Modikwe Dikobe

Modikwe Dikobe (* 1913 in SEABEES, civil Marks Rammitloa ) is a South African author and civil rights.

Life

Dikobe spent his youth in poverty and lived as a newspaper vendor in Johannesburg. In the 1940s and 50s he was involved in boycotts directed against racial segregation in public transportation. After the Second World War, he was a leader of the squatters' movement in Alexandra. His membership of the South African Communist Party and his political activism initially led to detention; after a short time he was released again under different conditions. In 1961 a ban was imposed against him, who later also his books included, the only slowly became popular for this reason.

1973 published the novel The Dikobe Marabi Dance, who is regarded as a significant work of 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, which is to marry a distant relative in the country, but another man loves. To date, Dikobe is said an influence especially on the South African theater. He is said to have worked with his publisher Lionel Abrahams about twelve years at the manuscript. It originated in the period of 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.

Dikobes second plant, the volume of poems Dispossessed, appeared in 1983 and was given less attention. He also deals mainly with the South African history in the 20th century. By the end of apartheid Dikobe feared because of his political background for his safety, so he published his books under a pseudonym and lived in seclusion in the sequence.

Works

• The Marabi Dance. Heinemann, London, 1984 ISBN 0-435-90124-9
• Dispossessed. Rawan Press, 1983, ISBN 0-86975-143-3

Documents

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• Author
• Novel, epic
• Poetry
• Literature ( English )
• Literature ( 20th century)
• South Africans
• Born in 1913
• Man
• SACP member