Call Me Not a Man. The Stories of Mitutuzeli Matshoba                                                            

                                          FIRST EDITION, SECOND IMPRESSION,  RAVEN PRESS, 1979, SOFTCOVER, 198 PAGES, CONDITION: NEW

This book is an invaluable look into the lives of subjugated masses in South Africa and how difficult it was to even secure a home in the terrible townships/imijondolo. The writing of it is disappointingly very Western, and Matshoba uses figures of speech from Greek mythology, Christian mythology and general phrases straight out of the /English/ English language. Such was the writing of the mentally and physically colonised, and so it is interesting still to read into these aspects of writing like this.

In 1978/9 Ravan Press published Matshoba's collection of short stories 'Call Me Not A Man' . This landmark and strident collection addressed urban black and migrant worker experience after the 1976 uprisings. Matshoba also appeared in anthologies like Forced Landing and To Kill A Mans Pride and, in 1980, won the English Academy Pringle Award in the Creative Writing category.

His short stories eventually attracted the attention of film makers, which resulted in him moving into scriptwriting. In a long and distinguished career Matshoba has been involved in the creation and writing of famous television productions such as Soweto, The History, Yizo Yizo, Stokvel, Scoop Scoombie, and Zero Tolerance. He graduated to feature film with the much acclaimed comedy Chikin Biznis, which won Best Film in FESPACO in Burkina Faso. He has also been involved in polishing the scripts for Red Dust and, more recently, Jerusalema. In 2014, Matshoba was a judge in the Twenty in 20 project, a Twenty Years of Freedom initiative whose aim is to identify the best South African short fiction published in English during the past two decades of democracy.