Sydney Sipho Sepamla (22 September 1932 – 9 January 2007) was a contemporary South African

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

and

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

Biography

Born in a township near

Krugersdorp Krugersdorp (Afrikaans for ''Kruger's Town'') is a mining city in the West Rand, Gauteng Province, South Africa founded in 1887 by Marthinus Pretorius. Following the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand, a need arose for a major town in the west ...

, Sipho Sepamla lived most of his life in

Soweto Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a s ...

. He studied teaching at Pretoria Normal College and published his first volume of poetry, ''Hurry Up to It!'', in 1975. During this period he was active in the

Black Consciousness The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid Activism, activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the power vacuum, political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African Nationa ...

movement and his 1977 book ''The Soweto I Love'', partly a response to the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976, was banned by the

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

regime.Sydney Sipho Sepamla
Accessed: 15 January 2007. He was a founder of the Federated Union of Black Artists (now the Fuba Academy of Arts) and editor of the literary magazine ''New Classic'' and the theatre magazine ''S'ketsh''. He published several volumes of poetry and novels. He received the

Thomas Pringle Award The Thomas Pringle Award is an annual award for work published in newspapers, periodicals and journals. They are awarded on a rotation basis for: a book, play, film or TV review; a literary article or substantial book review; an article on English ...

(1977) and the French

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...

for his writing. More recently in democratic South Africa he was a member of the government's Arts and Culture Task Group.

Works

Poetry *''Hurry Up to It!'' (Donker, 1975) *''The Soweto I Love'' (1977) *''Selected poems'' (Donker, 1984) *''From Gorée to Soweto'' (1988) Novels *''The Root is One'' (1979) *''A Ride on the Whirlwind'' (1981)

External links

2 poems

References

1932 births 20th-century South African poets 2007 deaths South African male novelists University of Pretoria alumni 20th-century South African novelists South African male poets International Writing Program alumni 20th-century South African male writers {{SouthAfrica-writer-stub