Biography
Mongane Wally Serote was born in 1944 in South Africa. He became involved in the Black Consciousness Movement while in high school and joined the African National Congress in 1969. His poetry considers themes of political activism, Black identity, revolt, and resistance. He was arrested by the apartheid government under the Terrorism Act and spent nine months in solitary confinement before being released without charge. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University and lived in exile in Botswana and England for thirty years before returning to South Africa in 1990. He authored several collections of poems and was inaugurated as South Africa's National poet laureate in 2018.
