Ismail Joubert, commonly known as Tatamkhulu Afrika, which is Xhosa for Grandfather Africa, was a South African poet and writer. His first novel, Broken Earth was published when he was seventeen, but it was over fifty years until his next publication, a collection of verse entitled Nine Lives.
Breyten Breytenbach is a South African writer, poet, and painter who became internationally well-known as a dissident poet and vocal critic of South Africa under apartheid, and as a political prisoner of the National Party-led South African Government. Breytenbach is now informally considered by Afrikaans-speakers as their poet laureate and is one of the most important living poets in Afrikaans literature. He also holds French citizenship.
Antjie Krog is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book Country of My Skull. In 2004, she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape as Extraordinary Professor.
The poetry of South Africa covers a broad range of themes, forms and styles. This article discusses the context that contemporary poets have come from and identifies the major poets of South Africa, their works and influence.
Olga Kirsch was a South African and Israeli poet.
Dr. Daniel Hugo is a poet, translator, compiler and editor. He worked a specialist announcer / producer for Radiosondergrense, the national Afrikaans radio service, and was also responsible for the literary programmes "Leeskring" and "Vers en Klank". He is an edit at the publishing house Protea Boekhuis.
Afrikaans literature is literature written in Afrikaans. Afrikaans is the daughter language of 17th-century Dutch and is spoken by the majority of people in the Western Cape of South Africa and among Afrikaners and Coloured South Africans in other parts of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini. Afrikaans was historically one of the two official languages of South Africa, the other being English, but it currently shares the status of an "official language" with ten other languages.
The Sestigers (Sixtiers), also known as the Beweging van Sestig, were a dissident literary movement of Afrikaans-language poets and writers in South Africa under apartheid. The movement was started in the beachside Cape Town suburb of Clifton during the early 1960s by André Brink and Breyten Breytenbach, under the mentorship of Uys Krige and Jack Cope, and in continuation of a tradition in South African literature pioneered in the 1920s by Roy Campbell, William Plomer, and Laurens van der Post.
Anoeschka von Meck is a Namibian author who writes in the Afrikaans language.
John Christoffel Kannemeyer, better known as J. C. Kannemeyer was an authority on Afrikaans literature and a well-known biographer of Afrikaans writers, and published numerous books on the history of Afrikaans literature.
Ingrid de Kok aka Ingrid Fiske is a South African author and poet.
Johann de Lange is an Afrikaans poet, short story writer and critic.
Daniel Sleigh is a South African novelist who writes in Afrikaans. He was born on the farm Geelbeksfontein on the West Coast on 3 November 1938. He matriculated at Vredenburg High School and then joined the South African Navy. Until 1962, he studied at the Paarl Training College to become a Physical Education teacher, after which he taught in Namibia and Cape Town.
Phil du Plessis Afrikaans poet, musician and medical doctor, was born as Johannes du Plessis at Fouriesburg, in the Orange Free State, South Africa. Following the appearance of his first anthology, he was hailed by Andre Brink as the spokesman for an underground 'Sixties' group in Afrikaans poetry. Something of a Renaissance man, a leader of an Afrikaans avant-garde, his work was experimental, latterly integrating poetry and art.
Jeanne Goosen was a South African journalist, poet and writer. She wrote short stories, children's books, plays and award-winning novels.
The Eugène Marais Prize is a South African literary prize awarded by the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns for a first or early publication in Afrikaans. In 1971 it was renamed after the Afrikaans poet and researcher Eugène Marais. The prize has no genre limitation, but only works that have appeared in the previous calendar year are eligible. Further, an author can only win the award once. The prize money was R22 000 and was sponsored by ABSA and Rapport.
S. V. Petersen was an Afrikaans-language South African poet and author, educator and founding principal of the Athlone High School, Silvertown [Athlone]], Cape Town. He was the first person of colour whose poetry and prose were published in South Africa.
Lucas Cornelis Malan was a South African academic and writer of poetry, prose, plays, text books, literary reviews and other articles, principally in Afrikaans.
Douglas Reid Skinner is a South African writer, editor, translator and poet. He was born in 1949 in Upington, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.
Koleka Putuma is a South African queer poet and theatre-maker. She was nominated one of Okay Africa's most influential women in 2019.
