Anthony Fleischer, the President of South African Pen for many years, died on 5 June at home in Cape Town. He was 85.
Fleischer, who lived in Cape Town, was the author of eight novels. His first novel, written under the pen name Hans Hofmeyer, was called The Skin is Deep, and published in 1958. It was well reviewed in England, but banned by the apartheid government when it reached South Africa, which was the catalyst for Fleischer to join South African Pen.
As Fleischer himself explained on SA Pen’s Books LIVE blog back in 2011:
I was inordinately upset by that ban. How can any government anywhere tell its citizens what they might or might not read? After Mandela was released, I published in the UK and locally under my own name. And, now, in reaction to the new threats of official censorship, I have revisited my first book and have published it on Kindle as an e-book. The title is now Chilembwe of the Lake and his lake was Lake Malawi. In the new democracies of the world, no one should be a foreigner.
Margie Orford, executive vice president of South African PEN, has written a moving obituary for Fleischer:
He will be greatly missed for his fiery combativeness in argument, his great capacity to listen and his desire to see the principles for which he stood all his life strengthened and deepened. He was loved and admired and respected by all who knew and worked with him. My thoughts, and those of the PEN membership, are with Dolores and his sons and their families. As Tony would say, hamba kahle.
Fleischer is survived by Dolores, his wife of 62 years; their three sons Spencer, Lance, and Kevin; ten grandchildren and one great-grandson:
We will miss his warm generosity, his enthusiastic optimism, his sense of humour, his humble curiosity, his love of life, writing, Africa, and the sea.