An engaging read, well-researched and accessible. It offers new insights not only on Can
Themba – the subject of the book – but on his era, his peers, and the movement that later
became known as the Sophiatown Renaissance. Mahala captures the period and its politics
so vividly that he makes the reader critically aware of how it felt to be in those events, rather
than merely chronicling them.
— Professor Zakes Mda, novelist, poet and playwright, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio University and Creative Writing Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University.

A satisfying chemistry radiates from every page of Siphiwo Mahala’s biography of Can
Themba. Mahala’s clarity, vivid narration, and fi rm touch do full justice to the life and work of
Themba, a brilliant artist who was mercurial and troubled in equal measure. The result is an
affectionate and astute biography that reaches across the generations.
— Professor David Attwell, author and Professor of English, University of York and Extraordinary Professor, University of the Western Cape.

This rich and absorbing biography of Can Themba, iconic Drum-era journalist and writer, is the definitive history of a larger-than-life man who died too young. Siphiwo Mahala’s intensive and often fresh research features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba’s surviving colleagues and family.

Mahala’s biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba’s life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland. The better-known elements of his life – his political views, passion for teaching and mentoring, and family life – are woven together with an examination of his literary influences and the impact of his own writing (especially his famous short story ‘The Suit’) on modern African writers in turn. Mahala, a master storyteller, deftly follows the threads of Themba’s dynamic life, showcasing his intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and wit, along with his flaws, contradictions and heartbreaks, against a backdrop of the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s.

Can Themba’s successes and failures as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography. The result is an authoritative and entertaining account of an often misunderstood figure in South Africa’s literary canon.

Keywords: Kofifi ; Drum Boys; Drum magazine; Drum generation; Fort Hare University College; urban black culture; black journalists; short stories; apartheid; South African literature; Marabastad; Sophiatown; The Suit; Swaziland.

Introduction
PART I: DEATH AND BIRTH OF A SCRIBE
Chapter 1 A Knock on the Door
Chapter 2 The Poet Laureate of Fort Hare
Chapter 3 The Teacher of Life and Letters
Chapter 4 From Marabastad to Sophiatown and beyond
PART II: LIVING FAST, DYING YOUNG
Chapter 5 The Drum Seduction
Chapter 6 Occasions for Loving
Chapter 7 Drumming Up a Storm
Chapter 8 Destruction and Demise
Chapter 9 The Road to Swaziland: A Kind of Suicide
PART III: THE ‘INTELLECTUAL TSOTSI’: THE IDENTITIES, POLITICS AND INTELLECTUAL LEGACY OF CAN THEMBA
Chapter 10 Black Englishman or Detribalised African? A Quest for Shared Identities
Chapter 11 A Politico in a Poet
Chapter 12 The People’s Intellectual
PART IV: DANCES WITH TEXTS: THE WRITINGS OF CAN THEMBA
Chapter 13 No Ordinary Storyteller
Chapter 14 Intertextuality and the Making of Mr Shakespeare
Chapter 15 ‘The Suit’ For All Seasons
PART V: THE IMMORTALITY OF CAN THEMBA
Chapter 16 Re-Membering the Fragments
Postscript: The Three Burials of Can Themba
Bibliography
Index

Siphiwo Mahala is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer, playwright and literary critic. He is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Johannesburg and a research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. He is the editor of Imbiza Journal for African Writing.

An engaging read, well-researched and accessible. It offers new insights not only on Can
Themba – the subject of the book – but on his era, his peers, and the movement that later
became known as the Sophiatown Renaissance. Mahala captures the period and its politics
so vividly that he makes the reader critically aware of how it felt to be in those events, rather
than merely chronicling them.
— Professor Zakes Mda, novelist, poet and playwright, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio University and Creative Writing Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University.

A satisfying chemistry radiates from every page of Siphiwo Mahala’s biography of Can
Themba. Mahala’s clarity, vivid narration, and fi rm touch do full justice to the life and work of
Themba, a brilliant artist who was mercurial and troubled in equal measure. The result is an
affectionate and astute biography that reaches across the generations.
— Professor David Attwell, author and Professor of English, University of York and Extraordinary Professor, University of the Western Cape.