James Matthews is a South African poet, writer and publisher. During the Apartheid era his poetry was banned, and Matthews was detained by the government in 1976 and for 13 years was denied a passport.
"I grew up in a household where there were no shelves filled with books. My father was illiterate and my mother read Oracle and Miracle, two thin paperbacks from the United Kingdom which could hardly be considered as literature.... I was almost 14 and in standard eight when we were asked to write a composition. It is now termed creative writing. I will never forget the name of our English teacher – Miss Meredith. She announced to the class that I had written a short story and not a composition. She marked it 21, one mark above the accepted 20 and informed the class that I was a writer. My introduction to a library was one of wonderment. I was a messenger at the Cape Times and a reporter asked me to take her books to the library. I was confronted by row upon row of stalls stacked with books. My eyes travelled along the lines of names and titles. None of them were known to me. My reading at that stage was limited to James Hadley Chase. Tentatively I asked the reporter if I could take out a book for myself when I returned her books the following time. She agreed and a new world opened to me because public libraries were then exclusively for the benefit of whites....
After leaving school he had a number of jobs, including as newspaper boy, office messenger, clerk and telephonist, and after publishing his first writings in 1946, when he was aged 17, he found work as a journalist, over the years contributing to various national publications such as the Golden City Post, The Cape Times, and Drum, as well as the independent community newspaperThe Muslim News. Matthews through his poetry became "a leading articulator of the Black Consciousness philosophy". In 1972 his first collection, Cry Rage, was published. It was banned by the apartheid regime — the first poetry collection thus targeted — as would also happen to most of his later works. Matthews was detained by the government in 1976, and was denied a passport for 13 years. He established the first black-founded art gallery in South Africa in 1972, and the first black-owned publishing house, BLAC, 1974–91, which closed as a result of constant government harassment. In 2000, he founded the publishing house Realities. He is a founding member and the patron of the Congress of South African Writers since its inception in 1987.
In 2014, Shelley Barry's documentary Diaries of A Dissident Poet, a film profiling James Matthews, premiered at the Encounters Film Festival in South Africa.
Awards
Woza Afrika Award
Kwaza Honours List — Black Arts Celebration, Chicago, U.S.A.
