Emergency

“And then they march back to the Locations. Column after column
along De Waal Drive. Mile after mile of black humanity. Hardly speaking,
hardly saying a word. Silent like people going to a graveyard.”
Three days in March 1960. That’s all it took to change a life. That’s all it took to change a
country.

Andrew Dreyer is a young, coloured schoolteacher in Cape Town. After a tragic but
relatively sheltered youth, Dreyer’s studies at university expose him to the true scale
and oppression of the apartheid state. But nothing can prepare him for his plunge into
the chaos of the Struggle, in the course of the three short days between the Sharpeville
Massacre and the declaration of the first State of Emergency.
A portrait of a developing political consciousness, Emergency was one of the first books
that dealt with the tumult of the Pass Law protests and the horrific aftermath of Sharpeville.
A tersely-written novel of both historical and social importance, EMERGENCY cements Rive’s
reputation as a sharp witness to the injustices of apartheid.

“[Emergency breaks] new ground by exploring the forces that might lead an ordinary, decent
black to become involved in the armed struggle against apartheid.” The New York Times
“The finest Bildungsroman in our national literature. In form alone it is a masterpiece of
controlled structural ironies.” Upfront

“He had more to give us, but we are profoundly grateful for the legacy he has left us.”
Es’kia Mphahlele

“[A] roistering braggart who… outshone his origins [to become] an intellectual with global
reach.” Stephen Gray, Mail & Guardian

RICHARD RIVE is also the author of the short story collection African
Songs (1963) and ADVANCE, RETREAT(1983), as well as the influential
memoir WRITING BLACK (1981). His best-known work remains the
novel BUCKINGHAM PALACE, DISTRICT SIX(1986). Rive was the editor of
the collections QUARTET (1964) and MODERN PROSE (1963). EMERGENCY CONTINUED, the sequel to EMERGENCY, was published posthumously in 1990.

RICHARD RIVE was born in 1931 in District Six, Cape Town. A winner of
scholarships from a young age, Rive carried his academic momentum
from high school until he had earned degrees from the Universities
of Cape Town and Columbia, as well as a doctorate from Oxford for his thesis on South
African writer Olive Schreiner. He has the rare distinction of having gained a Fulbright
Scholarship at both the post-graduate and the post-doctoral levels, and was for three years
Junior Research Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a visiting professor at several
universities, including Harvard University in 1987; and delivered guest lectures at more than
fifty universities on four continents.
An excellent sportsman as well as one of the most influential thinkers of his generation,
Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism and a fervent supporter of development in South
Africa. He was murdered at his home in Cape Town in 1989.