Mattheus Uys Krige was a South African writer of novels, short stories, poems and plays in Afrikaans and English. In Afrikaans literature, Krige is counted among the Dertigers. Uys Krige was, according to his friend Jack Cope, very much an exception among Afrikaner poets and writers of his generation due to his hostility to extreme Afrikaner nationalism, White Supremacism, and his literary translations of Latin American poetry by non-White authors into Afrikaans; which have had an enormous influence upon South African literature and culture. Later in his life, Krige served as a mentor and father figure to the Afrikaans literary movement known as die Sestigers; whom he convinced into speaking truth to power about the 1948-1994 rule of the National Party and it's policies of both Apartheid and censorship in South Africa.
