Mongane Wally Serote was born four years prior to the assumption of power by the Nationalist Party in 1948. Always conscious of himself in relation to his society, his life and writing afford a chronicle of and commentary on the Apartheid era. As one of South Africa’s most prominent poets, he is primarily known for the passionate intensity of his work, his uncompromising commitment to political liberation, the breadth of his sympathies, and the tension he maintains between the clichéd image or expression and the startlingly original one. Apart from his volumes of poetry he has also written novels, various short stories, and numerous essays dealing with the relation between culture and political liberation.