Dr Willem Anker and Dr Alfred Schaffer (who both teach creative writing at the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch) received the kykNET-Rapport Prize for fiction and the Dutch PC Hooft Prize, respectively, in ceremonies that were, as a result of the pandemic, wholly or largely held without face to face interaction.

Alfred had been announced as the winner of the coveted PC Hooft Prize on 14 December 2020 for an oeuvre already comprising nine volumes of poetry. He was able to receive the award in person in The Hague on 9 September. As part of the programme, a number of poets, among them the South Africans Antjie Krog and Ronelda S. Kamfer, read extracts from his and their own work and shared their thoughts on what makes his poetry so exceptional.

Willem was awarded the kykNET-Rapport Prize for the second time on 11 September – on this occasion for his third novel, Skepsel. His novel Buys (appearing in English as Red Dog courtesy of translator Michiel Heyns) won the same prize in 2015. The kykNET-Rapport Prize is not the first award to be bestowed on Skepsel. The novel scooped up the 2021 UJ Prize on 31 March. (Of course, Buys won the UJ Prize in 2015 and in 2008 Willem won the UJ Debut Prize with Siegfried.)

Skepsel is also in the running for an ATKV Woordveertjie – specifically the ATKV Prose Prize. The ATKV is due to announce the winner on Friday 17 September.

Later this year, Alfred will be honoured at the Breytenbach Centre's annual Tuin van Digters [Poets' Garden], to be held on 22 and 23 October.

The Department of Afrikaans and Dutch is proud of the achievements of these two author-lecturers and is delighted that their work is receiving such acclaim. Undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Department are privileged to learn from such talented writers and they definitely have an advantage when it comes to Afrikaans and Dutch literature and creative writing.