Includes bibliographical references. / Termination is a genre novel which follows a contemporary crime fiction format. It adheres closely to the narrative shape of modem mystery books, containing the essential elements which constitute a work in this field. With a few twists. Contemporary crime fiction can follow a couple of paths along the way to solving a misdemeanour. Which is usually a murder. The protagonist is either on the spot and in the plot by virtue of his/her job. In other words, they could be a cop, forensic specialist, medical examiner, private investigator etc. Or they could be drawn reluctantly into a scenario, by circumstance or due to an over-developed sense of "doing the right thing."

Includes abstract. / Late in 1998, Lincoln, a former journalist turned truck driver, picks up the ghost of a 17 year old white schoolgirl on a dark Joburg highway. She becomes his confessor, as he relates fragments of his life, hoping to seduce her. He is driving a shipment to Port Elizabeth, where he grew up, but does not want to return home with the news of being HIV positive. He would rather drive forever. Sooner or later Lincoln abandons the map completely, as he proceeds to willfully get lost. He gets stuck in an indeterminate phantom time, struggling to stay awake, losing and finding himself on a journey through eerie nocturnal landscapes and memories he has forgotten. Ban, the ghost's obsessive-compulsive best friend, wakes up after her funeral having tried to commit suicide. He is pursued by memories of Marga while she was alive, in particular her theories on AIDS and sexuality, and his secret love for her. A number of forces, real and imagined, are driving him towards overcoming his fear of leaving the house. Ban feels abused by his mother Helen's lifestyle. She is a con artist with a taste for reckless men, the latest of which is Derrick, who represents to Ban everything which is morally reprehensible about adulthood and growing up. Ean's discoveries in the course of his spring clean of the house, and the stories Lincoln tells the ghost, uncover Helen's great secret. She survived apartheid by denying her coloured family and living as a white woman, rejecting the black father of her child early on for her dream of becoming a .great white actress. When Ban runs away from home with the intention to commit suicide, and Lincoln emerges into the dawn with finer hopes of returning home, they meet without recognising one another as father and son, but unexpectedly give each other hope to carry on. In a world the one does not believe in and the other has abandoned, a boy and a man resist and deny the unfolding of their stories. Central to their struggle are the themes of home, family and healing. For Ban, healing means leaving, for Lincoln it requires return. The memories which pursue them will force them into the discovery of who they are about to become.

No description available.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and filled out the appropriate web form. / River Atlas is a collection of 35 poems, divided into three untitled sections, that explore the human experience through lenses of travel, geography, interpersonal relationships, memory, and nostalgia. In other words, these poems—some lyric, some narrative—are concerned with attachments to people, places, and times. Special attention is paid to the adventures and limitations of youth. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

This is an adaptation of 'Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises'. The story is changed in form and function from a book into a screenplay. And so, Hemingway's vivid source material is transposed from its origin as a literary work into a pictorial outline of a film. An adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel. A screenplay by Kate Erwin.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and filled out the appropriate web form. / A collection of poems / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-118). / In this dissertation the poetic voice in the collection Nadoodse ondersoek is investigated. A "poetic autopsy" is "performed" to define the poet's relation to words and images in thematic - and metaphoric implications. The development from impulse to final poem is discussed. The role of form and content and the tension between emotion and intellect is explored. Guidelines for aspiring poets by Ottone M. Riccio (The intimate art of writing), Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a young poet), Richard Hugo (The Triggering Town), A.P. Grove (Woord en wonder), T.T. Cloete (on J.H.Leopold's "dromende denke") and Dorothea Brande (Becoming a writer), amongst others, are applied. The definitions of desire and the death drive as formulated by Jacques Lacan, as well as Julia Kristeva's definitions of the semiotic chora and the abject are used as theoretic criteria in an investigation of psychoanalytic processes in the creative writing process.

Includes abstract. / In 1981 Sizwe Magona a 17-year old South African goes into exile in Europe. He is assigned to work with Graves Kumalo, prominent member of the ANC and responsible for investigating the apartheid government's nuclear weapons' programme. At that time, Kumalo meets Slimkop de Vriess, nuclear scientist in charge of South Africa's (secret) uranium enrichment plant. This provides the back story for Yellow Cake, a political eco-thriller set in contemporary South Africa. Written in a terse lean style with interrupted plot lines and multiple points of view, it uses the genre to explore complex relationships and themes of a country in transition. Global and local power dynamics play out in the choices that the characters make.

Rania, a young introverted woman, lives in a traditional Muslim family. It is a working class family, of Indian and Cape Malay heritage. Her parents married each other against her paternal grandmother's plans for her son, and because of their disapproval of Rania's mother, it caused a rift isolating both Rania and her mother from them. Rania feels stuck in an environment where she doesn't fit in and feels that she doesn't belong. Feeling like this, she escapes into a dream world of books and art to survive her overbearing mother, Shazia, who is both emotionally repressed and verbally abusive toward her. Her father, Ismail (Miley) Ahmed, fuels the drama with his obsessive control which Rania questions, yet obeys. Shazia, heartbroken from a previous love lost, pretends not to be interested in the silliness of love, and feigns disinterest in her husband's suspected extramarital affairs, yet does everything she can to hold onto him. Until he humiliates her beyond her capacity to forgive and she throws him out, but still secretly holds onto a hope that he will want to come back to her. Amara is Shazia's daughter from her previous husband, Rania's stepsister, and Shazia's favourite. Shazia has great plans for her, but she is a strong and free spirited young woman, and rebels against her doting mother by following her own bliss. She chooses happiness over security, even if it means defying her mother's wishes and breaking her mother's heart. Rania, obedient and lonely, yearns to meet someone she can connect to, someone who can save her from the world she believes her parents are keeping her trapped in, but she may be the one blocking herself. It is a coming of age story where three women struggle to find happiness amid difficult circumstances. The events which unfold, change their lives forever.

Rainbow Beach is the story of a family that escapes to a faraway place to forget the past and the past that follows them there. It is the story of a landscape, at times serene, at times explosive, that mirrors them and that they come to adore and yet resist. And it is the story of a father struggling under the weight of his memories and the daughter who loves him fiercely and senses the coming collapse and whose own memories take root in a part of the soul too deep to be erased.