Returning to South Africa with Mary in 1925, Campbell started "Voorslag", a literary magazine with the ambition to serve as a "whiplash" (the meaning of the title in Afrikaans) on South African colonial society, which he considered "bovine". Before the magazine was launched, Campbell invited William Plomer to help with it, and late in the year, Laurens van der Post was invited to become the magazine's Afrikaans editor. "Voorslag" was, according to Joseph Pearce, one of the first bilingual literary journals ever published in South Africa.