SOURCE: “Interview: Richard Samin with Es'kia Mphahlele,” in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 28, No. 4, Winter, 1997, pp. 182-200.

In the following interview, Mphahlele discusses African humanism, his writing, and life in Africa.

The following interview was part of a one-month research project on new developments in Black South African literature financed by the French Institute of South Africa (Johannesburg) in August 1995. It was conducted on 16 August 1995 at Professor Mphahlele's home in Lebowakgomo, near Pietersburg (Northern Province) where he has been living with his wife Rebecca since he took his retirement as Professor and Head of the Division of African Literature in the Department of Comparative Literature (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) at the end of 1987.

This was the first time I met Professor Mphahlele. The only contacts I had had with him were of an epistolary nature while I was doing research for my doctoral thesis on his and La...