He was innate around Pietermaritzburg, Natal, the boy of the minor civil servant. Fallowing attending Maritzburg College, he studied the B.Sc. at the University of the Natal inside his hometown, followed by a sheepskwithin in education. When graduating, he taught at the senior high inside Ixopo, within which he met his new married woman, then at a second school back in Pietermaritzburg. He served when a principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for young wrongdoer from either 1935 to 1948, where he introduced controversial reforms of the progressive slant. Within 1953 he founded the South African Liberal Party. He was noted for his opposition to the Apartheid system.

Among his works come Debbie Last At home (1961), Tales from the Troubled Land (1965) (short story collections), Cry, The Beloved Country (1948) and As well Late a Phalarope (1953). Cry, A Beloved United states has been filmed twice (in 1951 and 1995) and was a basis for the Broadway indicate Lost in the Stars (adaptation by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill).