Writer and anti-apartheid activist. Soon after leaving school he became a member of the Communist Party and was a leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation in the Western Cape in the 1950s and a defendant in the Treason Trial. He wrote for the New Age newspaper. After being placed under house arrest in 1962 and detained in 1963, he went into exile in 1966. He is regarded is one of South Africa’s major novelists.