Background
Tatamkhulu Afrika was born Mogamed Fu"ad Nasif in Egypt to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother, and came to South Africa as a very young child.
Tatamkhulu Afrika was born Mogamed Fu"ad Nasif in Egypt to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother, and came to South Africa as a very young child.
His first novel, Broken Earth was published when he was seventeen (under his "Methodist name"), but it was over fifty years until his next publication, a collection of verse entitled Nine Lives. His autobiography, Mr Chameleon, was published posthumously in 2005. He fought in World World 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 World War II he left 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. He lived in Cape Town"s District 6, a mixed race inner-city community.
District 6 was declared a "whites only" area in the 1960s and the community was destroyed. With an Arab father and a Turkish mother, Afrika could have been classified as a "white", but refused as a matter of principle.
Umkhonto We Sizwe, he was given a praise name of Tatamkhulu Afrika, which he adopted until he died.
In 1987 he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking or writing in public for five years, although he continued writing under the name of Tatamkhulu Afrika. He was imprisoned for 11 years in the same prison as Nelson Mandela, and was released in 1992. Tatamkulu Afrika died on 23 December 2002, shortly after his 82nd birthday, from injuries received when he was run over by a car two weeks before, just after the publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden.
He left a number of unpublished works, including his autobiography, two novels, four short novels, two plays and poetry.
He founded First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Jihaad to oppose the destruction of District Six and apartheid in general, and when this affiliated with the African National Congress" armed wing.