Uys Krige | |
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Born | Mattheus Uys Krige 4 February 1910 Bontebokskloof, Cape Province, Union of South Africa |
Died | 10 August 1987 Hermanus, Cape Province, South Africa | (aged 77)
Occupation |
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Language | Afrikaans and English |
Mattheus Uys Krige (4 February 1910 – 10 August 1987) was a South African writer of novels, short stories, poems and plays in Afrikaans and English. In Afrikaans literature, Krige is counted among the Dertigers ("Writers of the Thirties"). Uys Krige was, according to his friend Jack Cope, very much an exception among Afrikaner poets and writers of his generation due to his hostility to extreme Afrikaner nationalism, White Supremacism, and his literary translations of Latin American poetry by non-White authors into Afrikaans; which have had an enormous influence upon South African literature and culture. Later in his life, Krige served as a mentor and father figure to the Afrikaans literary movement known as die Sestigers; whom he convinced into speaking truth to power about the 1948–1994 rule of the National Party and its policies of both Apartheid and censorship in South Africa.