Matsemela Manaka began his career as a playwright in the mid 1970s. He was responsive to the ideas of black consciousness, took a leading role in the Soweto uprising of 1976, and participated in many of the cultural developments that ensued. In his work he set out to reconstruct what apartheid had subverted, if not destroyed: the cultural identity of black South Africans. He has sought to revitalize African tradition in the contemporary urban context and to rediscover South Africans' roots in the culture and history of Africa.

Manaka was born in Alexandra, one of the oldest of the black townships just north of Johannesburg, on 20 June 1956. After his family moved to Soweto, he attended primary and secondary schools there and then went on to study commerce part-time at Ithuteng Commercial College, Pretoria North. Since Afrikaans was required for university entrance, he also registered to take his matriculation examination...