Stanlake Samkange was a historian, an educationalist, a journalist, a member of an elite Zimbabwean nationalist political dynasty and the most prolific of the first generation of black Zimbabwean creative writers in English. His father Thompson was a Methodist clergyman, a proponent of African modernity in the colonial Rhodesia and a nationalist politician. Both Stanlake and his brother Sketchley were active in African nationalist politics in the 1950s and 1960s. For the Samkange clan, nationalist politics was an expression of Christian religious spirituality, and for Stanlake, writing fiction was a function of his religious and political beliefs. Although he authored several historical and philosophical works (
Origins of Rhodesia, 1968;
African Saga, 1970;
Hunhuism or Ubuntuism, 1980)…
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Citation: Primorac, Ranka. "Stanlake Samkange". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 January 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5409, accessed 27 April 2024.]
