Es’kia Mphahlele was the author of two autobiographies, more than thirty short stories, two verse plays and a fair number of poems.

“He was in many ways the father of modern black South African writing,” said Leon de Kock, the head of the school of literature and language studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “His death closes a certain bracket in our literature, what we used to call protest literature, literature in the resistance mode that included exile and return.”

In 1977 Es’kia Mphahlele original name Ezekiel Mphahlele changed his name to Es’kia. He was born in Marabastad, Pretoria, but spent much of his childhood in Maupaneng, a village outside Polokwane. At the age of 13, he and his siblings returned to Pretoria, moving in with their grandmother.

Mr. Mphahlele worked as a secretary at a school for the blind after his training for a teacher. He began contributing short stories to Drum, New Age and other magazines. Mr. Mphahlele married Rebecca Mochadibane in 1945. Four of their children survive him: Anthony, Motswiri, Chabi Robert and Puso.

While he was teaching English and Afrikaans at a Johannesburg high school, he received a B.A. and an M.A. in English literature from the University of South Africa and published his first book of stories, “Man Must Live” in 1946. After he publicly agitated against the discriminatory Bantu Education Act, his career as an educator came to a halt. Barred from teaching in South Africa, he struggled to survive and in 1957 emigrated.

Es’kia Mphahlele in 2003. Credit Simon Mathebula/Sunday Times, via Associated Press

“I was suddenly seized by a desire to leave South Africa for more sky to soar,” he wrote at the end of “Down Second Avenue.” He was, he complained, “shriveling in the acid of my bitterness.”

He completed his memoir while in exile, as well as a second volume of stories, “The Living and the Dead” in 1961, and “In Corner B” in 1967.

Mr. Mphahlele gave up his university post to return to South Africa in 1977. “I couldn’t grasp the cultural goals of the Americans,” he told The New York Times. “I found them so fragmented. I asked myself, ‘What am I contributing to American education?’ I had no answer.”

He was the first black professor at the Witwatersrand University, where he taught African literature and created a department devoted to the subject.

He also wrote two more novels, “Chirundu” in 1980 and “Father Come Home” in 1984, as well as a second volume of memoirs, “Afrika My Music” in 1984.

He found the Es’kia Institute in 2002, an arts organization devoted to preserving traditional African culture.

“An African cares very much where he dies and is buried,” he told the reference work Contemporary Authors after returning to South Africa. “But I have not come to die. I want to reconnect with my ancestors while I am still active.”

Some of Pretoria’s street names were renamed to represent all racial groups, genders and political spectrums, including Afrikaner religious leaders and academics that played an important role in the country’s liberation struggle. The former DF Malan Street is now Es’kia Mphahlele Drive.