Reverberations of Can Themba

It’s a love story that began 30 years ago: Siphiwo Mahala and Can Themba.

Mahala was a schoolboy then, still trying to find himself and his place in SA, which was poised for a great political transformation.

Themba had died alone some 25 years earlier in 1967 in Manzini, Swaziland, where he had chosen to live and work as an apartheid-era exile.

It was one of Mahala’s teachers who introduced him to Themba’s works. The teacher was a part-time student at Themba’s alma mater, the University of Fort Hare, and had returned with a copy of To Kill a Man’s Pride — an anthology of South African short stories that was quickly banned by the apartheid authorities.

Among them is the classic, The Suit. The fascinating storyline and Themba’s gripping writing style must have left a lasting impression on young Mahala for, when he eventually became a published writer, readers would remark that some of his work — especially his short story Mpumi’s Assignment — had echoes of The Suit.

“When people gave me feedback, they’d say ‘it reminds me of The Suit’. Obviously, my first reaction was to think that they implied I’d plagiarised it, which is why I went back to The Suit, read it over and over again until I realised that the story of that man who jumps out of the window was not told, which is how I wrote The Suit Continued. That led to more comparisons between my work and that of Can Themba,” Mahala told me during a lunch meeting recently.

The Suit Continued, led to him being regarded as some kind of expert on Themba. But he wasn’t; in truth, he was frustrated that there was no definitive biography of this icon of the legendary Drum generation of writers.

Mahala would spend time with Es’kia Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi and Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile and others of Themba’s generation who gave him useful anecdotes about the man. It was the death of Nkosi, himself an accomplished writer and a former Drum journalist, that led to Mahala realising the need for a proper account of Themba’s life.

“So, in 2013 I decided to start recording these conversations as it was the 50th anniversary of The Suit. I spoke to Bra Willie [Kgositsile], I spoke to Nadine Gordimer; basically, one interview led to another. I spoke to Ntate Joe Thloloe, Judy Mayet, Peter Magubane, Don Mattera, all of these people. At that point I was not clear about what I wanted to do with the research. All I wanted was to capture those anecdotes,” says Mahala.

Academic Mbulelo Mzamane in 2013 first suggested that Mahala, who was about to be conferred his master’s degree in creative writing at Wits, register for a PhD and take Themba’s life as his subject.

Mahala eventually heeded Mzamane’s advice and did his PhD via Unisa. He also wrote a production, The House of Truth, based on Themba’s life and starring celebrated actor Sello Maake kaNcube.

All this culminated in Mahala’s book, Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi, a Biography, published by Wits University Press. It’s a comprehensive insight into the tragically short but colourful life of a journalist whose work greatly defined a generation.

Look, Can Themba drank, that is for sure. So my interest was how he got there

Barrels of ink have been spilled over the past six decades as historians and journalists alike sought to understand the influence of the Sophiatown writers — of whom Themba was the leader — and Drum magazine on the political and social life of the 1950s.

Mahala’s book breaks new ground in helping readers understand some of the factors that may have contributed to Themba’s undoing. For instance, much of the previous writing on Themba is marked by what Mahala terms an “over-emphasis” on his legendary abuse of alcohol.

In his book Mahala seeks to understand how the young Themba, who before he joined Drum told news editor Henry Nxumalo that he did not drink, ended up an alcoholic after just a few years in the newsroom.

“Look, Can Themba drank, that is for sure. So my interest was how he got there,” Mahala says. 

In answering the question, Mahala takes the reader back to Themba’s first job as a schoolteacher and, despite having a university qualification, not being fully recognised as one and consequently not receiving a full salary. That was the first of a number of heartbreaks he was to experience in his career as a journalist and writer, as well as on a personal front.

No matter how good he was at his job, sometimes even standing in as Drum editor, a new editor would be shipped in from London and it would fall to Themba to help him learn the ropes.

His salary matched neither his talent nor his responsibilities. And then there was his romantic relationship with Jean Hart — a British émigré — at a time when liaisons across the racial divide were forbidden by apartheid laws.

Mahala acknowledges that Themba has himself to blame for his reputation as a heavy drinker. “What troubles me is the over-emphasis on his drinking and making it almost seem like he wrote because he drank. The thing is he did not do himself any favours because he romanticised it.”

It was Gordimer who, describing Themba’s contribution to short-story writing and journalism, said: “Can Themba will never be dead for us: South African literature, South African readers of his writings, the stirring flash of enlightenment, and the vivid pleasures of his interpretation of our world, along with his.”

In the biography, Mahala demonstrates this legacy. His detailed study of the man’s life and work leaves the reader with a deep appreciation of why his work has outlived the times it was created in, and remains relevant today under conditions of democracy and, albeit imperfect, freedom.

The books’ greatest strength is the oral interviews Mahala conducted with those who knew Themba personally.

“I would say I was lucky that I managed to speak to speak to people who knew Can Themba personally. I caught the tail end of things because most of Can Themba’s peers — he would have been 98 this year — are either gone or their memory is no longer that sharp. So I was fortunate to speak to the people that I spoke to, and more than half of them have since passed. Part of our history would have been gone without being recorded.”

Although the book is on bookstore shelves, Mahala isn’t resting. If he isn’t attending book launches, he is promoting his play, Bloke and His American Bantu, based on the lives of Themba’s Drum colleague Bloke Modisane and American poet Langston Hughes.

The play will be opening at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda on Thursday, before heading to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in August.

His fascination with Themba and the rest of the Drum generation clearly hasn’t abated after all these years.

On Wednesday, Mahala was announced as the winner of the PanSALB Multilingualism Award for English Literature. 

Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi, a Biography, by Siphiwo Mahala, is published in SA by Wits University Press. It is described as the “definitive history” of the larger-then-life Can Themba (1924–1967) with “intensive and often fresh research that features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba’s surviving colleagues and family”.

• Siphiwo Mahala is an author, playwright, senior lecturer in the department of English at the University of Johannesburg, and senior research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. His biography of Can Themba grew out of his PhD thesis.