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 10 of 57 books. 47 aren’t in English yet: show all.
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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · Shortlist
Die benederyk
Ingrid Winterbach · 62 when first published
Novel · 320 pages