At 51 years old, Mandla Langa is now one of the ruling elite. He was formerly the ANC head of culture in London during his period of exile (1976 ? 1994) and published his first two novels, Tenderness of Blood (1987) and Rainbow on a Paper Sky (1989) in Great Britain. When he returned to South African in 1994, he first launched a communications consultancy and worked on script-writing with several young filmmakers. In 1996 he was nominated President of Taskcom, a working group on government communications, and a year later he was made Director of Programming for national television. He then resigned from this position to take the post of President of the Independent Broadcasting Authority on the 1st of April 1999. Mandla Langa's first act as President of the IBA, which has since become a highly competent telecommunications body, was to ban violence and pornography from prime time television. His latest novel, Memory of Stones, was made into an opera (Milestones) in 1999. Although Mandla Langla is still writing, he now belongs, kile Wally Mongane Serote, to the circle of intellectuals that is loyal to the ANC and their voices are never heard/they never speak out these days.