The Drum Decade: Stories from the 1950s

"Drum" was launched as a popular magazine in the 1950s and quickly came to reflect the image and interests of the urban African. Several of its writers established themselves as important figures in South African literature and their writings are well known today in South Africa and overseas: Es'kia Mphalele, Can Themba, Richard Rive, James Matthews, Nat Nakasa and Casey Motsisi. This anthology presents a selection of more than 30 of the stories that appeared in "Drum" during the 1950s. They depict the danger, the poverty and the spurious glamour of Sophiatown, where the New African - the tsotsi, the jazz musician, the journalist and the writer - affirmed identity and style and refused to submit to the government's determination to 'retribalize'.