Can Themba

Can Themba ( born June 21, 1924 in Marabastad in Pretoria, † 1968 in Manzini, Swaziland; actually Canadoise D'Orsay Daniel Themba ) was a South African writer and journalist.

Life

Themba was born near Pretoria. After leaving school he received a scholarship to study at the University of Fort Hare in Alice. There he earned a degree in English language with top grade and a diploma as a teacher.

He moved to Johannesburg in the suburb of Sophiatown, which was a center of the urban culture of black South Africans at the time. Themba began to write short stories. He won the 1953 Drum Award, the first prize in a competition of the magazine Drum, which was established in Sophiatown. As a result, he wrote regularly for the magazine and was, along with other young South Africans such as Henry Nxumalo, Bloke Modisane and Lewis Nkosi one of the " Drum boys". My motto was live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse ( German: "Live fast, die early and have a good looking corpse "). Themba boasted to speak any African language.

Can Themba looked like his colleagues at Drum reality of apartheid within the meaning of investigative journalism. He reported on his attempts to get into churches, the whites were reserved. At times, he was deputy editor of the magazine.

1959 Themba was dismissed because of his alcohol consumption by drum. A year later, he was employed by the weekly paper The City Post. As Themba was dissatisfied with the limitations of apartheid, he moved in 1963 to the neighboring country of Swaziland, to work there as a teacher. In 1966 he was declared in South Africa to the communists and banned his works. Themba became increasingly dependent on alcohol. 1968 ( or 1969) he died in Manzini.

Two of his works were not published until after Themba's death: the narrative books of The Will to Die and The World of Can Themba. Among his most famous stories heard The Suit ( German: " The suit " ), who plays in a law family in Sophiatown. The eponymous suit belongs to the lover of the lady. Her husband forces her to her death, to treat the suit as a guest in order to remind them of adultery. The Suit was adapted for the stage. Other well-known stories are crepuscle, The Will to Die and The Bottom of the Bottle, in which Themba addressed his alcohol addiction.

Awards

Works

• The Will to Die. Narratives. Heinemann, 1972, ISBN 0-43-590104-4
• The World of Can Themba. Selected Writings of the Late Can Themba. Narratives. Ravan Press, 1985, ISBN 0-86-975145- X
• Requiem for Sophiatown. Narratives. Penguin, 2007 ISBN 978-0143185482

Translations into German

• Requiem for Sophiatown. Narrative, translated by Elisabeth Schnack, in: The Green Gnu and other tales from South Africa, ed. by Elisabeth Schnack, Diogenes, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-257-20883-9