele was born in
Pretoria, in the
Union of South Africa, in 1919. From the age of five, he lived with his paternal grandmother in Maupaneng Village, in GaMphahlele (now in
Lepelle-Nkumpi Municipality),
Limpopo Province, where he herded cattle and goats. His mother, Eva, took him and his two siblings to go live with her in
Marabastad (2nd Avenue) when he was 12 years old. He married Rebecca Nnana Mochedibane, whose family was a victim of forced removals in
Vrededorp, in 1945 (the same year his mother died). A qualified social worker with a diploma from Jan Hofmeyer School, in
Johannesburg, she and Mphahlele would have five children. When he went into exile from South Africa, he left behind his entire extended family, except for his wife and children, going for years without seeing them. While in Nigeria, he once tried taking advantage of a British passport before Nigerian independence. He applied for a visa through the consulate in
Nairobi, in order to visit his younger brother Bassie (Solomon) who was ill with throat cancer, but his application was turned down.
Rebecca Nnana Mochedibane (Mphahlele) Rebecca was born in Sophiatown. She first qualified as a teacher before pursuing a social work diploma. She remembered meeting
Zeke, and being very impressed by him: "The other young men were not readers and I could not relate to them. They could not relate to the outside world through literature." The couple met when Mphahlele was working at the Blind Institute, in
Roodepoort. A group of teacher students had come to visit the institute where they read books to the elderly. Es'kia was impressed and requested to visit Rebecca in her hometown during the holidays. It was Rebecca's final year at the training college. The couple decided on 29 August 1945 as their wedding date. Mphahlele's mother had fallen sick, and died at the age of 45, just before the couple got married. "For her part, Rebecca, always busy with the kids, survived by her own ingenuity and native practical sense, by her outgoing temperament. She has always been able to bulldoze into a new community, let people know what her intentions are, openly tell them what she likes and what she doesn't, without being either rude or patronising" –Es'kia Mphahlele. In Kenya, she worked as a social worker in the U.N. Freedom From Hunger Campaign, in charge of their educational programme. She read for her MA in Social Work at the
University of Denver.
As a student At the age of 15, Mphahlele began attending school regularly and enrolled at St Peters Secondary School, in Rosettenville (Johannesburg). He finished high school by private study. That became his learning method until his PhD qualification. He obtained a First-Class Pass (Junior Certificate). He received his Joint Matriculation Board Certificate from the
University of South Africa in 1943. While teaching at
Orlando High School, Mphahlele obtained his B.A. in 1949 from the University of South Africa, majoring in English, Psychology and African Administration. In 1955, he received his Honours degree in English from the same institution. While working at
Drum magazine, Mphahlele made history by becoming the first person to graduate M.A. with distinction at
UNISA, in 1957. His thesis was entitled "The Non-European Character in South African English Fiction". From 1966 to 1968, under the sponsorship of the Farfield Foundation, Mphahlele became a Teaching Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Denver,
Colorado, where he earned his PhD in Creative Writing. In lieu of a thesis, he wrote a novel entitled
The Wanderers. He was subsequently awarded First Prize for the best African novel (1968–69) by
African Arts magazine at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
As an educator Mphahlele obtained his Teacher's Certificate at Adams College in 1940. He served at Ezenzeleni Blind Institute as a teacher and a shorthand-typist from 1941 to 1945. He and his wife moved their family to
Orlando East, near the historic Orlando High School, in Soweto as he joined the school in 1945 as an English and Afrikaans teacher. There, in the company of many freshly-minted from Fort Hare young teachers, he became active in the
Transvaal African Teachers' Association (TATA). The 1949
Eislen Commission on Native Education, inspired by Dr.
Hendrik Verwoerd, the recently elected National Party's Minister of Native Affairs, had recommended a radically new system of Education for Africans. TATA, together with other teachers' organisations in the Cape, the Free State and Natal, took up the cudgels to oppose it. For his participation in that agitation, in December 1952 Mphahlele,
Isaac Matlare and
Zephania Mothopeng were dismissed from their posts. Mphahlele's protest against the introduction of
Bantu Education resulted in his teaching career being cut short. He was banned from teaching anywhere in South Africa by the apartheid government. He left South Africa and went into exile. His first stop was Nigeria, where he taught in a high school for 15 months, then at the
University of Ibadan, in their extension programme. He also worked at the C.M.S. Grammar School, in
Lagos. He worked in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the University of Ibadan, travelling to various outlying districts to teach adults. While based in
Paris, he became a visiting lecturer at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also lectured in Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. Mphahlele believed that alternative education can pave the way for a transformative and humane educational system for all.
Life in exile Nigeria (1957–61) Mphahlele spent 20 years in exile, of which he spent four years in Nigeria with his family. He wrote: "It was a fruitful experience. The people of Nigeria were generous. The condition of being an outsider was not burdensome. I had time to write and engage in the arts." He was working with the best in Nigerian; playwright, poet and novelist
Wole Soyinka; poets
Gabriel Okara and
Mabel Segun; novelist
Amos Tutuola; sculptor
Ben Enwonwu; and painters
Demas Nwoko and
Uche Okeke, and so on. His visits to Ghana became frequent as each trip added more literary giants to his list of networks and colleagues. The University of Ghana would invite him to conduct extramural writers' workshops. That is where he met
Kofi Awoonor (then George Awoonor Williams), playwright
Efua Sutherland, poet
Frank Kobina Parkes, musicologist Professor
Kwabena Nketia, historian Dr
J. B. Danquah, poet
G. Adali-Mortty and sculptor
Vincent Kofi. Mphahlele attended the first
All-African Peoples' Conference organised by
Kwame Nkrumah in
Accra, Ghana, in December 1958. "Ghana was the only African country that had been freed from the European colonialism that had swept over the continent in the 19th century. Most of the countries represented at Accra were still colonies." Mphahlele recalls meeting with the late
Patrick Duncan and
Jordan Ngubane, who were representing the South African liberal view. It was at this conference that Mphahlele met
Kenneth Kaunda, and listened to
Frantz Fanon deliver a fiery speech against colonialism. Mphahlele writes further about his experience at the All-African Peoples' Conference in his Accra Conference Diary, a chapter in An African Treasury, a collection of articles, essays stories and poems by Black Africans compiled by
Langston Hughes. Rebecca, his wife, returned to South Africa towards the end of 1959, to give birth to their last-born, Chabi. They returned in February 1960. They were in Nigeria when they heard about the
Sharpeville Massacre. Mphahlele said: "Yes, Nigeria and Ghana gave Afrika back to me. We had just celebrated Ghana’s independence, and were three years away from Nigeria's."
France (1961–63) Mphahlele moved his family to France in August 1961, their second major move. He was appointed as the Director of the African Program of
The Congress for Cultural Freedom and went to
Paris. They lived on
Boulevard du Montparnasse, just off St. Michel, a few blocks from the Le Select and La Coupole restaurants. Their apartment was soon to become a kind of crossroads for writers and artists: Ethiopian artist
Skunder Boghossian;
Wole Soyinka; Gambian poet
Lenrie Peters; South African poet in exile
Mazisi Kunene; Ghanaian poet and his beloved friend
J. P. Clark; and
Gerard Sekoto. It was during his stay in France when Mphahlele was invited by
Ulli Beier and other Nigerian writers to help form the
Mbari Writers and Artists Club in Ibadan. They raised money from Merrill Foundation in New York to finance Mbari Publications, a venture the club had undertaken. Work by Wole Soyinka, Lenrie Peters and others was first published by Mbari Publishers before finding its way to commercial houses. He edited and contributed to
Black Orpheus, the Ibadan-based literary journal. He toured and worked in major African cities including
Kampala,
Brazzaville,
Yaoundé,
Accra,
Abidjan,
Freetown and
Dakar. He also attended seminars connected with work in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Italy, and the US. Mphahlele went on to set up an Mbari Centre in
Enugu, Nigeria, under the directorship of
John Enekwe. In 1962, at
Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda, they organised the first
African Writers Conference, attended also by fellow South Africans
Bob Leshoai, who was on tour, and
Neville Rubin, who was editing a journal of political comment in South Africa. Two conferences, one in Dakar and another in Freetown were organised in 1963. Their aim was to throw into open debate the place of African literature in the university curriculum. They wanted to drum support up for the inclusion of African literature as a substantive area of study at university, where traditionally it was being pushed into extramural departments and institutes of African Studies. Mphahlele had only planned to stay in Paris for two years, after which he would return to teaching. Those experiences had made him yearn for the classroom again.
Kenya (1963–66) John Hunt, the executive director of the Congress for Cultural Freedom suggested that Mphahlele establish a centre like the Nigerian Mbari in Nairobi. Mphahlele arrived in
Nairobi in August 1963, and December had been set for Kenya's independence. By the time Rebecca and the children arrived, he had already bought a house. Prior to that, he had been housed by
Elimo Njau, a Tanzanian painter. Njau suggested a name everyone liked –
Chemchemi, Kiswahili for "fountain". Within a few months, they had converted a warehouse into offices, a small auditorium for experimental theatre and intimate music performances, and an art gallery. Njau ran the art gallery on a voluntary basis. He mounted successful exhibitions of Ugandan artists
Kyeyune and
Msango, and of his own work. "My soul was in the job. I was in charge of writing and theatre" (Mphahlele,
Africa My Music). Their participants were from the townships and locations that were a colonial heritage. Mphahlele would travel to districts to outside districts to run writers' workshops in schools that invited him, accompanied by the centre's drama group. Their travelling was well captured in
Busara, edited by
Ngugi wa Thiong'o and
Zuka, edited by Kariara. When the Alliance High School for Girls (just outside Nairobi) asked him to write a play for its annual drama festival, in the place of the routine Shakespeare Mphahlele adapted
Grace Ogot's "The Rain Came", a short story, and called it
Oganda’s Journey. "The most enchanting element in the play was the use of traditional musical idioms from a variety of ethnic groups on Kenya. A most refreshing performance, which exploited the girl’s natural and untutored acting," he said. After serving for two years, he felt he done what he had come for, as he had indicated before taking the job that he would not stay for more than two years. He turned down a lecturing post at the University College of Nairobi. They could only offer him a one-year contract, which he could not take.
Colorado, US (1966–74) In May 1966 Mphahlele moved his family to Colorado, where he was joining the University of Denver's English Department. Mphahlele was granted a tuition waiver by the university for the course work he had to do before he could be admitted for the PhD dissertation. He paid for the
Afrikan Literature and
Freshman Composition himself.
Philadelphia (1974–77) The Mphahlele family arrived in Philadelphia in May 1974. Mphahlele was about to begin a lecturing career at the University of Pennsylvania in September of that year. They had bought a house in Wayne, some 24 kilometres from Philadelphia, on the Western Mainline. Mphahlele spent his time in Philadelphia teaching, writing and never stopped thinking about going back home to South Africa. He recalled how since their days in Denver, he and Rebecca had longed to be in Africa again, and it had to be South Africa. They felt anything else would just be an adventure. They longed for community, a cultural milieu in which their work could be relevant. They were considered to have become British nationals, and had to approach the South African government through a single person in authority, Dr.
C. N. Phatudi, the then
Chief Minister of Lebowa, who had agreed to make representations on their behalf. As their application was being processed, which took more than five years, his books were still being banned in South Africa.
As a novelist and short-story writer It was during his primary school days when he started rooting everywhere for newsprint to read. He recalled always looking for any old scrap of paper to read. He further recalled a small one-room tin shack the then municipality called a "reading room", on the western edge of Marbastad. He remembered it being stacked with dilapidated books and journals, junked by some bored ladies in the suburbs. He dug out of the pile
Miguel de Cervantes'
Don Quixote, and went through the whole lot like a termite, elated by the sense of discovery, recognition of the printed word and by the mere practice of the skill of reading. Cervantes stood out in his mind, although his imagination was also fired by the silent movies of the 1930s. He enjoyed a combination of Cervantes' Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza together with
Laurel and Hardy and
Buster Keaton. Mphahlele would read the subtitles aloud to his friends who could not read well, amid the yells and foot stamping and bouncing on chairs to the rhythm of the action. The 1959 publication of his autobiographical novel
Down Second Avenue drew worldwide interest in Mphahlele as a writer, and focused a powerful spotlight on the internal dynamics of South Africa as it steadily drifted toward greater racial oppression and greater world isolation. Now a classic of African literature,
Down Second Avenue had successful printings in English, French, German, Russian, Dutch and Japanese, reflecting the impact and international popularity of the book. Mphahlele's second novel,
The Wanderers, was a story chronicling the experience of exiles in Africa. While in Paris, Mphahlele published
The Living and the Dead, in 1961. Six years later, in East Africa, he published
In Corner B. The contents of both collections of short stories are included in
The Unbroken Song (1986), which also contains some of his poems. As part of his Master's thesis, in 1962 he published
The African Image, which provides a historical perspective of South African literature. In 1967, he edited the anthology
African Writing Today, which was published by
Penguin. During his PhD, he produced
The Wanderers, a novel of exile originally submitted as a dissertation for his PhD in creative writing. He became the institution's first black professor. He was permitted to honour an invitation from the then Institute for Study of English in Africa at
Rhodes University. It was a two-month research fellowship where his proposal of finishing his memoir
Afrika My Music, which he had begun in Philadelphia, was accepted. After his retirement from Wits University in 1987, Mphahlele was appointed as the executive chairman of the board of directors at Funda Centre for Community Education. He continued visiting other universities as a visiting professor teaching mostly African Literature. He spent two months at
Harvard University's Graduate School of Education teaching a module on secondary-school education in South Africa. With the end of apartheid, he emerged as an eloquent proponent of the need to nurture the arts to feed a culture traumatized by colonization and oppression. The Es'kia Institute is named after him, honouring his life, teachings and philosophies. His return home and contribution towards the development of the country and continent's literary development is still being celebrated in many forms, with some towns choosing to name significant streets after him. ==Bibliography==