Richard Rive. Shaun Viljoen

Return’.⁷⁹

      ‘The Return’ is the story of a nameless stranger whose ‘sallow complexion betrayed that he was not European’. The stranger returns to a small town in the Karoo where he is greeted with crude and foul racist insults by white youngsters and older folk in the main street. He finds refuge in the coloured location, where he seems vaguely familiar to the people, but where he also finds intense mistrust of ‘the kaffers’. Both white and coloured folk justify their bigotry in terms of Christian doctrine and when the stranger attempts to enter a whites-only church, he is bundled out by the church warden. The concluding paragraphs reveal that the stranger is in fact Christ returning, only to discover that in this racialised society ‘there was no understanding in their hearts’.⁸⁰