Julian Smith

Julian Smith (19**-) is a star rugby player, academic and theatre historian.

Biography

Born in Robertson in the Cape winelands, he grew up in the picturesque village of McGregor, about 18km away. His parents, Julie and Milly, hail from families with strong sporting backgrounds, so his early interests were sport, and rugby in particular, in which he excelled and would go on to national honours. (For details of his rugby career, see the article "Black Legend: Julian Smith", SA Rugby Magazine November 28, 2018[1])

Smith began his formal schooling at the Methodist Primary School in McGregor where his father was the principal, then going to Langeberg Intermediary School and finished his schooling at to Esselenpark Secondary School in Worcester.

He then enrolled for a BA degree at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in 1972, and trained as a language teacher. In 1976 and 1977 he taught at Bishop Lavis Secondary School, while completing a BA honours degree. He then returned to Robertson to teach at his alma mater, Langeberg Secondary School.

In 1982 he was appointed a lecturer in the Afrikaans-Nederlands department at UWC,

where he became a lecturer in the Afrikaans department and later Registrar of the University. In 2000 he was appointed vice-rector of the University of Stellenbosch and Professor in the Stellenbosch Drama Department.

His daughter, Cherice Smith, studied drama at Stellenbosch.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

With a close personal relationship to Adam Small and the performing arts in the Cape Flats, he was intimately involved with the movement of so-called "coloured" writers to identify with black consciousness movement and sought to assess the contribution of black writers to Afrikaans literature. He was one of the Organisers of the seminal conference on Black Writers in Afrikaans, held at the University of the Western Cape in the 1980s and his doctoral thesis focused on and analyzed the role of black writers and the many theatre companies active in the theatre of the so-called "Cape Flats". A shorter version of the study was published in 1990 entitled Toneel en Poltiek and remains one of the few really significant documents in this field.