ABSTRACT
Richard Moore Rive stands as and for a specific kind of coloured intellectual. Born in Cape Town's District Six in 1930 and the victim of a gruesome murder in 1989, Rive is one of the preeminent figures in South African letters. The relationship radical intellectuals have with the disenfranchised community they belong to is complex. Empowered within and by their own community, oppositional thinkers are in a position to represent the struggle of the disenfranchised in and through their intellectual practices. Ironically, as Rive's links to District Six demonstrate, the laws of apartheid inadvertently strengthened the relationship between disenfranchised intellectuals and their community—even after the intellectual removes himself or herself from the physical site of the community. However much "'coloured'" may have implied a tacit acknowledgment of apartheid's racial categories, Rive's deep-seated investment in this community impelled him to investigate its cultural practices. Inscribed onto the coloured body is the history of colonialism, racism, and sexual and economic exploitation.
