Down Second Avenue' by Es'kia Mphahlele

Down Second Avenue' by Es'kia Mphahlele

Mphahlele's first book of short stories, Man Must Live, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland.[citation needed]

On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum,[1] under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organisation based in Johannesburg.

During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicised, and joined the African National Congress in 1955.[2] Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself