C.J. Driver (1939-2023), was a poet, novelist, teacher, and political activist. Charles Jonathan “Jonty” Driver became known as a major South African English poet of the last quarter of a century by the literary names of “CJ Driver” and “Jonty Driver.” South African by ancestry, birth, upbringing, and some of his education, he received a master's of philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford in 1967, became British and was for nearly 30 years a prohibited immigrant in South Africa. His published works include the novels Elegy for a Revolutionary, Send War in Our Time, O Lord, and A Messiah of the Last Days; 10 books of poetry; five books of biography and memoir; and a book of verse for children. He was in residence in 2009 when he worked on a seventh book of poems, titled Still Further.
He attended St. Andrews College in Grahamstown, S.A. (now Makhanda), and studied at the University of Cape Town when he became head of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students. It wasn’t long before he was suspected of being a member of the African Resistance Movement and was held in solitary confinement for five weeks under the 90-day Detention Law. Two days after being released without charge, he left for the UK and subsequently graduated with a M.A. in philosophy from Oxford. While there, his passport was cancelled by the South African government and he remained stateless until being accepted as a British citizen a few years later, though he remained “fiercely South African at heart.” It took more than 20 years before he was permitted to visit South Africa once more.
From the 1970s through the 1990s he taught at various schools, teaching at Wellington College and University of East Anglia. In 2007 and 2008, he was a judge for the Caine Prize for African Writing and served on the board of the Beit Trust for many years.
