Award-winning Afrikaans poet and author George Weideman has died, the SABC reported on Thursday.

The 61-year-old, who was the first recipient of the Sanlam prize for Afrikaans theatre in July 2004, died of leukaemia.

He had published more than 15 books, including poetry, short story collections and youth novels, and received several prizes for his youth novels and radio dramas broadcast on Afrikaans radio station RSG.

He was a lecturer at the Peninsula Technikon, now part of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, before his retirement. - Sapa