Alf Wannenburgh

Alfred John Wannenburgh III (2 December 1936 – 18 December 2010) was a South African author, journalist, conservationist, and anti-apartheid activist from Cape Town.

He was a member of the Communist Party in South Africa and the South African Congress of Democrats (COD)—a radical left-wing white, anti-apartheid organisation founded in South Africa in 1952 or 1953 as part of the multi-racial Congress Alliance, after the African National Congress (ANC) invited whites to become part of the Congress Movement.

He is most significantly associated with the Western Cape Protest School of the 60s analogous to the 'Sophiatown writers' of the 50s.

In 1955, he was a Congress Alliance delegate representing his local COD branch as one of 3,000 Kliptown 'Charterists', and was asked to travel to Kliptown to attend the Congress of the People (25 June 1955 – 26 June 1955) organised by the National Action Council—a multi-racial organisation which later became known as the Congress Alliance—to witness the declaration and ratify the adoption of the Freedom Charter, which set out the aims and aspirations of the opponents of apartheid.

Wannenburgh met Richard Rive in 1959 in a UCT registration queue and was already a close friend of his by the time Rive asked him to contribute stories to anthologies edited by him for Heinemann's African Writers Series—namely the short story anthology Quartet (1963) and the similar but expanded prose anthology Modern African Prose (1964).

Wannenburgh remained in South Africa in the early 1960s rather than going into self-imposed exile, however, he did relocate in 1965 (according to Roger Field) to Lüderitz, Namibia for a time—where he worked as a local History teacher and alluvial diamond researcher/prospector.

His early political writings which began in 1961/62 cemented his career as a left-wing protest writer in the radical pan-African literary scene and led him, Richard Rive, and Jan Hoogendyk to form what Grant Farred called the "Western Cape Protest School" constituted by Wannenburgh, Rive, Alex La Guma, and James Matthews—who occasionally met at Hoogendyk's Rondebosch home.

Wannenburgh attended both Rondebosch Boys' Preparatory School and Rondebosch Boys' High School and received his undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology, African History, and Political Philosophy from the University of Cape Town (UCT).

His career in journalism began in 1961 and ended in 2010.

He worked for many years as a foreign correspondent or stringer for America's Associated Press and Britain's The Guardian.

He was already a member of Goldberg's technical (engineering) unit, making bombs alongside him to be used for the anti-apartheid struggle's upcoming 'symbolic bombing' that began on December 16, 1961.

Wannenburgh was also a covert member of the UMkhonto we Sizwe ('Spear of the Nation' or 'MK') and was recruited by Dennis Goldberg and admitted in 1962.

The book was therefore first published in New York in 1963 under the name Quartet, being written in part by four writers—hence its title.

Wannenburgh negotiated and secured Crown Publishers' endorsement.

Quartet was banned on August 21, 1964 (Shaun Viljoen states '1965') by South Africa's apartheid government for being 'politically undesirable' but would still become widely read.

Prior to leaving "his [Muizenberg] home in a hurry" (in 1965), he received a decisive written warning from Hendrik Verwoerd's government to 'choose' exile before the situation escalated; and while away, a painting described by Wannenburgh as protest art gifted to him by Alex La Guma (after joint work on a SACPO [South African Coloured People's Organisation] election campaign) was likely confiscated by trespassing Special Branch, who had visited Wannenburgh before for questioning in either the late '50s or early '60s when he first lived as a bachelor in Rondebosch.

Two operatives, possibly the same ones, would later arrive and unwittingly receive help (from Wannenburgh) removing their vehicle in indiscernible darkness from a roadside depression at a remote Namibian bar near the alluvial site where Wannenburgh was working as a prospector-cum-researcher.

After returning to the establishment ahead of them, he heard them inquire for someone named 'Alfred' from the safety of an adjoining space, and thereafter made himself scarce.

Soon after arriving in Namibia, he also learnt of, his friend, Ingrid Jonker's suicide "in the winter of 1965" at Three Anchor Bay.

Domestically, he was also a columnist, feature writer, and sub-editor for the Cape Times, Weekend Argus, and Sunday Times in particular, from 1984 to 2010, while taking several research sabbaticals in-between.

Wannenburgh grew up in Cape Town's Southern Suburbs, namely 'Little Mowbray' (a subdivision of Mowbray proper) and Upper Rondebosch.

He was born into a middle-class Capetonian family of Anglo-Germanic and French Huguenot descent at either South Peninsula Maternity Home or Saint Monica's. His father, Malcolm Wentzel Wannenburgh, was a human computer at Cape Town City's ('CCC') Mowbray-based Trigonometrical Survey Office under the Mapping and Survey's Department.

Wannenburgh's family home was Harmony—a now lost Sir Herbert Baker manor house in Roseberry Road, Mowbray.

Wannenburgh's two sisters, Audrey and Elizabeth, attended Rustenburg School for Girls.

His mother, Dorothy (née Wood), was a CCC mayoral secretary.

After matriculating, Wannenburgh worked as a land surveyor's assistant, salesman, clerk, and window-dresser in the Cape Town City Bowl.

From the late 60s or early 70s until his death, he lived at Dartmouth, 212 Main Road, Muizenberg (on Muizenberg's 'Historic Mile').

Dartmouth was an Edwardian beach house, situated next-door to the Yokohama papier-mâché house, and was left to Wannenburgh by his father.

The structure stood directly below the Battle of Muizenberg historical site on Bailey's Kloof.

The Natural Wonder of Southern Africa (1984) has been omitted from this section.

An anthology written and co-edited by Alf Wannenburgh and Richard Rive, featuring James Matthews, Alex La Guma, Rive, and himself as part of their collective protest literature.

This 'Western Cape Protest School' first began meeting collectively at the Rondebosch home of Wannenburgh's good friend, Jan Hoogendyk.

In Quartet, Wannenburgh wrote Awendgesang, Echoes, The Snake pit, and Debut.

By 1985, several of Wannenburgh's short stories and books, respectively, had been translated into five European languages—namely Dutch, German, Polish, Hungarian, (Italian?) and French; with his story 'Echoes' being re-published in Hungary's Nagyvilág and Égtájak, France's Présence Africaine, East Germany's Sinn und Form, West Germany's Atlantis: Länder, Völker, Reisen, America's Black World/Negro Digest, and anthologised twice in Poland (see 'selected works' below).

Matthew Wannenburgh (* October 1, 1996), born out of Wannenburgh's second marriage from 1992 to 2010, is his only child.

Wannenburgh was an Independent Newspapers reporter, columnist, and sub-editor for almost two decades; spent several years as a stringer for European and North American newspaper houses; and published in a variety of diverse European and African political, short fiction, and wildlife publications (including Black Orpheus, Présence Africaine, Animan, Atlantis, GEO, New African, New Contrast, New Age, Negro Digest, Nagyvilág, Transition, London's Tribune and Gauteng's The Sunday Independent).

In his 2010 Cape Times staff obituary, he was remembered as an "affable activist" and "laid-back hero" who underplayed his contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle as a journalist, writer, go-between, and revisionist historian.

It was demolished post-2013.

His second wife, Celeste Wannenburgh (née Matthews), is a former Proportional Representative Councillor (Raadslid) for the City of Cape Town, a Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards recipient, and teacher that has served as a commissioner, board member, and advisor on several departmental agencies under South Africa's Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.

At the age of 74, Wannenburgh succumbed to cancer at his Muizenberg home.