Wrede prag en angs

Abstract

Since the days of the very first visitors to the Cape in the 15th century two almost contradicting impressions of this most southernmost tip part of Africa were recorded: the startling beauty of the natural landscape and an almost epidemic apprehension of uncertainty and fear, “wrede prag en angs” [brutal splendour and anxiety] as it was later called by the Afrikaans poet D. J. Opperman. How, in the different literary periods of South African history, variants of this contradiction were recorded in Afrikaans literature is the subject of this paper. It starts with the first diaries by Dutch and French explorars and ends with two remarkable short stories published during the last decade of the previous century in which rituals and ways of adoration previously regarded as typical “African” are not portrayed as awe insping and alienating but as agents of healing and safety.