Richard Moore Rive (1931 in Cape Town–1989) was a South African writer.
Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class coloured District Six of Cape Town.[1]
His father was African, and his mother was coloured[2], 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, where he qualified as a teacher.
Later he was to gain a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, followed by an MA degree from Columbia University in the United States, and a Doctorate 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 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.[1] In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He wrote a doctoral thesis on Olive Schreiner which was published posthumously, in 1996.[3]
Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism[4] 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: 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 Parkes and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre. 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.[1]
His last novel, Emergency Continued, was published posthumously. Rive was stabbed to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989.