Biography

Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class coloured

Coloured

In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured refers to an heterogenous ethnic group who possess ancestry from Europe, various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa, West Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaya, India, Mozambique,...

 District Six

District Six, Cape Town

District Six is the name of a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. It is best known for the forced removal of over 60,000 of its inhabitants during the 1970s by the apartheid regime....

 of Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

.

His father was African, and his mother was coloured, and Rive was given the latter classification under apartheid. Rive went to St Mark's Primary School and Trafalgar High School, both in District Six, and then to Hewat College of Education in Athlone

Athlone, Cape Town

Athlone is a suburb of Cape Town located to the east of the city centre on the Cape Flats to the south of the N2 highway. It is named after Alexander Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone who was Governor-General of the Union of South Africa from 1924 to 1930...

, where he qualified as a teacher

Teacher

A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

.

Later he was to gain a BA degree from the University of Cape Town

University of Cape Town

The University of Cape Town is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.-History:The roots of...

, followed by an MA degree from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and a Doctorate

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 from Oxford University. He was for years the Head of the English Department at Hewat College. Rive was a visiting professor at several overseas universities, including Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1987; and delivered guest lectures at more than fifty universities on four continents. He was a prominent sportsman (a South African hurdles champion while a student) and a school sports administrator. In 1963 he was given a scholarship organised by the editor of Drum magazine, Es'kia Mphahlele. In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He wrote a doctoral thesis on Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel The Story of an African Farm which has been highly acclaimed ever since its first publication in 1883 for the bold manner in which it dealt with some of the burning issues...

 which was published posthumously, in 1996.

Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism and decided to stay in his country in order that he could influence its development there.

Rive focused initially published his stories in collections or in South African magazines like Drum and Fighting Talk. He edited anthologies for Heinemann's African Writers Series

African Writers Series

African Writers Series is a series of books by African writers which has been published by Heinemann since 1962. The series has been a vehicle for some of the most important African writers, ensuring an international voice to literary masters including Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Steve Biko,...

: the short story anthology Quartet (1963) - containing stories by Alex La Guma

Alex La Guma

Alex La Guma was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against the apartheid era in South Africa...

, James Matthews

James Matthews (writer)

James Matthews is a South African poet, writer and publisher.He was detained by the apartheid government in 1976, and was denied a passport for 23 years....

, Alf Wannenburgh

Alf Wannenburgh

Alf Wannenburgh is a South African writer and journalist.Alf Wannenburgh studied at the University of Cape Town. He worked as a land-surveyor's assistant, salesman, clerk and window-dresser. Associated with the Sophiatown Renaissance, Wannenburgh remained in South Africa in the early 1960s rather...

 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 Parkes and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre

Sharpeville massacre

The Sharpeville Massacre occurred on 21 March 1960, at the police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in the Transvaal . After a day of demonstrations, at which a crowd of black protesters far outnumbered the police, the South African police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69...

. Buckingham Palace District Six, was published in 1986 and turned into a musical by a theatre in Cape Town. He also published an autobiography entitled Writing Black in 1981.

His last novel, Emergency Continued, was published posthumously. Rive was stabbed to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989.

External links

• Shaun Viljoen, Richard Rive: A Skewed Biography, Phd thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2006