Alfred Hutchinson

Alfred Hutchinson (born 1924, Hectorspruit, Transvaal, S.Af.—died Oct. 14, 1972, Nigeria) was a writer and teacher noted for his imaginative experiments with language. His autobiography, Road to Ghana (1960), was highly acclaimed and translated into several languages. It tells of his escape from Johannesburg (via East Africa and Ghana) to the United Kingdom after he had been imprisoned in 1952 and charged with high treason in 1956 for opposing apartheid.

Hutchinson graduated in education from the University College of Fort Hare and received his M.A. from the University of Sussex, England. He continued his teaching career in England until he moved to Nigeria in 1971. Hutchinson wrote a play, The Rain-Killers (1964), about the tensions between new and old ways of thought in a Swaziland village; a number of radio dramas, including “Fusane’s Trial”; and several widely anthologized articles and short stories. Road to Ghana, however, is considered his most important work—for his skill in presenting in a simple and moving narrative his personal humiliations as a black in “white” South Africa and his subsequent escape from oppression there.