About Tatamkhulu Afrika
Ismail Joubert, born December 7, 1920 and died December 23, 2002, known as Tatamkhulu Afrika (which means Grandfather Africa in Xhosa), is a South African poet and writer. Tatamkhulu Afrika was born Mogamed Fu'ad Nasif in Egypt, to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother. He arrived in South Africa as a young child. Both his parents died of influenza and he was raised by family friends under the name John Carlton. He was living in District 6 of Cape Town, a mixed 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, Tatamkhulu Afrika could have been classified as "white," but he refused to do so on principle. He founded Al-Jihaad to oppose the destruction of District Six and apartheid in general. Later, he was affiliated with the armed wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe, where he was given the homage name Tatamkhulu Afrika, which he adopted until his death.In 1987, he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking or writing in public for five years, although he continued to write under the name Tatamkhulu Afrika. He was imprisoned in the same prison as Nelson Mandela and was released in 1992. His first novel, Broken Earth, was published when he was seventeen (under his Methodist name), but it took more than fifty years for a new publication in the form of a collection of verses entitled Nine Lives.
He has won numerous literary awards, including the Molteno Prize for services to South African literature.
Browse all poems and texts published on Tatamkhulu Afrika
