Kris Van der Bijl

South African Writer

Posts

  • Exploring Nelson Mandela’s Evolving Authority Through His Writings

    Nelson Mandela’s place in South African public life has been shaped through the circulation of his writing and through the political work that writing was asked to perform. From the outset, his texts operated within a public sphere already primed to read him as a representative figure. This context shaped both how the writing functioned…

  • How Things Fall Apart from Fear: A Short Study of Okonkwo

    Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is often approached as a novel about collapse: the collapse of a society under colonial pressure and the collapse of a man not surviving the force of unwanted and imposed change. Yet long before the arrival of missionaries and administrators, the novel is already attentive to arguably quieter intimate pressures.…

  • Thoughts on Netflix’s Thabo Bester Documentary

    The Netflix documentary Thabo Bester: Beauty and the Bester has been released. It follows the common true crime Netflix format: three parts of roughly 45 minutes each. It offers little in the way of new information. But it is a sensational story. They were lucky, as this does the heavy lifting. I’m reminded of Glynnis…

  • On Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide by Atef Abu Saif

    Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide by Atef Abu Saif is an autobiography of a Palestinian man enduring life in the Gaza Strip after Israel seized the city following the events of October 7th, 2023.

  • The Legacy of Duse Mohamed Ali in Pan-African Literature

    Duse Mohamed Ali’s Ere Roosevelt Came is a rare and intriguing work of early 20th-century Pan-African literature.  First serialised in The Comet, Ali’s Nigerian magazine, in 1934, the novel is a bold exploration of race, global politics, and Black resistance in an era marked by rising fascism, entrenched colonial rule, and pervasive white supremacy.  Its…

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