Abstract
The phrase 'future anterior', which denotes the future perfect tense, 'is used to express a future action or event that will be completed before another future action or to describe a future action or event that will have been completed in the future' (Cliffs Notes n.d.). Borrowing from this sense of the future - where the future becomes past and is overtaken by another future - I propose that black South African literature, especially black South African literature written in English, can be seen as organised around this sense of time and events. The future anterior offers a sense of textual closure - of actions completed by a set time - yet also works by means of anticipation and displacement, hope, and possible disappointment. The very hope that an event will have happened always also carries the possibility of incompletion. From this perspective, I proffer a reflection and outlook on contemporary black South African writing as caught in the dialectic of closure and openness.