On 15 April 2026, the University of the Free State (UFS) awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature to Dr Ingrid Winterbach, recognising a body of work that continues to shape how Afrikaans is spoken, remembered, and evolved.

The degree was conferred during a graduation ceremony on the Bloemfontein Campus by Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Hester C. Klopper, who described Winterbach as a writer whose influence extends beyond bookshelves into the cultural life of South Africa.

Her novels, translated into languages including Dutch, French, and Bulgarian, have carried Afrikaans into international literary spaces. At the same time, her work remains grounded in the textures of South African life, its contradictions and silences, and its search for meaning.

A writer who stretches the language

Across decades, Winterbach has built a reputation for work that resists simplicity. Her writing moves between the ordinary and the unsettling, often returning to questions of memory, loss, and how people make sense of experience.

Alongside her literary career, she has sustained a visual art practice, exhibiting both locally and internationally. Moving between word and image reflects a continued exploration of how meaning is formed, especially when language feels insufficient.

Her contribution has been recognised through major literary awards, including the Hertzog Prize and the M-Net Prize.

Holding space for new voices

In her acceptance address, Winterbach turned to the future of Afrikaans.

While she writes exclusively in the language, she noted that much of her own reading has been in English, where access to literature is broader. This, she suggested, makes the emergence of new Afrikaans voices particularly significant.

She pointed to writers such as Willem Anker and Lynthia Julius, whose work is expanding what the language can hold.

“The mother tongue is the lens through which one first encounters the world,” she said. “As writers, we return to it to make sense of that world.”

Her reflection speaks to a wider question in South Africa: how languages continue to adapt and remain meaningful across generations.

Creating when words fall away

Winterbach also spoke about a period when writing was no longer enough.

After the death of her husband, she turned to painting as a way of working through grief. The resulting series, Murder ballads, emerged from an attempt to engage with an experience that resisted language.

“There are moments when words are simply not available,” she said.

In this space, visual art became a way to continue the work of meaning-making, extending rather than replacing her writing.

Recognition that affirms a lifetime of work

Winterbach’s honorary doctorate recognises more than just a distinguished career. It affirms the role of literature and the arts in helping society confront complexity and preserve ways of seeing and understanding.