Ek het half verwag dat hy my sou vra om in ’n soort piramideskema te belê. Ek het myself reggemaak daarvoor dat hy iets aan my sou probeer verkoop. Maar al wat hierdie naamlose mens wou weet was om opreg te vra of daar iets is wat hy kan doen om my te help.
Sy aanbod het my om verskeie redes baie verwar, maar die kern daarvan was ’n diepgesetelde agterdog, het ek eers later besef.
Hierdie man wou net help. Dit was nie ’n transaksie nie. Hy wou bloot welwillendheid betoon.
Ek was nie die eerste persoon in daardie parkeerterrein na wie hy sy helpende hand uitgesteek het nie en waarskynlik ook nie die laaste nie. Daardie dag was ek ’n getuie van ’n onderwaardeerde wonderwerk: een vreemdeling, wat werklik omgee vir ’n ander totale vreemdeling, in ruil vir absoluut niks nie.
Yuwinn A. Kraukamp is a bilingual writer from the coastal corner of Cape Agulhas, South-Africa. He’s a natural born creative, a former English— and Communications major at the university of the Western Cape, and a patron (saint) of everything that’s artistically unique and beautifully weird in this world. Yuwinn has worked as a freelance columnist for Network 24, and a freelance journalist for The Southern Post Newspaper since 2022. In 2024 he was the third-place winner of the Diana Ferrus poetry prize; and in April 2026 he was the first-place prize winner of the Njabulo S. Ndebele-themed ‘Rediscovering the Ordinary’ poetry competition. His poem Raw/Rou won the third-place prize at the Bridgette James international contest in May 2026. Both his English and Afrikaans poetry has appeared on various platforms such as Litnet, PEN Afrikaans and Versindaba; and has been published within poetry anthologies such as Ons Kom Van Hier and The Avbob Poetry Project.
He became a member of the Jakes Gerwel Foundation’s network of authors and artists, after participating in a writing fellowship in the Eastern Cape in October 2022. In that same year, he was shortlisted for the Nigerian short story contest—Toyin Falola—and became one of two South-Africans whose writing was honorably mentioned at The Future Feminist Awards in California. Yuwinn’s writing focuses on language identity, political transitions, moral complexity, loss, trauma and rebirth. A variety of his short stories have been published in magazines such as Huisgenoot and Kuier, and within collections such as the Short-Sharp-Stories anthology and FicSci. In 2024, Yuwinn was part of a science-meets-creativity workshop hosted by the University of Stellenbosch and the South-African Research Chair; where he produced climate-change fiction that was published in an oceanic-research anthology in June 2025. In September and October 2025, he participated in a writing residency alongside six African writers at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study (J.I.A.S), where they explored the political roles and responsibilities of poetry and short stories.
You can contact Yuwinn at yuwinnkraukamp@gmail.com regarding potential writing opportunities or projects.
