South African activist Frank Anthony wrote a novel that has been forgotten: why it shouldn’t have been

F. Fiona Moolla

How does it come about that a man who dedicated the greater part of his life to a vision of a just South Africa, and sacrificed his family and personal relationships to do so, disappears from the annals of the country’s history?

How does a writer with consummate command of two of South Africa’s national languages – English and Afrikaans – and whose work in poetry and prose reflects deep insights into world politics, literature and culture come to be virtually totally forgotten?

This is what happened to Frank Anthony, a South African author and activist who lived a life committed to ending racial, economic and gender injustice in apartheid South Africa. Anthony was born in 1940 and died in 1993.

He is the author of an Afrikaans poetry collection Robbeneiland: My Kruis, My Huis (Robben Island: My Cross, My Home) and the novel The Journey: The