Richard Rive

Richard Moore Rive (1 March 1931 – 4 June 1989) was a South African writer and academic, who was from Cape Town.

Biography Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class Coloured residential area District Six of Cape Town.

His father was African, and his mother was Coloured. Rive was given the latter classification under apartheid. Rive went to St Mark's Primary School and Trafalgar High School, both in District Six. In 1951 he went to Hewat College of Education in Athlone, where he qualified as a teacher. He was a prominent sportsman (a South African hurdles champion while a student) and a school sports administrator.

He acquired a BA degree from the University of Cape Town in 1962. In 1963 he was given a scholarship organised by Es'kia Mphahlele, the editor of Drum magazine,

Rive was for many years Head of the English Department at Hewat College. He was a visiting professor at several overseas universities, including Harvard University in 1987. He also delivered guest lectures at more than 50 universities on four continents.

A firm believer in anti-racism, Rive decided to stay in his country with the hope of influencing its development there. He lived comfortably, in a new California-style home in Windsor Park in Kraaifontein. In 1981 he told The New York Times: "I've got everything I want - except the franchise. And I'm not contented."

He was stabbed to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989, when he was 58 years old.

Writing Rive initially published his stories in South African magazines such as Drum and Fighting Talk. His collection African Songs was published in 1963 by Seven Seas Books. He edited anthologies for Heinemann's African Writers Series: the short story anthology Quartet (1963) - containing stories by Alex La Guma, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh and Rive himself - and the prose anthology Modern African Prose (1964). His short story "The Bench", for which he won a prize, is still anthologised. "The Bench" takes the well known story of Rosa Parks and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels that were published in his lifetime. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre. Buckingham Palace District Six was published in 1986 and turned into a musical by the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The authors all reflected on non-racial enclaves in South Africa during that era: Rive focused on District Six, Govender on Cato Manor, and Mattera on Sophiatown.