The curious riddle of the late writer Dugmore Boetie, rejected in exile amidst claims of appropriated authorship is discussed by academics

By Jojokhala Mei

The Friday 22 August trickle into UJ’s Institute for Advanced Studies for ‘Public Lecture Invitation: Reclaiming the Voice of Dugmore Boetie’ by visiting historians, Benjamin Lawrence of University of Arizona University in the USA and Vusumuzi Khumalo of Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha felt as stealthy as a gathering to crack a wartime code. But it is a rehearsal for their book DUGMORE BOETIE – THE ORIGINAL APARTHEID HUSTLER, due publication by Wits University Press in May 2026.

 In fact, that morning I frantically phoned bra Percy Mtwa, Barney Simon’s co-creator of the sensational 1980s stage play Woza Albert to join me and attest to the accusation of authorship theft against Barney Simon, if they are true..Tall order indeed. But Alas, the phone number I’d guarded for well over a decade didn’t work, and I left a forlorn text message.

Each of the two researchers strategically presented a vignette of one stage in Dugmore’s unfolding life, from Vusumuzi Khumalo placing Boeti’s birth on the same Goud Street, Sophiatown, where Khumalo’s own father stayed before forced ‘legal’ evictions to the distant South Western Townships, better known as Soweto.

 The result is a hyped stylish presentation as lively as a boxing pre-tournament sparring session.

Wikipedia says Sophiatown born ‘Dugmore Boetie is the pen name of South African journalist, writer, and musician Douglas Mahonga Buti (c. 1924 – November 1966). He is best known for Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost, or Tshotsholoza, a fictionalised autobiographical book first published in 1969.

 But the Benjamin N. Lawrance says the autobiographical novel Dugmore left behind in 1966 he named Chocholoza. Like ‘chocolate. Typical of the man whose own surname had several spelling reincarnations throughout his life; including ‘Bowtie’ ;Boeti’, and ‘Buti’. The original Chocholoza now lies for safekeeping at the Amazwi SA Museum Of Literature in Makhanda, Eastern Cape.

Wikipedia make their pick to explain that: ‘Buti was born between 1922 and 1926 in Sophiatown Township, a racially integrated community of White, Black, Asian and Coloured residents. His father, Alcott Buti, was amaHlubi and an Ethiopianist lay preacher. His mother, Regina, who was classified under apartheid legislation as Cape Coloured, was from a farming family with Dutch and African heritage who lived in Queenstown. She may have been a washerwoman. Buti does not appear to have been educated beyond primary school, and the defining event of his childhood was the amputation of his leg after he fell from a tree and the wound became infected. It appears Buti travelled widely in his youth and into his early twenties. It was during these years that his musical talents developed, becoming competent on the guitar, piano and piano accordion. He performed with bands in Johannesburg and Durban, possibly performing in Dorkay House.

Yes, Lawrence says claims are made that Boetie took a photograph playing the guitar alongside Julius Nyerere in Tanzania where he turned back to South Africa under unsubstantiated suspicions that he was an apartheid agent.  

 Boeti made what seems at face value an incredulous claim that he limped all the way on foot from present day Botswana to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. Lawrance says Boetie actually hurt his leg in an accident playing soccer as a six year old boy, and it had to be amputated. He broadly agrees with these facts of Boeti’s adult life, to the point that:

‘By 1958 he was living in Cape Town, possibly working as a journalist. … In the early 1960s, Buti became involved in writing workshops run by Nat Nakasa, Can Themba, Nimrod Mkele and Barney Simon. The first result of this was a short story, “The Last Leg”, which was published in 1963 in The Classic, a quarterly magazine founded by Nakasa earlier that year.’  

But Benjamin disagrees with the popular Wikipedia ‘gospel truth’ that:

‘As Buti’s reputation grew, … various claims emerged about criminal activity and imprisonments. Another short story was published, first in The Classic in 1965 and then in the London Magazine in October 1966. This was to become the first chapter for his book.

Buti’s health began to decline in 1965, and over the next year he was hospitalised repeatedly with lung cancer. During this period he finished the manuscript of Familiarity. He died at the Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital in Nquthu in November 1966. He was buried at Doornkop Cemetery in Soweto on 19 November 1966.

Authorship

Barney Simon’s role in bringing Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost to publication has been repeatedly debated. Simon continued to revise the text long after Buti’s death, and the book’s production has been called a process of “collaboration”, “co-production”, or “cultural appropriation”. Some critics contend that the whole book was written by Buti, while others see it as an example of a white South African “discovering” a black voice.’

Not once does Benjamin N. Lawrance mention Wikipedia, but I have taken the liberty to refer to this popular ‘gospel of truth’. Lawrence adds that Boeti’s mother was Regina, and he married Pinkie Lukhele originally from Mpumalanga province. Hot on the heels of the early 1960s Sharpville massacre Boetie exiles himself, literally dumping his wife, or ‘absconding’ from his marriage as Lawrence puts it. Another, more famous writer of the time who confesses to dumping his wife is Bloke Modisane, in his book Blame Me On History.

Khumalo identifies with the impression Boetie left on many.  Khumalo grew up as a Soweto township lad descendant of Sophiatown residents, to be a university researcher who still proudly has a casual offhand manner of speech and gestures that can be mistaken for self-deprecation, or flippancy, if not tsotsi truancy, as it did for Dugmore Boetie.

Invariably Wikipedia wraps up that: ‘Following Buti’s death, his mother assigned agency rights to Simon. By the time of publication, Buti’s preferred title, Tshotsholoza, had been replaced [with Familiarity Is The Kingdom Of The Lost] and the cover of the first edition suggests co-authorship by crediting the work to “Dugmore Boetie with Barney Simon”. Simon’s name was only removed from the cover in 2005 when the first South African edition appeared.

Ah, my elder bra Percy, where are you when I need you to absolve or condemn the Barney Simon I’d worked under at the Market Theatre around 1994 of ‘cultural appropriation’. What of Woza Albert? Or should we let sleeping dogs lie since both Barney Simon and Mbongeni Ngema have departed to speak for themselves.

UJ Prize Shortlist announced

Things are shaping up as the names of those shortlisted for the prestigious literary awardthe University of Johannesburg Prize (UJ Prize) for South African Writing have been released.

“The University of Johannesburg Prize (UJ Prize) for South African Writing is pleased to announce the shortlist for books published in 2024. The Prize opened for submissions on 26 November 2024 and closed on 28 February 2025.

The UJ Prize was established in 2006 for South African writing and is not genre-specific.

We trust our panel of judges to do a fair and rigorous evaluation of submitted texts and select the most outstanding books. Following an intensive adjudication process, the judges have shortlisted the following books in their respective categories:

Debut Prize

• Morafe: Person, Family and Nation in Colonial Bechuanaland by Khumisho Moguerane
• Weeping Becomes a River by Siphokazi Jonas
• Who Looks Inside by Anna Stroud

Main Prize

• Keorapetse Kgositsile and the Black Arts Movement by Uhuru Portia Phalafala
• The Comrade’s Wife by Barbara Boswell
• The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan

The prize money is R75,000 (Seventy-Five Thousand Rand only) for the main prize, and R45,000 (Forty-Five Thousand Rand only) for the debut prize. The final results will be announced before the end of September 2025,” a media statement reads.