ABSTRACT
Securing an ideological space for coloureds within the ranks of the disenfranchised and crafting an artistic vocabulary that can engage the problematic of racial ambiguity and ambivalent political identification are two of the main issues in Arthur Nortje's poetry. In the opening stanza of one of his most brilliant poems, "Dogsbody half-breed," Nortje traces coloured roots with a remarkable vividness, offering an insightful revisiting of the sexualized history of colonialism in South Africa. The "pressure of history" affected Nortje's exile in a variety of ways, compelling him to think critically about his disaffiliation. The unattainability of coloured roots serves only to make them, in Nortje's verse, more desirable to and necessary for the coloured community. Even as Nortje adopts the Rive approach and dedicates his work, in key moments, to locating coloureds as organic to the black experience, so he finds himself facing the dilemma of racial bifurcation at every turn.
