Siphiwo Mahala’s biography of legendary journalist and author Can Themba paints a harrowing picture of a gifted genius who was driven to self-destruction by the evil system of apartheid and prejudice.
Although the book Can Themba: the doing and the falling apart of the intellectual tsotsi Focusing solely on the late journalist and author of the golden generation of the 1950s, it highlights the brutality that the racist laws of that era inflicted on educated and gifted African men.
What happened to Themba is a fate that befell many African men of his generation and before him. His is the evidence that the victims of apartheid were not only those who were violently mutilated and massacred by the system’s police.
Apartheid also waged brutal psychological warfare against many other sons and daughters of the land, who were denied the chance to fulfill their full potential in the service of their country of birth.
Themba was part of that generation of African men who were not only frustrated by apartheid, but also humiliated and psychologically scarred.
It was a generation of men who, regardless of their talents and qualifications, were not allowed to grow beyond a certain level designated and determined by the white apartheid creators and supporters.
Trapped in this system where they were required by law to be cared for by white men who were, in most cases, less talented and qualified, they were forced to find solace in the consumption of alcohol, which led to their deaths. premature, or into exile where they died alone. deaths in horrible conditions.
This is a topic explored extensively in the pioneering book, The Land Is Ours: South Africa’s First Black Lawyers and the Birth of Constitutionalism by attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.
Ngcukaitobi crafts an insightful and evocative account of how talented and committed black legal professionals of the early 20th century found themselves systematically frustrated by petty racial legislation.
Having fought and lost the battle against the authorities who sought to relegate them to the status of mere certified black men, the talented lawyers who were the hope of the oppressed African masses were led to destruction and early graves.
In Can ThembaMahala gives this departed genius the dignity often denied him by academics and researchers who never seemed to question the reason for his slide into chronic alcoholism.
Mahala’s work succeeds where other scholars, who have researched and written about Themba’s life and work, have fallen short.
Themba has largely been portrayed as an aimless self-destructive alcoholic; an unfair and somewhat harsh portrayal of this man of letters whose writings inspired generations of writers beyond the borders of his country.
Mahala digs deeper, and in her attempt to piece together the circumstances that might have frustrated Themba so much that she saw no way out but to drown herself in alcohol, brings a new understanding of the deeper reasons that led to her demise.
“We cannot be content with the simple statement that he was just an alcoholic without questioning the reports that when he joined Drum in 1953; he apparently was a teetotaler, but in a matter of just 14 years he died of medical conditions supposedly brought on by alcohol abuse,” Mahala writes in the chapter titled Destruction and Death.
Mahala carefully piece together snippets of Themba’s life from his early days in Marabastad, Pretoria, and follows the brilliant young student to Fort Hare, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree.
He records his battles with the authorities through numerous letters in which he was pushed to the point of asking for a certificate of his qualifications in order to earn a salary commensurate with his qualifications.
But if this battle with the authorities frustrated him, it wasn’t until he joined Drum magazine in 1953 that began to face even harsher realities in a South Africa that was rapidly tightening its grip on blacks in its quest to entrench white supremacist policies.
In addition to facing and confronting the daily horrors of apartheid laws in his daily personal life and in his work as a journalist, in the newsroom the yoke of white supremacy weighed heavily on him and his talented colleagues.
The apartheid color bar had determined and was brutally enforcing a policy that sought to put black men “in their place”, that regardless of their talents or qualifications, they could never be above the white man for position in the workplace. or for remuneration.
“The [Themba] He knew that no matter how educated or experienced he was, and no matter how well he did his job, he would never get the credit of being a publisher. Drum magazine, nor would he receive any salary increase, simply because he was black,” writes Mahala.
It emphasizes how Themba’s frustration was exacerbated by the fact that, as her top African colleagues left the country to go into exile and escape the hardship and oppression brought about by apartheid, she chose to remain in her homeland, where she was judged on the basis of his race and not his talents and abilities, and he faced the monster head on.
“When his experienced colleagues left Drum and the country, Themba remained the only senior black journalist, and although his working relationship with [Sylvester] Stein was often harsh, it occurred to the latter that Themba deserved more than she got. He was performing the duties of editor, and for all practical purposes he was the editor, although as a black male he could only rise to the level of associate editor.”
Mahala goes on to quote Stein acknowledging Themba’s contribution, describing him as “the heart of the newspaper”.
To his credit Stein, who eventually resigned from Drum Hastily following another case of editorial interference by the magazine’s owner, Jim Bailey, he acknowledges that perhaps Themba was the one who deserved to be editor and that his frustration with the system may have led to his erratic behavior that later got him fired.
Mahala further points out that personal tragedies such as the loss of his close friend Henry “Mr Drum” Nxumalo, who was assassinated in 1955, and then the death in exile by the alleged suicide of another close friend, Nat Nakasa, precipitated his rapid disappearance in alcoholism.
“The loss of her job, her colleagues and her lover contributed to her destruction. The apartheid government was also becoming increasingly cruel in dealing with those who contradicted its policies. It came as no surprise that Themba was more inclined to drink,” Mahala wrote.
The author notes that the last straw for Themba was his ban under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1966. By then, he was living in exile in Swaziland and working as a teacher, while writing and publishing in South Africa and throughout the continent.
But the silencing of his voice in South Africa by the authorities, who would not leave him alone or across the border, broke him.
He died the following year in his room, from what the autopsy reports said was a coronary thrombosis.
But reading Mahala’s account of the death and destruction of this truly gifted man, it might not be unreasonable to conclude that Can Themba died of a broken heart.
Can Themba – The doing and undoing of the intellectual Tsotsi is published by Wits University Press
