Langa, Mandla, 1950-

Mandla Langa (born 1950 in Stanger, Durban) is a South African poet, short-story writer, novelist, and cultural activist. He grew up in the KwaMashu township of Kwazulu Natal. His novel The Lost Colours of the Chameleon won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa region). Langa enrolled for a degree in English and Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare, but was expelled in 1973 as a result of his involvement in the activities of the South African Student Organisation. In 1976, he went into exile and has lived in different countries of Southern Africa as well as in Hungary and the United Kingdom. Langa was brought in to complete the second volume of Nelson Mandela's autobiography, left in an unfinished draft when Mandela died in 2013, and published in 2017 as Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years.