Modikwe Dikobe

Modikwe Dikobe (born March 13, 1913 in Seabe , Transvaal ; real name Marks Rammitloa ) is a South African writer and civil rights activist .

Life

Dikobe spent his youth in poverty and lived as a newspaper seller in Johannesburg . In the 1940s and 50s, he was involved in boycotts against racial segregation on public transport. After World War II he became one of the leaders of the squatter movement in Alexandra . His membership in the South African Communist Party and his political activism initially led to his imprisonment; after a short time he was released under various conditions. In 1961 a ban was finally imposed on him, which later also included his books, which for this reason only found slow circulation.

In 1973 Dikobe published the novel The Marabi Dance , which is considered an important work in South African protest literature. The novel is set in the working class of the 1930s and 40s and has autobiographical elements. It tells the story of a girl in the slums of Johannesburg who is supposed to marry a distant relative in the country but loves another man. To this day, Dikobe is said to have influenced the South African theater in particular . He is said to have worked on the manuscript for about twelve years with his publisher Lionel Abrahams . It was created in the 1950s and early 1960s. At the beginning of the 1970s, the work first appeared as a series of articles in the magazine South African Outlook .

Dikobe's second work, the volume of poetry Dispossessed , appeared in 1983 and received less attention. He is also primarily concerned with the South African history of the 20th century. Until the end of apartheid, Dikobe feared for his safety due to his political background, which is why he published his books under a pseudonym and subsequently lived in seclusion.

Works

• The Marabi Dance . Heinemann, London 1984, ISBN 0-435-90124-9 (newer edition)
  • German as: The Marabi dance. Walter, 1973.
• Dispossessed . Rawan Press, 1983, ISBN 0-86975-143-3

Web links

• The great man they once called Scaapie. Portrait of the magazine Learn and Teach on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1983 (English)

supporting documents

1. ↑ Michael Titlestad (UNISA): The acoustics of memory: historiography and alterity in representations of 1950s township jazz . 2002 WISER (University of Witwatersrand, Institute for Social and Economic Research), document page 10 ( Memento from September 25, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 127 kB), accessed on September 28, 2012, English
2. ↑ Tim Couzens: Entry about Modikwe Dikobe in: Eugene Benson, LW Conolly (ed.): Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English , Routledge: London / New York (1994), vol. 1, p. 363f.
3. ↑ James Currey: Africa Writes Back , Oxford / Johannesburg (2008), pp. 191ff.