Mandela Day:Re-examine the Anti-Apartheid Movement

Originally aired on January 21, 2017, this interview is a small segment of the weekly literary program Ink&Quill.

From J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace to Nadine Gordimer's My Son's Story, South African literature has found a small foothold in China, as both countries had to endure painstaking struggle to gain freedom and independence.

Yet few books from the Rainbow Nation lay out the conflict between the apartheid state and the armed wing of African National Congress, the driving force behind the liberation movement. 

Born in 1950, Bhuti Mandla Langa is one of the most celebrated writers in South Africa. From 1972 to 1976, he served as the Director of Cultural Affairs at the South African Student Organization, responsible for organising and promoting African cultural activities. In 1976, he was arrested on a charge of planning to leave South Africa illegally. Langa was imprisoned for over three months until he fled to Botswana, which signifed the beginning of his exile. He has lived in many countries of southern Africa as well as in Hungary and the United Kingdom. Langa has written peotries and novels. In 1991, he became the first South African writer to be awarded the Arts Council of Great Britain Bursary for creative writing. [Photo: China Plus/Xu Weiyi]

Multi-award winning writer Mandla Langa has decided to set this right.

In his historical novel, The Texture of Shadows, the author unveils the thrilling journey back home of a group of expelled guerrilla soldiers. They are requested to escort two heavy trunks with highly-classified information inside. When they set off on the road, threats linger and conflicts erupt. 

Besides The Texture of Shadows which was translated and published in Chinese in 2016, Mandla Langa's latest works also include Tenderness of Blood, A Rainbow on a Paper Sky, The Naked Song and Otehr Stories, The Memory of Stones, and The Lost Colors of the Chameleon.

Upon the arrival of International Nelson Mandela Day, a day that celebrates freedom and social justice, let’s listen to the conversation between our reporter Shiyu and Mandla Langa, to discover how we should reflect on South Africa's history in the post-apartheid era and most important of all, how we should emphasize with one anothe and make the world a better place.  

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