All prizes South Africa
South Africa · Since 2001 · For books in Afrikaans
Awarded each year by the University of Johannesburg (until 2005 Rand Afrikaans University, as the RAU-prys) to the best creative book of any genre written in Afrikaans and published the year before; a separate debut prize is not listed here. Shortlists are known from 2011 on.
The prize was first awarded in 2001 as the RAU Mardene Marais Prize at Rand Afrikaans University, made possible by a donation from Dr Fanie Marais of the Cordis Trust. When the university merged into the new University of Johannesburg in 2005, the prize was renamed and a prize for English books was added; prizes for Zulu, Northern Sotho and literary translation followed in 2021. Books of any genre are eligible, and a panel of literary scholars from several universities chooses the shortlists and winners. In 2026, 65 books were entered and the shortlists were announced in June. The main prize is worth R70,000 and the debut prize R35,000. Marlene van Niekerk has won three times, first with Agaat in 2005; Ingrid Winterbach, S.J. Naudé, Etienne van Heerden and Antjie Krog have also won more than once.
Showing 25 of 83 books. 58 aren’t in English yet: show all.
UJ-prys 2026 · Winner
Binnerym van bloed
Antjie Krog · 73 when first published
Novel · 248 pages · Autofiction, Family
AI-generated summary:A poet returns to the Free State plains of her childhood and writes about her mother, a writer in her nineties who now needs full-time care, drawing on their letters, diaries and the carers’ reports.
UJ-prys 2024 · Winner
Van vaders en vlugtelinge
SJ Naudé · 53 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:When his elderly father dies, Daniël, who lives between London and Cape Town, can inherit only if he visits his cousin Theon on the old family farm in the Free State, a visit that leads to a journey to Tokyo with a sick little boy.
UJ-prys 2023 · Winner
Plunder
Antjie Krog · 70 when first published
Poetry · 128 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems about the landscape of a woman’s life, marriage, the body’s decline and small moments of family joy, in which the speaker tries at last to make sense of the country, of herself and of the past.
UJ-prys 2022 · Winner
Dol heuning
SJ Naudé · 51 when first published
Short stories · 240 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories that circle the globe from Cape Town to Reykjavik, rural Belgium and the Alps: a couple shelters their son while their cleaner’s child faces the country’s injustices, and a woman takes mad honey with the man who left her for someone else.
UJ-prys 2020 · Winner
Die biblioteek aan die einde van die wêreld
Etienne van Heerden · 65 when first published
Novel · 640 pages · Politics, Crime
AI-generated summary:An ill-considered tweet turns the attorney Ian Brand’s life to hell overnight; Thuli Khumalo, a student activist on a campus reeking of petrol and teargas, must choose between betraying her father and her principles; and a crossbow killer strikes ever more often in Cape Town.
UJ-prys 2019 · Shortlist
Die troebel tyd
Ingrid Winterbach · 70 when first published
Novel · 196 pages
AI-generated summary:On the wrong antidepressant, the zoologist Magrieta Prinsloo loses her head, insults her head of department and ends her distinguished academic career. She takes a post at the Bureau for Continuing Education, where colleagues and whales alike send her life in a new direction.
UJ-prys 2018 · Winner
Die derde spoel
SJ Naudé · 47 when first published
Novel · 347 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:In London in 1986, Etienne Nieuwenhuis and his German lover Axel find the first reel of a lost 1933 film, made by Jewish filmmakers who had to flee Berlin, in the flat of Axel’s dying grandfather, and the search for the rest takes Etienne to Berlin and Buenos Aires.
UJ-prys 2018 · Shortlist
Spertyd
Elsa Joubert · 95 when first published
Nonfiction · 212 pages
AI-generated summary:The last part of a writer’s autobiographical trilogy, about her later years in a retirement home in Cape Town, where her experience of the present is woven together with memories reaching much further back.
UJ-prys 2017 · Shortlist
Koors
Deon Meyer · 58 when first published
Novel · 584 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:A fever has killed almost everyone. Thirteen-year-old Nico Storm and his father Willem roam a nearly empty South Africa in search of a place to rebuild society, and settle at the old Vanderkloof, now called Amanzi, with a group of survivors.
UJ-prys 2016 · Winner
Soos familie
Ena Jansen · 64 when first published
Nonfiction · 359 pages
AI-generated summary:A study, drawing on literature and personal documents, of the domestic worker in South Africa, caught between race and class, rich and poor, town and country, black and white, an institution reaching back to the first years of the Company’s settlement at the Cape.
UJ-prys 2016 · Shortlist
Vlam in die sneeu
Nonfiction · 450 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:The love letters of two writers who met in April 1963, more than two hundred of them, from her telegram thanking him for flowers to his last letter in April 1965: one of South Africa’s most moving love affairs, published half a century later.
UJ-prys 2016 · Shortlist
Vlakwater
Ingrid Winterbach · 67 when first published
Novel · 272 pages
AI-generated summary:After his relationship breaks up, the artist Niek Steyn settles in Cape Town and befriends Marthinus Scheepers when one of his pigs lands in Niek’s garden. Then his lodger Charelle Koopman disappears, and a well-off artist makes a suspicious offer on his house.
UJ-prys 2015 · Winner
Buys
Willem Anker · 35 when first published
Novel · 432 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Coenraad de Buys, the most dangerous man in the Cape Colony, crosses his first border at eight and wanders from the Langkloof across the restless frontier of the late 1700s as King of the Basters, polygamist, bandit and outlaw.
UJ-prys 2015 · Shortlist
Mede-wete
Antjie Krog · 62 when first published
Poetry · 128 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems on conscience, memory and language, on a shared awareness of guilt, on the relation between self and other, and on land and the ownership of land.
UJ-prys 2015 · Shortlist
’n Duisend stories oor Johannesburg
Harry Kalmer · 58 when first published
Novel · 329 pages
AI-generated summary:Interwoven stories of Johannesburg people, emigrants, returnees and those who never left, through the twentieth century, from a concentration-camp tent in Turffontein to a couple whose love is illegal and a xenophobic murder in 2008.
UJ-prys 2014 · Shortlist
Wolf, wolf
Novel · 272 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Mattheus Duiker, son of Benjamin Duiker, once the owner of Duiker’s Motors, opens the gate of the Cape Town mansion to his lover Jack, disguised as a wolf. A story of father and son, and of a man the past has ill equipped for a fast-changing order.
UJ-prys 2013 · Winner
Die aanspraak van lewende wesens
Ingrid Winterbach · 64 when first published
Novel · 336 pages
AI-generated summary:After a disturbing call from one Josias Brandt, the heavy-metal fan Karl Hofmeyr reluctantly sets out to help his brother Iggy, while Maria Volschenk, struck one day by a great emptiness, travels to the Western Cape on a mission she has long dreaded.
UJ-prys 2013 · Shortlist
Philida
Novel · 320 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:The young slave Philida walks from Franschhoek to Stellenbosch to lodge a complaint with the Protector of Slaves against her master, Cornelis Brink, who wants to sell her after she has borne his son Frans four children. Frans had promised to buy her freedom.
UJ-prys 2011 · Winner
Die sneeuslaper
Marlene van Niekerk · 56 when first published
Short stories · 192 pages
AI-generated summary:Four interwoven stories about friendship that ask how and why stories come about: a teacher of creative writing meets her match in an extraordinary student, and the friend of a dead author addresses the mourners at his funeral.
UJ-prys 2011 · Shortlist
Die benederyk
Ingrid Winterbach · 62 when first published
Novel · 320 pages
UJ-prys 2009 · Winner
30 nagte in Amsterdam
Etienne van Heerden · 54 when first published
Novel · 518 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Henk de Melker, a museum curator in Somerset East who writes short monographs on obscure figures, learns from a letter that he is heir to his almost forgotten Aunt Zan, on condition that he spend thirty nights in her house in Amsterdam.
UJ-prys 2007 · Winner
Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat
Ingrid Winterbach · 58 when first published
Novel · 328 pages
AI-generated summary:When her employer dies suddenly and a thief steals her precious shells and soils her carpet, Helena Verbloem is set on a search that makes her face the losses she has long concealed.
UJ-prys 2006 · Winner
Bidsprinkaan
Novel · 251 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Drawn from the life of the historical Cupido Kakkerlak (c. 1760–c. 1825), who was not born but brought by an eagle: after the god Heitsi-Eibib appears to him in the veld, he becomes known far and wide as a master hunter, and as the district’s drinker, liar, lover and fighter.
UJ-prys 2005 · Winner
Agaat
Marlene van Niekerk · 50 when first published
Novel · 695 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A novel about women on a farm who depend on each other in need and want, giving a disquieting view of half a century of the Afrikaans landscape, marked by broken, maimed humanity but also by unfailing hope.
UJ-prys 2003 · Winner
Eilande
Novel · 758 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:A novel of the first decades of the Dutch settlement at the Cape, told around Eva-Krotoa of the Goringhaicona, her marriage to the Danish surgeon Pieter van Meerhoff, and their daughter Pieternella.