Arthur Maimane

Background

Arthur Maimane was born on October 5, 1932, in Pretoria, South Africa.

Education

Arthur Maimane attended Saint Peter's College.

Career

Arthur Maimane entered journalism as a young reporter for Drum in 1952, a time when apartheid - the separation of blacks and whites in South Africa and an era of racial oppression, was still in effect. It was a precarious time for reporters, evidenced by the killing of Maimane's mentor and Drum's editor, Henry Nxumalo, in 1957. Maimane was in danger, too, for reporting on the doings of underground criminals, even though he tried to conceal his identity by writing under the name Arthur Mogale in his articles. Also writing for the Golden City Post, where he was news editor until 1958, Maimane found refuge in Ghana by fleeing to Accra and writing for the western edition of Drum from 1958 to 1960. he also served at the Ghana Radio Times in 1960-1961. Eventually, the situation became dangerous for him in Ghana, as well, and Maimane moved to London in 1961.

In the United Kingdom, Arthur Maimane became the first black journalist for the Reuters news agency, as well as for the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 1973 he joined the Independent Television News as a senior writer. When apartheid finally ended, and Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, Maimane returned, joining the Weekly Mail as its first black reporter, and writing a column for the Sunday Independent. From 1994 to 1997, he was a managing editor of The Star. In 1997 Maimane became a media consultant and full-time writer. He went back to the United Kingdom in 2001, however, where he became a news consultant and focused on writing fiction.

As a writer, Arthur Maimane made a name for himself for his investigations of apartheid abuses. Many of his short stories and serialized detective pieces were published in Drum and other magazines. Maimane also wrote several plays, such as the award-winning The Opportunity and Hang on in There, Nelson! With a hiatus of three decades between them, he published the novels Victims and Hate No More. Set in the 1960s, the novel, Hate No More, portrays the life of Phillip Mokone, a black man living in Sophiatown, South Africa. Consumed with rage against apartheid, Mokone finally resorts to an act of violence in a whites-only suburb.

Achievements

• Arthur Maimane was best known as a writer and journalist. He served as a reporter for almost fifty years in the United Kingdom and South Africa. As a writer, Maimane received the Commonwealth Radio Play first prize for his work, The Opportunity, in 1964 and the Thomas Pringle Award for Creative Writing from the English Academy of South Africa in 1978.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Hate No More

    (The story hinges on the rape of a young white woman by an...)

    2000
  • Victims 1976

Membership

• 

  Society of Authors , United Kingdom

Connections

Arthur Maimane was married twice. When he moved to London, his first wife and three children had returned to South Africa, so they divorced. Then he met Jenny, his English wife-to-be. Maimane had five daughters.

Wife:

Jenny Maimane

Jenny Maimane was Arthur Maimane's second wife.