Tatamkulu Afrika

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Tatamkhulu Afrika (Xhosa: "Grandfather Africa") (December 7 1920 - December 23 2002), was a South African poet and writer. Sometimes his first name is spelt Tatamkulu.

He was born as Mohamed Fu'ad Nasif in Egypt in 1920 and moved to South Africa as a young child, where he was raised by an English Methodist family after the death of his parents. He fought in World War II and was taken prisoner. He later became a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, and founded an armed resistance group, Al-Jihaad.

His first novel, Broken Earth was published when he was seventeen, but it was over fifty years until his next publication, a collection of verse entitled Nine Lives. He won numerous literary awards, and in 1996 his works were translated into French.

He died shortly after his 82nd birthday, from injuries received when he was run over by a car two weeks before, just after the publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden.