Richard Rive

Shaun Viljoen’s Richard Rive: A Partial Biography (2014) is about the prominent South African writer, literary critic, and scholar Richard Rive. Critics praise the book for its insightful look at apartheid and its depiction of the concept of nonracialism. A South African author and scriptwriter, Viljoen studied English at the University of Cape Town before taking over the English Department at Stellenbosch University. In 2007, he completed his doctorate on Richard Rive, which he later adapted into this published biography.

Viljoen explores Rive’s life from the 1950s until his murder in 1989, introducing readers to the complexity of Rive’s personality. While Rive is known for his short stories and literary achievements, it is less known how deeply he struggled with issues of homosexuality and nonracialism. Viljoen takes readers through the most politically and socially active decades of Rive’s life to reveal new ways of appreciating this complicated man.

Viljoen first offers readers some background information on Rive’s literary work. He wrote most of his short stories, novels, plays, and critical articles between 1954 and 1989. During this period, he also edited numerous African authors and he wrote his own memoir. Viljoen discusses Rive’s writing in detail, highlighting what it reveals about his views on race, color, and sexuality.



The first part of the book briefly touches on Rive’s early life. Rive was born in District Six, a residential district just beyond central Cape Town. When Rive grew up in District Six, it was a lively, cosmopolitan area where black and white people lived comfortably beside each other. By 1966, however, the Nationalist government turned District Six into a whites-only area.

As a black male deeply affected by this social change, it’s unsurprising, Viljoen notes, that Rive explored District Six in so much detail through his writing. He wrote about the problems with the area in “‘Buckingham Palace,’ District Six,” a story with which younger readers are most familiar. Viljoen credits the story with exposing the realities of apartheid and solidifying Rive’s place as a leading South African writer.

Although Richard Rive is primarily a biography, it also reflects upon South African social history more generally. For example, Viljoen considers how we can separate South African literature into pre-1994 and post-1994 literature, following the significant 1994 elections. He worries that there is less interest in pre-1994 South African literature than there should be, and he hopes that introducing young readers to Rive through work like “‘Buckingham Palace,’ District Six”  will reinvigorate a general interest in earlier writing.



Viljoen believes it is possible to analyze Rive’s writing now in ways that were almost impossible under apartheid. For example, it wasn’t possible to promote queer and homosexual elements in Rive’s stories pre-apartheid, because linking Rive with homosexuality was defamatory. The issue here, Viljoen explains, is that by refusing to acknowledge these elements in Rive’s stories, we are denying the truth of who he really was.

Rive struggled with queerness and sexual identity. Modern audiences, Viljoen claims, can appreciate these struggles, which make Rive seem more relatable. We’re free now, post-apartheid, to properly explore Rive’s work and the work of his contemporaries. Again, Viljoen reminds readers why he calls the book a “partial” biography. We are only now scratching the surface of Rive’s true personality and appreciating the full complexity of his work.

Rive embodied all manner of contradictions. Although he spoke loudly against racism and campaigned strongly for human justice, he was, in private, a very quiet and introverted man. Viljoen believes Rive masked inner loneliness and unhappiness with his brash, exuberant outer personality. Although he introduces readers to the various sides of Rive’s psyche, it is impossible to ever know him truly.



A careful re-examination of Rive’s work means exploring nonracialism. Rive passionately rejected racialism, meaning he believed there is no such thing as different human races. Rive believed race is a construct created by colonialists to justify apartheid, and it has no place in modern society. For Viljoen, Rive’s commitment to nonracialism is what makes his writing so powerful.

Viljoen finds it especially interesting that Rive didn’t see himself as a colored man. He only saw himself as human. He never wanted to be known as a colored writer, because this would imply there’s a difference between white and colored authors. Viljoen believes the significance of Rive’s commitment to nonracialism can’t be overstated.

Essentially, Viljoen claims, we shouldn’t look at Rive as a black or colored writer, because he didn’t see himself this way. We should see him as a man who fiercely campaigned for social justice while battling his own personal demons such as loneliness and issues of self-loathing. By seeing Rive as simply human, we can appreciate his work from an entirely new perspective and stimulate discussions around color and racial identity more generally.