Arthur Maimane

John Arthur Mogale Maimane (5 October 1932 – 28 June 2005), better known as Arthur Maimane, was a South African journalist and novelist.

Biography Maimane was born in Pretoria, South Africa, growing up in the black township of Lady Selborne. He was educated in Johannesburg at St Peter's College, also known as the "Black Eton" of South Africa (Oliver Tambo was his mathematics teacher before becoming a lawyer and president of the African National Congress). Maimane was originally intending to study medicine, when a young priest, Trevor Huddleston (who was involved in the Sophiatown forced removals), persuaded him to take a vacation job at Drum magazine. As a result, Maimane choose journalism as his life career. He was a versatile journalist, covering a wide spectrum of subjects for Drum, including writing sports reports, thriller and interviews with beauty queens and other celebrities.

Reporter Joining Drum in the early 1950s, he was mentored by Henry Nxumalo.

Under the pseudonym Arthur Mogale, he wrote a regular series for Drum entitled "The Chief", in which he described gangster incidents he had heard about in the shebeens. Don Mattera, a leading Sophiatown gangster, took exception to this: "The gangsters were pissed off with him and there was a word out that we should wipe this guy off."

Maimane moved to Drum magazine's sister daily paper, Golden City Post, as the news editor but he did not stay long. In 1958, the year after his friend Nxumalo was murdered by unknown assailants, Maimane relocated to Ghana to work on the West African edition of Drum. and then moving to Independent Television News (ITN) in 1973. After a brief return to England, he was appointed managing editor of the Johannesburg Star, South Africa's biggest daily newspaper (1994–97). His post-apartheid play, Hang on in There, Nelson, was performed at the Windybrow Theatre in Johannesburg and at the State Theatre in Pretoria, in 1996. His novel Victims was reissued in 2000 under the title Hate No More in South Africa.

In 2001, Maimane and his wife returned to London, after he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Maimane died on 28 June 2005, aged 72, at the Charing Cross Hospital in London.

Books

Victims, London: Allison & Busby, 1976. (Winner of the English Academy of South Africa's Thomas Pringle Award for Creative Writing in 1979). Hate No More (reissued version of Victims), Kwela Books, 2000.