(1944- ) poet,essayist, novelist
Mongane Wally Serote was born in Sophiatown, South Africa. He received his early education in Alexandra Township and later attended the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto. In 1974, after a succession of different jobs, he left South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled him to study for a master’s degree in fine arts at Columbia University in New York. Before leaving he had been awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for Poetry following the publication of his collection Yakhal’inkomo (1972).
Serote’s most recent novel, Gods of Our Time (1999), documents the latter years of the liberation struggle in South Africa and conveys the bewilderment and uncertainty of those involved in the historic events of the time. In his text, Serote mimics the dislocated sensation of living in a time when people often disappeared without a trace by using a multitude of characters who enter the pages in an apparently random manner and then, inexplicably, disappear again. Much of Serote’s work chronicles a disconnection with the past and attempts a realignment and reconfiguration with that past. His collection of poetry The Night Keeps Winking (1982) was banned in his home country. It contains vivid imagery of the cruelty of life under apartheid, but also lyrical notes:
If life is so simple why can’t it be lived if it is so brief why can’t it be lived After living in exile in Botswana and Britain, he returned to South Africa when the end of apartheid came. In 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Natal. He won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1993. Mongane Serote was elected to South Africa’s Parliament in 1994 and became the chair of the Arts, Culture, Language, Science and Technology Parliamentary Portfolio committee. Serote continues to chronicle the history of the South Afican experience.
Another Work by Mongane Wally Serote
To Every Birth Its Blood. Westport, Conn.: Heine-mann, 1983.
Works about Mongane Wally Serote
Brown, Duncan. “Interview with Mongane Wally Serote.” Theoria: A Journal of Studies in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 80 (October 1992): 143-49. Horn, Peter. “A Volcano in the Night of Oppression: Reflections on the Poetry of Mongane Serote.” Available online at http://homepages.com-puserve.de/PeterRHorn/volcano.htm.
