Born: 5 July 1955, South Africa
Died: NA
Country most active: South Africa
Also known as: NA
The following, “Dianne Case,” is republished from South African History Online in line with the SAHO Copyright, Disclaimer & Privacy policy.
Dianne Case was born in Woodstock, Cape Town in 1955, the daughter of an Indian father and mixed race mother of slave ancestry. The family later moved to Wittebome in Wynberg where Dianne attended Battswood primary school and Immaculata High School. A quiet and sensitive child who felt the pain of others very deeply, Dianne found a channel for these feelings through writing. Not surprisingly, as a student Dianne excelled at creative writing and language. [i]
In 1981 as a young mother, Dianne penned her first the novel Albatross Winter, a story about the life of a young child from a disadvantaged community in the Cape Flats. [ii]This novel won the Maskew Miller Young Africa Literary award in that year and was to be the start of a journey as a full-time writer capturing childhood in the dismal underbelly of the Western Cape where life is cheap and childhoods are stifled by poverty and desperation. Case’s grasp of the social ills caused by Apartheid and its intergenerational consequences runs as a common thread in all her novels and she does not shy away from dealing with issues that are hard-hitting, but real for many impoverished communities.[iii] This is nowhere more evident than in her last literary offering ‘The Rules’, which deals with the lives of two young people from Manenberg in the Cape Flats. The book touches on the challenges faced by youth in Cape Town townships, most notably the abuse of Tik Methamphetamine, a drug that is slowly sucking out the life of many of Cape Town’s disadvantaged youth.
Dianne is notable, not only as a children’s author who has touched the lives of street children and highlighted the plight of Cape Town’s disaffected youth, but also as a community worker. She has also run creative writing workshops for female prisoners at Pollsmoor prison[iv] in the past and currently spends a good deal of her time giving workshops and motivational talks at schools.
Dianne is kind to a fault and is a lifeline to many in her community who have fallen on hard times. In addition to this, Dianne has raised three daughters who are all strong young women, one of them being Maxine Case, herself an accomplished author, a chip off the old block![v] Certainly, Dianne Case’s contribution to South African literature has been outstanding. Described as a ‘master storyteller’,[vi] Dianne she has won multiple awards for writing, including the Percy Fitzpatrick prize of the English Academy of Southern Africa.[vii]