Bloke modisane biography of albert

Perhaps the best vantage point from which to view William ‘Bloke’ Modisane is that from a series of sketches of him by his fellow Sophiatown Renaissance writer Lewis Nkosi  in the late 1950s and in the late 1980s. The first portrait was on the occasion of Modisane’s leaving South Africa illegally what turned out to be a permanently self-imposed exile. Having accompanied him to the railway station in Johannesburg in his quest for new territories and for new horizons, Nkosi reflects on the psychic and political pain felt by Modisane in the entrapment of South Africa: “I remember Bloke, in particular, as a man who felt the hurt so deeply and so personally that I wondered if he would not explode or commit suicide if he did not leave the country. I remember the nights in Sophiatown just before he left. We would sit up late nights listening to what we cynically referred to as a ‘culture on disc.’ Time and again we listened to the deep voice of Canada Lee, the late Negro actor who came to South Africa to star in Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country” (Lewis Nkosi, “Why ‘Bloke’ Baled Out”, Contact, July 11, 1959). Continuing on his reflections, Nkosi outlines the historical project of the Drum writers as well as tracing the historical conditions of possibility that made this undertaking feasible: “I don’t want to suggest that this desire to escape did not arise out of a genuine feeling of entrapment. I suffer from it perpetually. . . I know some spiritually under-privileged people have suggested that this is a desire in the creative artist to flee from his people. I know this to be untrue because while Sophiatown remasined intact we felt we could endure at least to some extent. For most of us Sophiatown, because of its community spirit, provided some emotional warmth which could sustain us for many days and nights of cultural and spiritual sterility. The throb of life of the people here was a constant inspiration. There was even talk amongst the more ambitious of us