Dedication

pp v-v

Epigraph

pp vi-vi

Contents

pp vii-viii

List of Illustrations

pp ix-x

Acknowledgements

pp xi-xii

Introduction

pp 1-8

PART I - Death and Birth of a Scribe

pp 9-10

1 - A Knock on the Door

pp 11-19

2 - The Poet Laureate of Fort Hare

pp 20-29

3 - The Teacher of Life and Letters

pp 30-41

4 - From Marabastad to Sophiatown and Beyond

pp 42-48

PART II - ‘Live Fast and Die Young’

pp 49-50

5 - The Drum Seduction

pp 51-55

6 - Occasions for Loving

pp 56-68

7 - Drumming up a Storm

pp 69-81

8 - Destruction and Demise

pp 82-101

9 - The Road to Swaziland: A Kind of Suicide

pp 102-108

PART III - The ‘Intellectual Tsotsi’

pp 109-110

10 - Black Englishman or Detribalised African? A Quest for Shared Identities

pp 111-130

11 - A Politico in a Poet

pp 131-146

12 - The People’s Intellectual

pp 147-156

PART IV - Dances with Texts: Writing and Storytelling

pp 157-158

13 - No Ordinary Storyteller

pp 159-170

14 - Intertextuality and the Making of Mr Shakespeare

pp 171-188

15 - The Suit for All Seasons

pp 189-200

PART V - A Writer’s Immortality

pp 201-202

16 - Re-Membering the Fragments

pp 203-216

Postscript: The Three Burials of Can Themba

pp 217-222

Notes

pp 223-242