Annelie Botes, 53, author of several novels, made the remarks last week in an interview with Rapport newspaper.
"I don't like black people," she told the paper, when asked what sort of people she disliked.
"I don’t understand them! ... I know they are people just like me. I know they have the same rights as me. But I do not understand them. And then I do not like them. I avoid them because I am scared of them."
Botes blamed black people for South Africa's violent crime problem, which had claimed the life of her neighbour, and said the violence showed blacks were "angry because of their own incompetence".
The writer has been pilloried for her remarks, with many people accusing her of being prejudiced and stuck in the past.
But a large number of people have also praised her honesty and defended her right "to like who she likes".
Botes told the Mail & Guardian newspaper she had received about 1 000 e-mails backing her remarks and that she still stood by her comments.
"Naturally, there are a lot of black people that I like very much. But I certainly meant what I said," she said.
SHOOT: South Africans should not polarise themselves, it makes the intractable problems we already have worse. That said, there seems to be aschizophrenia between reality and what people really mean. This is why corruption is the invisible evil eating at the fabric of society that it is. There is a schism between jobs, stated roles and intentions and what people actually do. But let's be realistic, in a country where the majority of people are black, it's okay to sing songs about killing white people. But for a minority person to say I don't like somke of the blacks...quite odd if you ask me. And she also tempered this statement by saying it is the criminal and the corrupt that she doesn't like, and some black folk she does like. Hellooo! This is life in South Africa - not really free or fair, but was it ever, for anyone?
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