During his final year in high school a pastor, Reverend Kohl of the Lutheran Mission Church, he felt, had a particularly good influence on his personal development.
[citation needed] In 1959 Petersen was appointed a member of the US–SA leadership program and travelled with his family to America, where he lectured at several university colleges in New York and Chicago.
In 1982 he was appointed to the advisory board of the SABC He died of kidney failure in Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town on 30 October 1987.
The short story Verbode vrugte (Forbidden Fruit), was published in 1943 in Die Naweek and included by Daniel Hugo in his collection Tydskrif 2.
[citation needed] From the same period dates the novel As die Son Ondergaan (When the Sun Goes Down), a story about the demise of a young brown man (Frans) in the city.
The gifted young man, unable to realise his ambition to become a teacher, left his home in the countryside for city, hoping to get a paying job.
This problem, however, remains largely in the background, the destruction and preservation of the protagonist representing not a symbolic example of the coloured people's struggle, but rather a more universally human development.
[citation needed] In 1946 As die Son Ondergaan was awarded the prize in a nationwide contest of prose writing offered by the magazine Kern a part of the Unie-Volkspers.
[citation needed] Die Enkeling (The individual) makes its impact more through the authenticity of feeling about the suffering of coloured people, than the quality of the poems, which technically, are not yet truly poetry.
It is especially the poignant poem Bede (Prayer) that revolts against "the accursed penalty of a dark skin" and concludes with the speaker praying for the fortitude to accept his fate, should this indeed be God's will.
[citation needed] Die stil kind (The quiet child)[3] evinces considerable artistic progress, with the tone of the poems less harsh.
As its title states, the dreaming child is portrayed as a lonely individual, while verses describe with deep emotion the ravaged victims of poverty.
Die loper (The runner) portrays the struggle of the intellectual coloured man, and Slotsom (Conclusion) concludes that, in death, no difference between the races exists.
The collection reflects the progress of his first two books and in depicting the provocation, the melancholy and loneliness of the brown people and can be seen as an important milestone in African poetry.
Beautiful poems include Kinders van Kain (where the fate of those kicked out is contrasted with the promise of the New Day); Die drumpel (The threshold), in which the harsh manner in which coloured people are treated is challenged by an accusation that, as a racial group, they originated from the immoral behaviour of white pioneers; Kinderland (Childhood), with its melancholy about the utterly lost dreams of childhood; and Die veles (The many) follows the path of common people through life in rather a witty manner.
Bergies (Mountain dwellers) is also noteworthy, with its witty imagery of this marginalised sector of society, while Windermere touches the social needs of the people.
Each section ends with a suite of five poems, Ballade – a series about the "platteland", the countryside, and one on the "Confession of the city dweller" showing the contrasts in the feeling of freedom.
Memories of country life find expression in poignant poetic memoirs such as Tuiskoms (Homecoming) and Sekelgat, where former joys are played off against the sadness of remembrance.
du Plessis[10] deals with how the question of skin colour can dominate one's judgements on the value and dignity of the human being,[11] and the search for one's own identity in trying to find the sense of security that was present in the parental home.
Noteworthy poems are Stadsmens (City dweller), depicting the hand-to-mouth existence of this group; Kaapse Vlak (Cape Flats) about the violent death of a young boy; and Landelik (Rural), beautiful images from this carefree and simple world.
In 1950 the SABC dedicated an episode of Ons skrywers en digters aan die woord (Our writers and poets of the word) to his work.