Your role as politicians is to organise and agitate the masses against injustice, and mine, as a writer, is to document, critique and analyse both your actions and those of the oppressors.

This, in a nutshell, is how I can best paraphrase legendary journalist Can Themba's response to Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu when the two men, young activists of the ANC in the 1950s, visited him at his famous Sophiatown abode which he had christened provocatively as The House of Truth.

Watching House of Truth, a stage tribute to the legendary scribe at the Market Theatre last week, I had to smile at just how the more things change the more they remain the same. Just as the artists, writers and journalists of Themba's time were always under pressure from both the apartheid government, and its liberation struggle opponents to "do the right thing", today the artist is equally buffeted by winds and words of anger and criticism from both those in government, and those on opposition benches.

There is an expectation, on the part of those in power, for the artist to play a role in "nation building" or "social cohesion"; while the opposition parties expect the artist to be the watchdog for the citizenry. Some perceive it to mean one is always playing an adversarial role against the government while others understand it to mean guarding against abuses of power.

In the exquisite stage production where Sello Maake kaNcube single-handedly plays Themba and some other minor personalities who impacted on the writer's life, this issue of society's expectations of its writers is explored intelligently.

It's a hilarious reprise of very hard times for Themba, whose life is a microcosm of the black intelligentsia of that era.

Black intellectuals, because of their education, became a buffer between the oppressed masses and the oppressive regime. As a result, they were at the receiving end of attacks from both.

The oppressor saw the black intellectual as a threat and agitator. The black masses, on the other hand, dismissed him as one who had been co-opted into the system. Or, to use today's lexicon, "captured". The intellectuals were pejoratively referred to as "Situations" by their own black brethren.

In the play kaNcube explores all these contradictions and, in the voice of Themba, argues that the artist, if he is to dispassionately analyse the ills and challenges faced by society, must not be aligned to any political formation.

It's a debate that's been part of the SA landscape for a long time.

In an interview I did with novelist Zakes Mda last year, I suggested that in a country such as SA, which is a democracy in the making, a writer's role should be that of a "conscientious commentator", a social critic of the highest order.

"How dare you dictate what a writer should be? A writer should be who he wants to be. He should write what he or she likes. He should write about what brings him or her joy; or whatever he or she feels strongly about. And he must do it beautifully. That is art."

Then he related a story of how, back in the 1970s, he was one of those exiled South Africans who picketed Welcome Msomi when he brought to London his play Umabatha, a modern interpretation of Macbeth, with a strong Zulu bias.

"With the benefit of hindsight, I regret that we picketed Msomi. We set a wrong precedent by trying to dictate what an artist should do with his art."

Mda reluctantly conceded that artists, because they had the platform and the influence, could play an important role in spreading potent messages to the world. It is thanks to Siphiwo Mahala, who wrote House of Truth, that this important debate is back on the agenda.

It is tragic that a man of Themba's peerless writing skills and superior education never wrote a book in his lifetime.

Yes, he published some short stories and poems, some of which are contained in the anthology The World of Can Themba (compiled posthumously by Essop Patel).

Themba's romanticism, which I think robbed him of his time to focus on his writing, made him admire ingenious ways of survival: especially the illicit shebeens and general lawlessness.

Another way of looking at it is the frustrations that beset his life. Others found respite and redemption in exile. By the time Themba fled to Swaziland, it was too late.

His life will always be worth analysing - for in it we will continue to draw inspiration, be it as artists or just ordinary South Africans trying to understand the meaning of life.

l House of Truth is on at the Market Theatre until January 29.