Two articles follow concerning the passing of South African author, Es'kia Mphahlele. Both mention that his major work (among many), Down Second Avenue, has been translated into several languages, but not any of South Africa (it was written in English, also an official language of the country). The articles are from the Sowetan and Sunday World (seen via a Google alert)...
The Sowetan Literary world left poorer with Mphahlele's passing http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=874457 Pallo Jordan 31 October 2008 Es'kia Mphahlele was the illustrious author of two autobiographies, more than 30 short stories, two verse plays and a fair number of poems. Mphahlele, pictured, was born on December 17 1919 in Marabastad, Pretoria. His parents sent him to live with his paternal grandmother in Maupaneng near Polokwane in Limpopo. He came back to Marabastad to start school and attended St Peter's College in Rossetenville. He went on to study at Adams College in Natal, where he qualified as a teacher in 1940. He completed his matric by correspondence while holding down two jobs as a teacher and shorthand typist at the Ezenzeleni Institute for the Blind in Roodepoort in 1942. A self-made man, Mphahlele received a BA degree in 1949, followed in 1956 by a BA Honours degree and by an MA degree (with distinction) in 1957. In 1968 he received his doctorate from the University of Denver in the US. Mphahlele took up the post of English and Afrikaans teacher at Orlando High School. There, in the company of many freshly minted young teachers from Fort Hare he became active in the Transvaal African Teachers Association Tata). The 1949 Eislen Commission on Native Education, inspired by HF Verwoerd, the National Party's minister of native affairs, had recommended a radically new system of education for Africans. Tata, with other teacher organisations, took up the cudgels to oppose it. For his participation in that agitation in December 1952 Mphahlele, Isaac Matlare and Zephaniah Mothopeng were dismissed from their posts and permanently banned from teaching. In 1954 he left to teach at the Basutoland High School in Maseru. Returning to South Africa a year later he found work with Drum magazine, where at various stages he held the posts of political reporter, subeditor and fiction editor. Responding to an appeal for teachers from Nigeria, Mphahlele left South Africa in 1957 . The ANC asked him to represent it at the first Pan-African conference hosted by Ghana in 1959. Mphahlele had launched his literary career with the publication of Man Must Live in 1946. In the 1950s Mphahlele wrote a series of stories published in Drum. The Drum era was to produce, in quick succession, Bessie Head, Arthur Maimane, Todd Matshikiza, James Matthews, Bloke Modisane, Casey Motsisi, Lewis Nkosi, Richard Rive and Can Themba. The autobiographical Down Second Avenue (1957), Mphahlele's crowning achievement, has been translated into several foreign languages but not a single South African language. Mphahlele's literary and academic career took off in exile. Two collections of short stories followed Man Must Live. The Living and the Dead appeared from West Africa in 1961. Six years later he issued In Corner B from East Africa. The contents of both collections of short stories are included in The Unbroken Song (1986), which also contains some of Mphahlele's poems. His engagement with literary and cultural production in the African Diaspora finds expression in Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays (1972), which examines African and African-American literature in relation to the Western tradition. His career as a novelist produced The Wanderers, followed in 1979 by Chirundu. A second volume of his autobiography appeared in 1984 as Afrika My Music, written in the convention of the memoir. Soft-spoken, humble, urbane, cosmopolitan, erudite and exuding ubuntu, Es'kia Mphahlele embodied in his person and in his work what he described as "the personification of the African paradox detribalised, Westernised but still African". **************************** Disclaimer ****************************** Copyright: In accordance with Title 17, United States Code Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material posted to this list for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Content: The sender does not vouch for the veracity nor the accuracy of the contents of this message, which are the sole responsibility of the copyright owner. Also, the sender does not necessarily agree or disagree with any opinions that are expressed in this message. ********************************************************************** ================================================== Sunday World Between the lines - Serendipity at Es'kia's spot http://www.sundayworld.co.za/swzones/sundayworldNEW/entertain/entertain1225565562.asp Saturday November 01, 2008 20:52 - (SA) One morning in January, with the shorthand note in my hand, I knocked on a door in Lebowakgomo Unit F to fulfil a teenage yen to meet Es'kia Mphahlele. It has been communicated to me that I might as well retool the manuscript talk generally about life and the cultural sociosphere. The intimation was that it was overly stated Es'kia is barely audible and gravely ill. There was also the question: "What else is there to tell?" So the interview was as good as dead. To make things worse, I pitched without a copy of the magazine I was to moonlight for behind my employer's back. This really ticked him off. "I will need to read and understand the agenda of the magazine the direction that it's taking, the editorial direction and so on. "I think before I commit to anything it's only fair that I know what it's all about," he said and waved a copy of another magazine with William Kentridge on the cover. "This is what I'm talking about. I was hoping you'd bring something that will explain who you are." The embarrassment was great but eventually we spoke. Nothing concrete came out of the interview. A contemporary of Mphahlele, Professor Taban lo Liyong, had some encouraging words to offer. I contacted him with the idea to contribute a verse and to vet Es'kia's contribution to African literature. He was courteous: "I judge Elder Es'kia through his emergence into the African literary world. The time of his entry, the works he and his contemporaries performed and their impact on later artists: these matter a lot. That is how I judge a work of art; the oeuvre of an artist. "I am sure many words have been spent assessing Es'kia. Your assignment is to make an assessment of assessments." It's no surprise that Es'kia's works seem extremely sacred. We have put this halo around them. Very few have taken the pitted road to critique his works in what might seem like a mark of reckless impulse. Some books stands out Afrika My Music, The Wanderers and Down Second Avenue. In Corner B has stubbornly failed to fulfil me. Now that Es'kia has passed away it feels like I'm a blood countess. The story of Es'kia the writer is now outweighed by bits and pieces of his previous life. This has dammed up at the back of my mind for quite some time. On the day of the interview we stumbled on a man knocking at the door, a spindly, dapper man in a navy suit. His jaw line had sunk in and he looked like he'd lost some teeth. He introduced himself as Saint Mokoena. He caught us unawares when he mentioned he was Es'kia's child from another relationship. The photographer called the chance meeting "serendipity". Saint had come to ask the old man for permission to use his last name. And by the look of things he was not supposed to be there. There was a prolonged delay before the door was opened and he was whisked off to another room. Saint is an artist who dabbles in different mediums stone carving, watercolour painting and drawing. In his hand he carried a bag with a catalogue of his work. He demanded to know who we were. "Let me adopt your name in my diary," he said and unzipped his bag. By adopting he meant writing down. So I got sucked to his misuse of English and asked him if I could also adopt his name. He said a few days ago he had read Down Second Avenue again and felt there was something missing in his life. He last saw Es'kia in 1957 before he left to teach English at C.M.S Grammar School in Lagos, Nigeria. The next time was here when Es'kia was back in South Africa. "He introduced me to his sons Puso and Chabi but did not qualify the introduction," he says. He walked out of the yard to "adopt" the registration number of the car we were driving. When the interview was done, Saint reappeared again and the old man was not pleased. "I told you I'm busy. What do you want?" Because everyone is dying to read profound definitions, crazy theories and metric lines on the meaning of Es'kia, stories about Es'kia the man are overlooked. Ranty scholars will not be fulfilled. I realise I've just stretched my reportorial limbs and might earn myself the sobriquet of Shwashwi because of the tone of this piece. But I shall forever treasure the short time I spent with Es'kia and the chicken he bought me. * Es'kia Mphahlele was buried yesterday in Limpopo. This & That * Is to African letters what Nelson Mandela is to African politics. * Authored two autobiographies, more than 30 short stories, two verse plays and a fair number of poems. "Add to these, two anthologies , essay collections, innumerable essays, addresses, awards and a Nobel Prize nomination for literature and what emerges is to many the Dean of African Letters," writes Peter Thuynsma, in Perspectives on South African English Literature (1992: 221). * A self-made man, in 1949 he was awarded a BA degree, followed in 1956 by a BA Honours degree and in 1957 by an MA (with distinction). He studied for his three degrees by correspondence. In 1968, he received his doctorate from the University of Denver in the US. * Born in Marabastad, Pretoria, on December 17 1919, his parents sent him to Maupaneng, near Polokwane, to live with his paternal grandmother. * Attended school in Marabastad and also St Peter's College, Rosettenville, which was shut down under apartheid. * Qualified as a teacher at Adams College in Natal in 1940. He passed his matric in 1942, studying by correspondence, while working as a teacher and short-hand typist at Ezenzeleni Institute for the Blind in Roodepoort. * Launched his literary career with the publication of Man Must Live (1946), the second collection of short stories in English by an African writer after Dark Testament by Peter Abrahams, Mphahlele's classmate at St Peter's. * Down Second Avenue (1957) has been translated into several foreign languages, but not a single African language indigenous to South Africa. It remains Mphahlele's crowning achievement. Info supplied by Professor Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane **************************** Disclaimer ****************************** Copyright: In accordance with Title 17, United States Code Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material posted to this list for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Content: The sender does not vouch for the veracity nor the accuracy of the contents of this message, which are the sole responsibility of the copyright owner. Also, the sender does not necessarily agree or disagree with any opinions that are expressed in this message. ********************************************************************** ------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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