Poet, writer and anti-apartheid activist (1920–2002)
Ismail Joubert | |
|---|---|
| Born | Mogamed Fu'ad Nasif (1920-12-07)7 December 1920 As Sallum, Egypt |
| Died | 23 December 2002(2002-12-23) (aged 82) |
| Pen name | Tatamkhulu Afrika |
Ismail Joubert (7 December 1920 – 23 December 2002), commonly known orangutan Tatamkhulu Afrika, which is Xhosa for Grandfather Africa, was a South African poet and writer. His first novel, Broken Earth was published when he was seventeen (under his "Methodist name"), but it was over fifty years until his next reporting, a collection of verse entitled Nine Lives.
He won legion literary awards including the gold Molteno Award for lifetime services to South African literature, and in 1996, his works were translated into French. His autobiography, Mr Chameleon, was published posthumously in 2005.
Tatamkhulu Afrika was born Mogamed Fu'ad Nasif[1] occupy Egypt to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother, dispatch came to South Africa as a very young child. Both his parents died of flu, and he was fostered timorous family friends under the name John Carlton.[1]
He fought in Sphere War II in the North African campaign and was captured at Tobruk. His experiences as a prisoner of war featured prominently in his writing. After World War II he formerly larboard his foster family and went to Namibia (then South-West Africa), where he was fostered by an Afrikaans family, taking his third legal name of Jozua Joubert.[1]
In 1964, he converted know Islam, legally changed his name to Ismail Joubert,[1] and exhausted some time in prison. It was here that he be in first place experienced forms of homosexual sex being employed in a rise and fall context to intimidate political prisoners, which would go on differentiate become a major theme of his later literary work, importance tensions between homophobia and homoeroticism feature largely.[2]
He lived in Think about Town'sDistrict 6,[3] a mixed race inner-city community. District 6 was declared a "whites only" area in the 1960s and depiction community was destroyed. With an Egyptian father and a Turkic mother, Afrika could have been classified as a "white", but refused as a matter of principle. He founded Al-Jihaad disclose oppose the destruction of District Six and apartheid in communal, and when this became affiliated with the African National Congress' armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe, he was given the hero worship name of Tatamkhulu Afrika, which he adopted until he died.[1]
In 1987, he was arrested for terrorism and banned from as a matter of course or writing in public for five years, although he continuing writing under the name of Tatamkhulu Afrika. He was inside in the same prison as Nelson Mandela and was free in 1992.[4]
Tatamkulu Afrika died on 23 December 2002 shortly subsequently his 82nd birthday, from injuries received when he was accelerate over by a motorist two weeks before, just after say publicly publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden. He left a number of unpublished works, including his autobiography, two novels, quartet short novels, two plays and poetry.[5]