Bloke Modisane

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Bloke Modisane (born August 28, 1923 in Johannesburg , † March 1, 1986 in Dortmund ; real name William Modisane ) was a South African journalist , actor and writer .

Life

Bloke Modisane grew up in the Sophiatown district of Johannesburg . His father was murdered and his sister died of malnutrition. His mother ran a shebeen . His stage name Bloke (German roughly: comrade, type) refers to the character The Saint from Leslie Charteris ' novels .

Drum magazine was founded in 1951 as a lifestyle magazine primarily for black people. It was based in Sophiatown, the center of urban culture for South African blacks at the time. Together with other journalists from the magazine, such as Henry Nxumalo , Lewis Nkosi , Todd Matshikiza and Can Themba , he formed the “Drum boys” in the 1950s, whose motto is Live fast, the young and have a good-looking corpse (“Leb quick, die young and have a good looking corpse ”) read. He mainly wrote short stories for Drum .

Modisane also worked as a jazz critic for the Johannesburg Golden City Post. He increasingly turned to acting and tried to open the theater to "blacks" too. He was a member of the African Theater Workshop and appeared in Athol Fugard's first theater production , No Good Friday .

Modisane co-wrote the script for Come Back, Africa in 1959 , which is primarily set in Sophiatown. Because of his dissatisfaction with apartheid oppression , he emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1959 . In 1963 his autobiography Blame me on History was published. In it, he described, among other things, his desperation over the destruction of Sophiatown and the forced relocation of its residents in the late 1950s. The book was banned in South Africa in 1966 .

Modisane continued to work as an actor, including in Jean Genet's play The Negroes. He appeared in several films in supporting roles, including 1964 in Guns at Batasi and 1968 in Katanga . In 1973 he starred in the film Black Snake , directed by Russ Meyer . He moved to Dortmund. In 1981 he starred in the episode Black Freight of the television series On the Move . The writer Heinrich Peuckmann tried to get a grant for the impoverished Modisane. The day after Modisane found out about the scholarship, he died of an asthma attack . He was buried in Syburg .

Works

  • Blame me on history. Thames and Hudson, London 1963; New edition: Ad. Donker, Johannesburg 1986, ISBN 0-86-852098-5
    • German as: White is the law. Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 1964

literature

  • Mike Nicol : A Good-looking Corpse. The World of Drum. Jazz and Gangsters, Hope and Defiance in the Townships of South Africa. Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., London 1992, ISBN 978-0436309861

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Biography Modisane on news.de ( Memento from April 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ In the original Live fast, the young and leave a good-looking corpse in a film from 1949, quoted shortly afterwards in the form of have by James Dean
personal data
SURNAME Modisane, Bloke
ALTERNATIVE NAMES William Modisane (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesburg
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1986
Place of death Dortmund