SOURCE: de Vries, Abraham H. “An Interview with Richard Rive.” Current Writing 1, no. 1 (October 1989): 45-55.

In the following interview, de Vries speaks with anti-apartheid activist and author Richard Rive a few weeks prior to his brutal murder on June 4, 1989. Rive shares his perspective on Black protest writing from the 1950s through the 1980s.

[de Vries]: Drum of the 1950s and Staffrider in the late '70s seem to symbolise two epochs in black South African life and literature. You've been a witness to both.

[Rive]: Yes, Drum of the '50s was basically a kind of protest writing. I don't like the term. But what it implied was that the writing was critical of the situation, but essentially negative. It was more about the black man and what was being done to him rather than the way he was hitting back. Whereas Staffrider of the '70s was...