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Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988) was a South African writer, anti-apartheid activist, and educator. His works include the novels Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), Too Late the Phalarope (1953), and the short story The Waste Land. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Gold for his literary contributions to the anti-apartheid movement.

Early life

Paton was born in Pietermaritzburg in the Colony of Natal (now South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province). He was the son of James Paton, a civil servant and Scottish immigrant, and Eunice Warder Paton (née James), a schoolteacher of English descent. Both of his parents were deeply religious, raising him in the Christadelphian faith, and neither was highly educated.……

Early career

Paton served as the principal of Diepkloof Reformatory for young (native African) offenders from 1935 to 1949. A year before he started as principal, the South African parliament transferred reformatory institutions for juveniles from the Department of Prisons to the Union Education Department, opening up principal positions at several reformatories.……

Later career

Paton volunteered for military service with the British Commonwealth forces during World War II, but was refused by the South African authorities. After the war he took a journey, at his own expense, to tour correctional facilities across the world. He toured Scandinavia, Britain, continental Europe, Canada, and the United States.……

Opposition to apartheid

In 1948, four months after the publication of Cry, the Beloved Country, the right-wing National Party was elected to power in South Africa. Black South Africans did not receive the vote until 1994 so were unable to oppose this directly. The legislature soon passed laws to formally establish apartheid, a system of racial segregation.

Paton, together with Margaret Ballinger, Edgar Brookes, and Leo Marquard, formed the Liberal Association in early 1953.……

Other works

Paton continued to explore racial themes and apartheid in his second and third novels, Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful (1981), and his collected short stories, Tales From a Troubled Land (1961).

Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful was built on parallel life stories, letters, speeches, news and records in legal proceedings.……

Personal life

While at Ixopo, Paton met Dorrie Francis Lusted. They married in 1928, and remained together until her death from emphysema in 1967. Their life together is documented in Paton's memoir Kontakion for You Departed, (1969). They had two sons, Jonathan and David.

In 1969, Paton remarried, to Anne Hopkins. This marriage lasted until Paton's death in 1988.

Paton was a Christian. His faith was one of the reasons he was so strongly opposed to apartheid.

Adaptations

Cry, the Beloved Country was twice adapted for films, in 1951 and 1995. It was the basis for the Broadway musical Lost in the Stars, which was adapted by American playwright Maxwell Anderson with music by Kurt Weill.

Selected works

Cry, The Beloved Country, 1948 – made into a film in 1951, directed by Zoltan Korda with a screenplay by Paton himself; in 1995, directed by Darrell Roodt; also a musical and an opera

Lost in the Stars 1950 – a musical based on the above work (book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill)

• Too Late the Phalarope, 1953
• The Land and People of South Africa, 1955
• South Africa in Transition, 1956
• Debbie Go Home, 1960
• Tales from a Troubled Land, 1961

Awards and honours

In 20 April 2006, Paton was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Gold for his "exceptional contribution to literature, exposing the apartheid oppression through his work and fighting for a just and democratic society."